Jewel of the Thames (A Portia Adams Adventure) (17 page)

Chapter Nine

T
wo days later, I sat with Mrs. Jones in front of my fireplace. I had just explained this latest case, and she was still full to the brim with questions.

“
But why involve you at all, Portia?” she said, leaning forward to pour a bit more tea into both our cups.

“
Hmm?” I replied, my brain and eyes focused on studying her profile, comparing it with Irene Adler’s. “Sorry, why involve me?”

She nodded, eyeing me curiously.

“I think things were not progressing fast enough for Mr. Barclay’s debtors,” I suggested with a nod of thanks. “No one had yet accused Elaine Barclay of anything, his father had still not died despite months of poisoning, and if he died without any doubt being cast on the daughter then Barclay would have only accomplished half his goal. And two suspicious deaths by poisoning were out of the question, so he needed to resolve this problem quickly.

“
He knew of my background and assumed I had enough skill to follow the trail he laid, and that I had enough credibility with the Yard to bring them along as well. And by hiring me to help ‘save’ his sister, he could have a witness to his shock and outrage when her evil plan was revealed.”

My guardian shook her head. “He underestimated you, little one.”

I nodded. “And I him. I was taken in by his charms, and he truly has a talent for acting that I fear will continue to go unappreciated where he is going. If it had not been for my accidental poisoning, I might not have made the connection at all.”

“
How did that happen? You would think he would have been very careful for your sake and his to not mix up the poisoned and unpoisoned books,” my guardian remarked.

“
Oh, he was careful. He picked the book I was to read to Mr. Barclay — one of his plays, and therefore unpoisoned. A very long book that would take me several weeks to finish reading aloud. I am sure it was his intention that it be the only book I handled during my unwitting support of his plan. It was only on the day that I dropped by unannounced that I got hold of a poisoned book by mistake.”

“
When he realized his mistake, he rushed me over here and had you wash away all the evidence from my hands and skin,” I explained. “He knew that the risk of my discovering his plan had suddenly trebled by poisoning me, so he left to enact the final stage of his murder.”

“
The vial?” she asked, brow arched.

“
The vial,” I agreed. “He knew all about it, knew it contained ground garlic, and had a key to the reticule. He filled the contents of the vial with powdered cyanide and allowed his poor sister to administer the final murderous act.”

“
And then, when he came by the next day to check on you, he bullied you into seeing his planted clues,” she said, eyeing me carefully.

“
Indeed. He must have known that his father’s death was imminent, within a few meals at most, so he needed to push me toward the correct conclusion immediately. I wondered why he looked so nervous but wrongfully assumed it was his concern for me that made his state of dress so out of character,” I said, stirring a slice of lemon into my tea. “He needed me to reveal my findings in front of the police at his house. Everyone would believe Elaine Barclay was the murderer. She would be almost incoherent in her paranoid state, and James Barclay would inherit all.”

“
And you would have been an accessory to his dark deeds. He would never have considered making you a part of his plan had you not been the heir to the most famous detective offices in the world,” my guardian said. “Are you finally seeing the terrible burden this house seems to lay on you? Do you really want to add to that by associating yourself with Sherlock Holmes directly?”

I thoughtfully sipped at my tea and found nothing to say.

Casebook Three

Unfound

Chapter One

London, Christmas 1930

“
O
h dear!” fussed Mrs. Dawes as she fluttered around me. “You’re going to miss your train, I just know it, and then what will we say to Mrs. Jones?”

I shook my head fondly at her as I watched her son pick up my valise and start in surprise at its weight. He was wearing a forest green sweater that seemed to complement his eyes and skin color in a way that distracted me from the conversation every time I looked directly at him. Thankfully, turning my eyes just a little from the Dawes presented my garishly decorated townhouse instead. Mrs. Dawes had assured me that she and our neighbor, Mrs. Katz, decorated the outside of their townhouses every year, and it being of no importance to me and seemingly of much importance to her, I agreed to her continued leadership on the matter.

It wasn’t that the garlands and bells weren’t festive, it was that no color had been left unexplored, making it a chaotic eyesore — at least to my eyes. My mother had celebrated Christmas, decorating the house mostly with handmade doilies and strings of popcorn, and perhaps she was the one to blame for my spartan decorating tastes.

“
I would never presume to advise a lady on her packing,” Brian said, carefully hauling the valise out the door. “But surely you could do without the marble sink that you have in here?”

I caught his eye and smiled. Brian Dawes knew me well enough to guess at the contents of my suitcase — and it wasn’t a marble sink.

“There are only eight casebooks in there, Mr. Dawes,” I defended myself as his mother continued to cluck around me in a distracting orbit.

“
Harrumph!” he said, getting my luggage into the hackney. “A little light reading, then, Miss Adams? You are supposed to be relaxing in Edinburgh, are you not?”

