The Adventures of Mary Darling, page 8
“Is that doctor gone?” Mary lifted her eyes from her sewing. Her expression was grim.
“He’s talking with George now.”
“Dr. Hill wants to lock me up.” She stabbed the needle through a hole in the button with unnecessary ferocity. “George wants me to be calm. I have been calm. The time to be calm is over. It’s time for action. If I’m locked away, I will never find my children.”
Watson took a deep breath. “Holmes is spending night and day looking for the children. He will find them,” he told her, professing a confidence he didn’t feel.
Mary shook her head. “Holmes doesn’t understand what’s happening here.”
“But you do?” Watson studied his niece. “Do you know something that will help us find the children?”
Mary shook her head. “If I told you all that I knew, I fear you will agree with Dr. Hill. I know that Holmes would.”
“Do you trust me so little?”
“I trust your heart, Uncle John. I trust you to love me and care about me and do what you think is best for me. But I do not trust that what you think is best will match what I know is best.”
“Tell me what you know, Mary,” he said. “I want to help you.”
She took a deep breath, then spoke quickly. Her tone was that of a person who is telling a secret that has been kept too long. “There is a boy named Peter. The children have flown away with him to a place called Neverland. I must go there and bring them back.”
The anguish in her face broke Watson’s heart. “What are you talking about, Mary? You say the children flew away? You know that makes no sense.”
Perhaps Dr. Hill was right. Perhaps the pain of losing her children had strained her nerves beyond what they could bear. But even so, surely it was best for her to stay in her own home, in familiar surroundings.
“Please, Mary, I will do my best to keep you here at home, but you have to help me. Be calm. Take care of your husband. He’s worried about you.”
“My husband is worried? Poor George has taken refuge in a dog kennel.” Her face twisted in anguish.
Watson put his hand on her shoulder, thinking of how alike they were in temperament. He sympathized with her frustration, her need to act. In every case in which he had assisted Holmes, he had felt that same frustration.
“I am here and Holmes is working on your behalf. When the time comes, Holmes and I will act swiftly. You can be sure of that.”
Mary did not appear to be reassured.
When he returned to the nursery, Watson was deeply troubled.
“So, Doctor, what is your professional opinion?” Dr. Hill asked.
“I will consider the matter tonight and give you my answer tomorrow,” Watson said. He needed time to find a way to help Mary. “Can you wait until then?”
“We must act quickly. It’s for her own good.” George spoke with the manic energy of a man who is trying to convince himself he is doing the right thing. “I don’t know what she might do. She talks of flying away. Flying away! So dangerous, so dangerous. She can’t go. I will not allow her to go. Dr. Hill will help. She is my wife. I must protect her.”
“She is calm now,” Watson said. He looked at Dr. Hill. “You will only agitate her if you take her away now. Please do nothing until you hear from me. I can make this easier.”
He did not say that he would make it easier for Hill. Watson allowed Hill to assume that. Watson wished, of course, to make things easier for Mary.
Hill nodded. “Indeed, it would be better to have your assistance.” He spoke to George. “Perhaps we can wait until tomorrow. If Dr. Watson is unwilling, I’ll call on one of my colleagues to assist.” He smiled, a confident man who knew that he could get his way.
Chapter 10: An Unexpected Departure
Watson hurried home to Baker Street. Snow was beginning to fall—delicate flakes driven before the wind.
He was hoping to enlist Holmes’ assistance. Whatever Holmes thought of Mary’s sanity, he would surely see that she was better off at home than in the care of Dr. Hill. And George respected Holmes; he would value the great detective’s opinion.
Holmes was not in the sitting room. Mrs. Hudson said Holmes had left an hour before. “Did he say where he was going?” Watson asked.
Mrs. Hudson shook her head and studied Watson’s face with concern. “Has something happened?” she asked.
Watson told her about Dr. Hill and the rest cure. Mrs. Hudson’s eyes widened. “Her husband can have her locked up,” she said. “He has the right. She is not mad now, but being locked up may well drive her mad.”
