Death at the Diogenes Club: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery (The Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mysteries Book 6), page 9
The barmaid frowned, her eyes darting back and forth, and I could see nervousness warring with the urge to help. Finally she said, “All right, dearie. You didn’t hear it from me, but go up and turn right onto Milk Street, then left onto Clement Court. Look for number fifteen.”
Clement Court proved to be a narrow, crowded lane, with buildings that leaned into one another like a row of drunkards propping each other up. A butcher shop on the corner made me cover my mouth against the reek of blood, and two doors in, a pawn shop appeared to be doing a brisk trade in what were probably stolen watches and handkerchiefs.
An itinerant street vendor had set up camp on the sidewalk. He seemed to be selling pet songbirds, all trapped in small wooden cages that he carried on a pole.
“Buy a bird, miss?” The vendor wore a scruffy-looking gentleman’s top hat and a heavy woolen muffler wrapped around his throat. “Beautiful singers, they are.” He looked me up and down. “Or I can see you might want something special. This ’ere is a bird of paradise, straight from the jungles of darkest Peru. I’ll let you ’ave it for just a shilling.”
He whipped the cover off of another cage.
I peered more closely. “That looks like a chicken.”
An extremely irritated-looking chicken, whose feathers had been dyed into a rainbow of colors with what appeared to be cheap oil paints. The colors had run in places, blending into a muddy greenish-brown.
The bird let out an annoyed squawk, trying to peck through the bars of the cage, and the vendor gave me a dirty look.
I kept walking.
Number fifteen was at least easy to find, in that it proved to be a coffee house—the sort of establishment where coffee was served for a penny a cup or three half-pence for a pint. The entire house, from the ground floor all the way up to the attic, was brightly lighted and appeared as crowded—and a great deal louder—than the gin palace I’d just been in.
As I stood on the pavement studying the place, the swinging double doors covering the front entrance suddenly burst open, spilling out a pair of men who appeared to be trying to kill each other. One had the other’s neck in a choke hold, and they went down to the ground practically at my feet, rolling and grunting and punching each other.
Getting involved wouldn’t at all fit with my current persona. Not to mention, I had no idea whose side I ought to be on.
I stepped around them and pushed open the coffee house doors.
“Haven’t seen you in here before.”
I turned and found myself staring at the expanse of a man’s beefy chest, covered in a none-too-clean blue and white striped shirt and a waistcoat that was strained to the limits of its seams. Adjusting my gaze upwards, I discovered that the waistcoat’s owner was a big, red-faced man with hair that seemed to have all fled from the top of his bald head and collected instead into a bushy dark beard. Between the beard and the collar of his shirt, I could see a tattoo of a green snake crawling up the side of his neck.
I took a sip from my coffee, which tasted strong enough that I imagined it slowly eating its way through the cup.
Since I didn’t actually want to attract the attention of the man in the police sketch, I hadn’t shown my drawing here. But I hadn’t seen any sign of him. Neither I had I seen Jack, and I had been here for what had to be close to an hour.
I summoned a smile for the bearded man. “I’m looking for someone.”
The one thing I was sure about, after an hour of watching the comings and goings inside the coffee house, was that it was not just a place selling coffee and cheap food.
Certain patrons approached the counter, but then stepped around it and vanished through a doorway at the back of the main room. I had been keeping count, and so far eight people—seven men and one woman—had gone inside. None of them had come out again.
The bearded man leaned towards me, baring stained teeth in an answering smile. “Looking for someone, are you, luv? And who’d that be?”
I debated, then made up my mind. “Jack Kelly.”
“Kelly, is it?” The man’s eyebrows went up, and he eyed me, a calculation seeming to take place behind his gaze. “All right.” He turned, jerking his head in a way that meant I ought to follow. “Come along upstairs.”
I eyed his broad back. In my experience, practically nothing good ever started with those words—especially not when they were spoken by strange, tattooed men in establishments that were shady at best.
But I couldn’t go back to Baker Street without seeing Jack, and neither could I sit here all night.
The coffee house had been an actual house at some time, maybe back in the days when Cheapside was a thriving commercial district, the areas around it filled with respectably affluent tradesmen’s homes. The bearded man led the way out of the main room and up a flight of stairs that opened off the small entrance hall.
The second floor of the house wasn’t as crowded as the ground level, but it was still filled with patrons. Rooms that must at one time have been bedrooms now contained tables and chairs where customers were drinking, eating, and playing rounds of cards or dice.
The bearded man led the way to a room at the end of the hall and pushed open the heavy paneled door. The back of my neck prickled. None of the other rooms had doors.
The realization struck me just as the man’s hand shot out, grabbing hold of my wrist with unnerving force.
This of course was the drawback to dressing as a lady of the evening. It disarmed suspicion and gave me access to places where I wouldn’t be allowed in more respectable apparel. But it did have its quotient of risk involved.
I looked down at the beefy fingers wrapped around my arm. “You really don’t want to do this.”