“
Yes, of course,” I agreed as his mother dashed up to my rooms. “But knowing … Mrs. Jones as I do, I anticipate that despite her best intentions, I will be left with swaths of time to fill on my own. What better use of my time than to familiarize myself with the techniques of comparing victims of suicide and of homicide?”

“
And what about our search for Sherlock Holmes?” he said, looking around to make sure we were alone. “You haven’t talked about your progress on that front in weeks. And now you’re going away…”

I shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant, but the truth was, since finding that photo of Irene Adler with my grandmother Constance Adams at a society ball almost fifty years ago, I had refocused my research on Adler instead. The introduction of Bruiser Jenkins and their decades-old friendship had added fuel to the fire, taking me back to the archived society pages again and again. Several of the notebooks in my valise were actually filled with details the press had written about Irene Adler’s exploits and marriages. I had not yet shared my findings with Brian, well aware of his commitment to Scotland Yard and unsure if I could ask him to keep a secret like this. And more and more it was looking like this was a reality, not just my suspicions. My bag was packed with casebooks and all the evidence I had managed to gather — from the old posters from concert halls featuring photos of Adler in her operatic costumes to the notes I had made comparing the timeline of Adler’s and Jones’s lives. I suspected far more than a simple change of name to disguise past criminal activity. I thought I might have uncovered the real reason why my mother had left me in the care of this woman, and why
the woman
, as Holmes had referred to her, had accepted such a responsibility.

I was taking it all with me to confront her with it far away as possible from Baker Street and Brian Dawes. I glanced at him again and forced my thoughts away from that unpleasant confrontation.

“I got you something, nothing really, just … something,” I said, pulling a small package out of my pocket and pressing it into his hands.

“
What a coincidence, Miss Adams, since, well, would you look at that!” He pulled something of about the same size and shape from his trouser pocket. “I have something small for you as well!”

We laughed, exchanging the gifts and then glancing at each other for permission to open them. When we both nodded and laughed again, I pulled off my gloves and made to unwrap the cloth-wrapped gift.

Brian had gone the more direct route, pulling the brown paper off in one handful and holding his present up to his eye. “A magnifying glass?” He laughed again. “Both elegant and useful, thank you, Miss Adams.”

“
And it has several magnifications,” I explained excitedly. “They fold behind each other into the leather case so you can use them as you need them. Also, there is a clip to attach it to your uniform belt.”

“
I see that,” he replied, his grin wide and his dimples deep. “Thank you!”

“
You are so welcome,” I replied, glad he liked it because I had agonized over his gift. Meanwhile, I had pulled the ribbon off the cloth, and on unwrapping it discovered that it was the gift itself, folded inside out and tied up.

“
It’s a print of old London from …” I said, shaking it out to see it better, and found the corner with the date of printing. “From 1845?”

“
It’s how Holmes and Watson saw the world when they lived here,” he explained, clipping the magnifying glass onto his belt to take the other two corners so that the cloth was held between us like a picnic blanket we were about to lay on the ground.

“
It’s … I really don’t know what to say, Mr. Dawes,” I said, thrilled with this gift and the fact that I had a friend who knew me so well. “It’s perfect. I can’t wait to hang it up in my room. I think I’ll put it right above my bed so I can look up at it when I am lying down!”

Brian waggled his eyebrows, and that was a little suggestive. I blushed and cleared my throat.

We stood on the sidewalk a trifle awkwardly, me folding up the cloth map and then adjusting the light satchel over my shoulder, and Brian shifting from foot to foot until I extended my hand, which he readily shook.

“
Happy Christmas, Miss Adams,” he said. “And try to shake off this last case, would you? Anyone else would be thrilled with the result of capturing a murderer. Lord knows Sergeant Michaels can’t stop talking about it — mentioning your name as little as possible, by the way.”

I tried to smile, but the memory of how close I came to accusing an innocent woman of murder — on behalf of the actual murderer, of all people — was still too close and I had not quite recovered my usual level of confidence. Instead I nodded at my friend as his mother re-emerged with a warm bonnet from the two-story townhouse we all shared.

“I will promise to try if you promise to leave some crimes unsolved for me until after the holidays when I return,” I said, giving his mother a hug and wishing her a Happy Christmas before stepping into the cab, bonnet in hand, and speeding on my way with a wave.

Chapter Two

T
he
Flying Scotsman
, as it had been famously dubbed, left promptly at ten o’clock every morning from King’s Cross Station. Despite my calm when compared to Mrs. Dawes’ frenzy, when I got out of my cab the clock outside the station forced me to hasten.

The smells of the hundreds of Londoners who frequented this station every day assaulted my nose as soon as I closed the cab door, but the sight of begging children, hurried businessmen, families with huge trunks of luggage and the madness of the rush was a lot to take in all at the same time. I reminded myself to visit this station at an off-peak time, the better to observe it. The volume of voices combined with train whistles and announcements on the loudspeaker made it hard, but I finally got the attention of a porter, and with his cart, we sprinted to my destination: Platform 10. I had the tip ready so that my valise was transferred rapidly from porter to luggage handler and I was on board the train with moments to spare.