“I convinced him to wait until tomorrow,” Watson said. “Perhaps Holmes can convince George to change his mind.”
Mrs. Hudson’s expression was grim. “Dr. Hill won’t wait. He relies on patients like Mary for his bread and butter. It’s a profitable business, locking women up. He will act as soon as he can.” She paused, thinking things through. “Bring her here. She can stay downstairs with me. You must tell everyone that she has gone to the country for her health. To the seaside, perhaps. Make sure she takes clothes for a holiday at the sea. That will send Dr. Hill looking elsewhere.”
Watson stared at Mrs. Hudson, startled. Mrs. Hudson was the ideal landlady, a good cook, and remarkably tolerant of Holmes’ propensity to keep odd hours and treat the flat like a chemical laboratory. But this was a side of her he had never seen.
Mrs. Hudson had many sides that she had never revealed to Watson and Holmes. Watson had never suspected that she was anything more than the perfect landlady. He knew nothing of her wild youth, nor her current efforts in the women’s suffrage movement. No doubt Holmes could have deduced them, had he ever thought to apply himself to the task. But why would he bother?
“When did you leave her house?” Mrs. Hudson asked.
“Eleven o’clock, I would guess.”
Mrs. Hudson’s eyes went to the clock. It was just past noon. “You must get her away now. There’s no time to waste.”
“Then I must go,” Watson said. Wearily, he went down the stairs to the front door. Mrs. Hudson followed.
At the door, he heard a dog barking. A very large dog, by its bark. The dog was tied to the metal post beside the front door. It was Nana—no question of that. When the big dog saw Watson and Mrs. Hudson, she stopped pulling against the rope that held her and looked up at them with beseeching eyes.
An envelope had been tucked under Nana’s collar and secured with a bit of ribbon, the sort of ribbon Mary used to tie back Wendy’s hair. Watson squatted beside Nana and pulled the envelope free.
The note was in Mary’s handwriting.
Dear Uncle,
I am going to get the children and bring them home. It will be a difficult journey. I am sorry that I must leave Nana behind. Please take care of her and take care of George. I will bring the children home or perish in the attempt.
All my love, Mary
Watson gave Mrs. Hudson the note. When she read it, she cried out in distress, “Oh, Mary!”
“I must find her. When I do, I’ll bring her here,” Watson said decisively. “Give this note to Holmes when he returns. Tell him I have gone to find Mary. Take care of Nana.”
The snow was thick on the ground and still falling. The walkway beside the dog bore the traces of many footprints—some partly filled by falling snow, some almost completely obliterated. Perhaps Holmes could have made sense of the footprints, but Watson could not. People hurried past, heads down.
A hansom cab was at the corner, waiting for a fare. Watson stepped closer and called up to the cabman, “I’m looking for the person who brought this dog to my door. Did you see anyone come this way?”
The man had his nose buried in the great muffler that encircled his neck. He lifted his head to glance at Watson, then at Mrs. Hudson, who stood at the door to the flat, holding Nana’s leash. “Is that a dog? I took it for a pony.” He chuckled at his own witticism. “A young woman led the beast past me. That’s all I know.”
“I saw her,” said a hoarse voice. It was the crossing sweeper who worked on the corner.
“What did you see?” Watson asked the boy.
“A young woman. She tied the dog there.” The boy pointed at 221B.
“Where did she go?” Watson asked.
“She asked me where to catch the horse tram to Kensington. I showed her where the stop was.”
“What did she look like?”
“She was dressed in a blue coat. She was crying. I wanted to help her. She was so sad.”
Watson knew that the tram stopped just a few blocks away from Mary’s home. But it seemed unlikely that she would go home. What other reason could she have to go in that direction? He remembered George’s words: “She visits that tailor without my permission.”
Watson tossed the boy a penny and shouted to the cabman, giving him the address of Sam Smalls’ shop. “Make it quick, and there’s a half sovereign in it for you.”