The big man ignored me, dragging me with him into a dark, narrow room that was empty save for a dingy four-poster bed.
I could have broken his grip, but this would be easier without a potential audience from any of the other rooms.
“Kelly’s not going to give you any business.” The man’s beard scratched against my cheek as he whispered, his breath hot in my ear. “Used to be a copper, now he lives like a bloody monk. But I’ll give you a—”
I swung my handbag at him, smashing the heavy brass paperweight inside into his face. He howled, clutching his nose, and I gave him the most savage kick I could manage to the groin.
He sank to his knees, groaning, his nose spurting blood.
I stood looking down at him. “Which part of the sentence, You don’t want to do this was too difficult for you to understand?”
Now I would have to start all over again with looking downstairs.
I turned to the doorway—and came face to face with Jack.
CHAPTER 15
Jack looked from me to the man on the ground. He was breathing as though he’d just run up the stairs, but his voice was almost calm.
“I see you’ve met Yates.”
I recovered my ability to speak. “His notions of hospitality leave something to be desired, but yes. We’ve met.”
Yates was still moaning, his face smeared with blood from his nose and his eyes tearing. “Get that crazy bint away from me.”
Jack hauled Yates roughly to his feet and gave him a shove towards the door.
“Keep talking, and I’ll leave the two of you alone so that she can finish what she started.”
Yates gave us a look that was half anger, half fear, and staggered out.
Jack and I stood looking at each other. He was wearing dark gray trousers and suspenders over a plain cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows. His dark hair was tousled-looking, and his expression was grim.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked.
“I’d just come out of the back room downstairs and saw you going up here with Yates. I was hoping I was going crazy or hallucinating or something harmless like that.” Jack looked at me, the line of his jaw tight. “What were you thinking, coming up here with him? That has to be the—”
“If you’re going to say craziest thing I’ve ever done, I promise you it’s not.”
Jack rubbed a hand across his face. “What are you doing here, Lucy?”
“What am I doing here? You’re the one who’s supposed to be at a medical clinic in Bath right now!”
“I—” Jack stopped speaking as the door to the room burst open again.
I stiffened, ready for Yates to have returned with reinforcements. But instead it was a man I hadn’t yet seen—younger, scarcely out of his teens, with a thin, sallow face and a mop of curly black hair. He was breathing hard, and he looked at Jack with panicked eyes.
“Leave the twist and Botany! Blue bottles in the field!”
He spun, running back down the hall.
I turned to Jack. Working with Holmes had taught me some of the slang used by East Londoners, but in this case, the only term I’d recognized was blue bottle.
“Police?” I asked.
“That’s right.” Jack was already moving towards the window, drawing the curtains back just a fraction so that he could look out into the street below.
“And if you were found here, that would be … bad?”
Cheapside wasn’t too far from Holburn Police Station, where Jack reported—or used to report—for duty. He probably knew all of the police officers who were currently closing in on this place by name.
“Yeah.”
Already I could hear a commotion from downstairs, shouts and the sounds of running feet. My heart accelerated.
“Maybe you should leave.”
Jack gave me a look. “Right. Never would have thought of that for myself.”
“I mean, you should get out of here now, without me. You know this area, and I don’t, not really. And two people are more conspicuous than one.”
Especially when one of them was dressed as I was.
“You’ll stand a better chance of getting away if you’re on your—”
Jack cut me off. “You want me to just run away and leave you here?”
“You jumped out the window to get away from me yesterday.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
Jack turned fully away from the window to look at me. “On Foley Street, there weren’t a hundred different ways you could get into trouble within the first five minutes.”
“I can take care of myself!”
“Not arguing. But I’m still not leaving you. You’ve just seen what Yates is like when he’s just getting to know you. He’s going to have a score to settle the next time. Not to mention you could get yourself locked up in a prison cell.”
Holmes would undoubtedly come and secure my release, but I had to admit it would still be inconvenient. And I wasn’t particularly anxious to see Yates again.
“Fine. How are we getting out of here then?”
“This way.”
The hallway outside was a crush of people, all shouting and trying to shove past each other towards what I took to be the back stairs. Jack pushed a way through them, keeping close to the wall, and I followed until we reached the stairway as well.
But instead of joining the crowds going down, Jack started up the stairs.
There was no one at all going up. The stairwell was in darkness save for lights down below, and the higher we climbed, the darker it grew. I stumbled once, and Jack put out a hand to steady me.
“What kind of business is it downstairs?” I asked. “Illegal gambling? Drugs? Thieving?”
“Some of all three.” I couldn’t see well enough to be sure, but I thought from the sound of Jack’s voice that he was gritting his teeth, probably against pain. I could hear the sound of his footsteps and knew he was favoring the injured leg.
“And the police are suddenly raiding this place tonight because …”
“That’s a good question.”
We seemed to have reached the top of the stairwell. Jack pushed open a door, and a rush of frigid outside air struck me. I stepped out after him onto what had to be the coffee house’s roof, which was luckily flat, and surrounded by a low parapet.