I was, of course, not the only late arrival as whistles sounded the final boarding call. As I made my way to the compartment my first-class ticket had paid for, I could see several other would-be passengers through the windows of the train making the same dash.

I was stopped by one of the conductors, who perused my ticket wearing eyeglasses that were obviously not adequate for his failing eyesight. As I waited patiently, a young woman leading a small blonde child by the hand pushed through the crowd on the platform. They ran past and out of my sight toward first class.

I glanced at my conductor, but he was still struggling and a line-up was forming behind me, so I said, “Can I help you, sir? The numbers are AA12…”

“
Yes, yes,” he mumbled and handed back my ticket, to repeat the process on the poor individual behind me. I took the ticket and continued on my way with a sigh, checking the numbers on the compartment doors as I went.

My very rich, highly secretive guardian had arranged this private compartment for my trip to meet her, and sliding open the glassed door, I felt trepidation at the prospect of what awaited me when I disembarked. I knew what I had to do when I got to Edinburgh, but the idea of confronting my guardian with the knowledge that she was in fact Irene Adler, adversary of my own grandfather and unexplainably good friends with my grandmother Constance Adams, took my stress up to a new level. How had they traveled in the same circles? How was it possible that Constance Adams, married to Dr. Watson, had also been friends with Irene Adler? At the end of the casebook involving Adler, she had disappeared from Watson and Holmes’s life — at least according to the notebooks. There was no other mention of her except as the only woman to have bested Holmes. It seemed obvious that Adler and Constance had remained friends after my grandmother left Watson, even attending his funeral after her friend’s death. All of this meant that I felt more than a little twinge of guilt when enjoying the fruits of her crimes, like this trip.

The compartment was made up of two long benches that looked more like expensive couches except for their wooden backs that made up the walls on either side. There was a large curtained window between them, the lower pane slightly raised. In addition to the compartment door, there were long drapes tied up on either side of the glass door, so I loosened the golden cords that held them in place, allowing their thick fabric to cover the doorway. Now it looked like I was ensconced in a brocade nook, the fabric of the couches complementing the drapes and even the walls of the compartment in burgandies and yellows.

From my vantage point, out the window I saw another woman and child run in the opposite direction toward third class as the train jerked to a start.

Removing yesterday’s newspaper, I pushed my satchel onto the luggage shelf above the bench seat. My valise may have been heavy with casebooks, but I restricted myself to my new notebook for this adventure, along with a small wallet.

Several throw pillows were stacked on one side of the bench seat, so I chose that one to arrange myself on, propping my back up comfortably to look out the window so I could watch our progress out of the train yard. The whistle sounded again as we gained speed, the rhythmic pattern of the wheels passing over tracks speeding up as well. To the north, it was easy to see the hills of Hampstead and Highgate, and the snowy blanket only heightened their mysterious beauty.

With college out for the season, I had been quietly dreading spending the holidays alone in my apartment at 221B Baker Street. The holidays were a time for family, after all, and it made me miss my dear departed mother even more than usual.

I had spent a total of five evenings with the brothers Watson and their large families, and despite enjoying being a part of a family again, the raucousness of the many children and the multitude of questions about Canada and San Francisco and the cases I was working on were tiring. I had just wrapped up a case that had, more than anything else, damaged my ability to trust. And then so quickly on its heels I had made the connection between Irene Adler and Irene Jones — which felt like a second blow to my ability to trust. Finally, my suspicions about Adler’s true relationship to me, and my mother’s knowledge of that — that was the third and final blow. Was no one who they seemed? How could I trust anyone?

Therefore, when my rather excitable guardian had invited me to visit her at her home in Edinburgh (one of many she held all over the world), I determinedly accepted the offer, unwilling to let this fester any longer.

The rocking of the train and the pristine white of the landscape had the expected effect of relaxing me. But only minutes had passed in this serene state when I was jerked fully awake by a woman’s scream. I sat up straight, cocking my ear for either a repeat of the sound or a signal that I had mistaken it for something else — a train whistle, perhaps. Several more minutes passed, and I watched some official-looking men run past my compartment toward the front of the train. A few minutes later, a group of men headed in the opposite direction, passed by more men heading the same way as the first group.

My curiosity never really needed much to arouse it, so I slid open my door just as a conductor, followed by a constable, passed by me in a rush.

I waited a beat and then followed them down the hallway. Only five compartments away, still in first class, a small party of people was gathered around a door through which a woman’s sobs could easily be heard.

“But what could have happened to her?” a passenger whispered to her companion.

“
Happened to whom?” I asked, trying to see into the compartment.

“
Why, to the child of course!” the second woman said excitedly.

Another fit of sobs brought our attention back to the compartment, and that was when the constable reappeared at the doorway.

“All o’ ye need tae get back to your seats,” he announced in a thick Scottish accent. “Leave us to our business. Go on now!”