Whenever it snowed, the perpetually bad London traffic grew even worse. At every intersection, there was a problem: two cabmen in an altercation over a fare; a delivery wagon with a broken wheel; a coach caught in a rut. It seemed that every vehicle in London conspired to slow Watson’s journey.
When Watson finally reached the tailor shop, he stepped inside without stopping to knock. From the perch by the window, Captain Flint whistled loudly and shrieked, “Ahoy, matey! Look lively!”
“Watson,” Sam said, emerging from the back. “What a surprise! Sit down for a moment and I’ll be right with you.”
Before Watson could speak, Sam disappeared into the back room, fast on his feet for a man with an artificial leg. Watson hesitated for a moment, looking around the shop, hoping to spot clues that Holmes would have seen in an instant. Had Mary been here? He saw nothing that caught his attention.
Watson went to the back door to look into the courtyard behind the shop. A man in a red knit cap and an old canvas coat was walking away, barely visible through the falling snow. He carried a battered canvas seabag on his shoulder; the collar of his coat was turned up against the cold.
“Step sharply now, Marty,” Sam shouted to the man. “The tide won’t wait. Away with you.” Sam turned to Watson without a backward glance. “An urgent delivery,” he said. He laid a hand on Watson’s shoulder as he escorted him back into the shop. “What’s the trouble, my friend? You look like you’ve had a shock.” In the shop, Sam brought out the rum bottle and glasses and waved Watson to a seat at the table.
Watson sat down. The old injury in his shoulder was aching and he felt very tired. He accepted the glass of rum Sam offered. “Mary has run away. I thought she might be here.”
From its perch, the parrot eyed Watson. “Look lively,” the bird said in its scratchy voice.
“Run away? Why? What has happened? Tell me from the start, my friend,” Sam said.
Watson told him about Dr. Hill. “She said she would not let them lock her up. She said she had to find her children. I tried to reason with her, but she was determined.” He shook his head. “Mad or not, she would be better at home than locked away by Dr. Hill. I tried to reason with George too.”
“George has decided the course he will take,” Sam said. “There will be no talking him out of it. Where is Holmes?”
“I don’t know. I asked Mrs. Hudson to give him Mary’s note when he came home.”
“Would he go to Mary’s home to look for you? Perhaps you should look for him there.”
“Yes,” Watson said. “We’ll go to her house. Perhaps Holmes will be there.”
“You look pale, my friend,” Sam said. “Have you eaten today?”
“There’s no time for that. We must go quickly.”
“You’d best go on without me,” Sam said, frowning. “I am not welcome under George Darling’s roof.”
Watson laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I need your help. Mary needs your help. Please. You must come.”
At Watson’s insistence, Sam accompanied him to number 14. They did not go as quickly as Watson would have liked. Sam—so sure on his feet in his shop—moved slowly on the snowy streets. He had to stop twice to adjust the straps that held his artificial leg in place.
When they reached number 14 at last, Liza responded to their knock on the door. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. “Mr. Holmes is here,” she told them. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I don’t understand what he is doing.”
She took them to the bedchamber where Holmes was conducting his investigation.
Watson stopped in the doorway, gesturing to Sam and Liza to stay on the threshold. From there they watched Holmes at work.
Two wardrobes stood side by side against the far wall of the room. The doors to both were wide open. In the wardrobe on the left, below the hanging dresses, one of the drawers was pulled out.
Holmes was considering the contents of this drawer. He lifted a handkerchief from the drawer and set it to one side. He peered into the drawer, leaning close to examine the contents with his magnifying glass. He reached into the drawer and took something out—a coin of some sort. Taking an envelope from his pocket, he placed the coin in it, then lifted out another handkerchief and shook something—dust or sand or ash—into the envelope.
He turned then to the second wardrobe, in which Mr. Darling’s clothing hung. Watson saw nothing amiss, but it was obvious that Holmes noticed something Watson did not. The detective sank to his hands and knees in front of the wardrobe door. First, he peered at the floor of the wardrobe—then at the floor of the room. He crept across the floor, examining it minutely. He was in the middle of the room when he looked up at Liza.