Above us, tattered shreds of clouds drifted across the night sky, though there was too much light from the surrounding buildings to make out any stars.
“Aren’t the police just as likely to search and find us up here as they are if we’d stayed down below?”
“Only if we’re still here when they come up.” Jack moved to the edge of the roof, looking across the gap to the roof of the neighboring building.
I stepped forward to join him. The distance wasn’t great, maybe only four feet or a little less, but the drop down to the ground was considerable. I could see a churning mass of people in the street three stories down below us. A fight seemed to have broken out, and small figures in blue policeman’s uniforms were struggling to drag combatants apart.
I eyed the gap between buildings. “You realize that this only counts as an escape if we don’t wind up smashed to smithereens on the pavement?”
Jack didn’t smile. He looked at me, his expression taut, braced somehow. He looked like someone facing a fight against twenty opponents: desperately outnumbered, but grimly determined to keep fighting to the end.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you should take your chances with the police. At least Yates isn’t likely to come up here.”
“But you’re not going to.” I scrutinized his face. “You’re willing to risk jumping because … because something even worse will happen to you if you’re caught.”
I also had a horrible, hollow feeling that if I let Jack out of my sight now, he would disappear into the vast, sprawling mess of London—the great cesspool, my father would call it—and I would never be able to find him again.
Jack didn’t answer. But he also didn’t deny it.
“All right, fine,” I said. “We’ll jump.”
“Lucy, you shouldn’t—”
I interrupted. “When has telling me I shouldn’t do something ever gone well for you?”
I climbed up, balancing on the edge of the parapet.
Just don’t look down.
“Do you want to go first or should I?”
Jack swung himself up to stand beside me, using the strength of his arms. He was keeping most of his weight off the injured leg.
Fear pinched my insides, squeezing.
Jack was unflinching in the face of danger, but not reckless, and I’d never known him to take pointless risks in all the months I’d known him.
If he was willing to do this, there had to be a compelling reason. But I still found myself bargaining with anything or anyone that might be listening, begging God, fate, and the universe not to let him fall.
I heard him exhale, and then he launched himself forward into the air.
He landed on the neighboring roof, staggered briefly, and then regained his balance and turned back towards me.
I made the mistake of letting my gaze stray down to the street below, squeezed my eyes shut, and then jumped before I could think about it anymore. I seemed to be in the air forever—but then the soles of my boots struck the edge of the neighboring roof with a jarring impact.
I was off balance and almost fell backwards, but Jack caught me with an arm around my waist.
“All right?”
My heart felt as though it had stopped beating for a second or two, but I seemed to be in one piece. “Yes. Now how do we get down from here?”
The building was a tenement house, with an evil-smelling stairwell that opened from a mounted doorway on the roof. We passed by a tired-looking woman with a baby on her hip, four men arguing about racing, and an old man sitting on the landing of one floor and smoking his pipe. But none of them gave us more than a passing glance. In this sort of place, no one was overly curious about their neighbors.
We reached an entrance leading out onto the street. Jack pushed the door open, then drew back into the shadows of the covered doorway, swearing under his breath.
Peering cautiously out past him, I could see that some twenty feet away to our left, the road was blocked by a police wagon, and constables were herding a disheveled band of people into the back, presumably those arrested in the brawl outside the coffee house.
I looked up at Jack. “Stay here?” I asked in an undertone. “Or go the other way?”
Jack glanced in the other direction, but then shook his head. “Stay here. Too much chance we’ll be seen if we go out there.”
“All right.” I leaned back against the soot-stained brick wall behind me. “What do ‘twist’ and ‘Botany’ mean?”
Jack quirked up an eyebrow. “That’s what you’re worrying about right now?”
Actually I was trying to distract myself from thinking about how close Jack and I were standing. The doorway was narrow, and I was nearly pressed up against the hard wall of his chest. I could feel the warmth of his body seeping through the thin satin of my dress.
I shrugged, folding my hands to stop myself from reaching up and brushing the hair back from his forehead or tracing the hard planes and angles of his cheek and jaw.
“I was curious. The boy in there said, Leave the twist and Botany. Which I assume means something along the lines of, Run for your life. But I have absolutely no idea why.”
“Twist is girl.” Jack spoke absently, leaning out of our shelter just enough that he could peer into the street. “Twist and twirl—girl. Botany is Botany Bay. So, run away.”
“So you only say the first part of whatever makes the rhyme?” I frowned. “Then why does field mean street? He said bluebottles in the field.”
Jack turned back to me, suddenly smiling just faintly. My breath caught. He was looking at me the way he used to, before he was shot in July, the way that made my heart feel tightly twisted and my pulse skip.
“Field of wheat.” We were standing close enough that I could see the shadow of what looked almost like longing cross his gaze, his gaze lingering on my mouth as though he were wishing that he could kiss me. But then he smiled again. “Don’t they teach you Yanks anything?”