“When was this floor last washed?” he asked the girl.
She had been watching from the doorway, her mouth agape, clearly astonished at the sight of a gentleman crawling on the floor. “Yesterday, sir,” she said.
Holmes nodded. He straightened up and looked at Watson for the first time. “When did you see your niece last?” he asked.
“I visited her this morning.”
“Describe your visit.”
Still standing in the doorway, Watson gave a careful account of his meeting with George Darling and Dr. Hill, followed by a description of his conversation with Mary. “She sat right there.” He gestured at the dressing table, where Mary’s sewing box was still open, the pincushion on the table. “I saw no sign she was going to run away. She was fixing a pair of her husband’s trousers.” He shook his head in puzzlement. “Why would a woman who was planning to run away fix her husband’s trousers before she went?”
“Why indeed?” Holmes asked. “What have you been doing since you left here?”
Watson felt ill from lack of food, from stress, from anger, from sorrow. But he carefully recounted all that had happened since he left Mary. “She brought Nana to Baker Street,” he said. “And then . . .”
Holmes waved a hand. “That’s enough, Watson. No need to say more. Mary did not bring the dog to Baker Street.”
“Of course she did,” Watson protested. “The lad described the woman who left the dog—a young woman wearing a dark blue wool coat.”
“Liza,” Holmes interrupted. “Mary gave you her coat to wear, did she not?”
“She didn’t want me to be cold,” Liza said, her voice trembling. “She asked me to take Nana to Dr. Watson and she feared I’d catch a chill. She put the coat on me and wrapped her very own muffler around my neck to keep me warm.”
Holmes nodded. “You should have asked the crossing sweep about the young woman’s shoes,” he told Watson. “The boy notices shoes, since he earns his pennies helping his clientele keep them clean. And he certainly knows the difference between a servant’s shoes and a lady’s walking boots.”
Watson’s eyes went to Liza’s well-worn footwear. “Mary wasn’t at Baker Street at all.”
“Quite so,” Holmes said. “And here is something else of note: Mary is gone, but her boots are still here. What do you think she was she wearing when she left the house?”
Watson looked in the wardrobe. Mary’s walking boots were there. Holmes waved a hand toward Mr. Darling’s wardrobe. “Look at the shoes, Watson.”
Watson wearily stared at the shoes on the floor of Mr. Darling’s wardrobe, but they revealed nothing to him. “I see a pair of shoes and a pair of boots,” he said.
“Not the shoes that are there. Think about the shoes that aren’t there.”
Watson peered at the space Holmes indicated, right beside the shoes that were there. He saw an empty space.
“There are minute scuff marks on the polished wood of the wardrobe,” Holmes continued. “The soles that left those scuff marks were well-worn.” He glanced at Liza. “Did Mr. Darling have a pair of old boots?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Mr. Darling is not wearing those boots now—his bedroom slippers are his footwear of choice when he’s curled up in the kennel. And here on the floor I’ve found traces left by those old boots. The marks are separated by the length of Mrs. Darling’s stride. Consider the clothing, Watson.”
Watson looked at the shelves of the wardrobe. He felt exhausted, defeated, but he did his best. One of the lower shelves had empty space. “Some clothing is missing. Maybe the clothes that go with the missing boots.”
Holmes nodded. “Those trousers you said she was mending, Watson—more likely she was adjusting them for a better fit. And of course you noticed that the lady left her wedding ring behind.”
Watson looked at the dressing table. A hairbrush and a scattering of hair clips were strewn across the table top beside the pincushion. Beside them was Mary’s wedding ring, a simple gold band.
“She’s coming back,” Liza said. “She said she would find the children and bring them back.” Liza’s hands were knotted in her apron, her eyes red rimmed and sorrowful.
“Did you help her cut off her hair before she left?” Holmes asked.
