Sherlock Holmes (29 page)

Crowds of onlookers had gathered at either end of the street, and fire carts were parked in a row, their doors still hanging open where their drivers had abandoned them to get to the injured or trapped.

Newbury caught sight of a lone bobby in the midst of it all and staggered over, grabbing the young man by his cuff. The policeman shook him off irritably, looking him up and down.

“You must send for Sir Charles Bainbridge of Scotland Yard immediately,” said Newbury. “There’s a dead woman in that carriage.” He pointed back the way he had come.

The bobby looked at him as if he’d cracked a particularly bad joke. “Yes, sir,” he replied, sarcastically. “There’s been an accident.”

“No, no!” Newbury shook his head in frustration. “You don’t understand. She’s been murdered.”

The bobby raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Indeed, sir?”

“Listen to me!” barked Newbury. “My name is Sir Maurice Newbury, and I’m a good friend of your chief inspector. I’m telling you, a woman has been murdered on that train. The killer is still on board. My friend here can confirm it.” He turned to beckon Clarissa over.

She was nowhere to be seen.

“Clarissa?” called Newbury, perplexed. Had she gone back to help free the others from the wreckage? “Clarissa?”

Concerned, he turned his back on the policeman, scanning the scene for any sign of her.

For a moment he stood there, utterly baffled, while the storm of activity raged on around him. She seemed to have disappeared. One moment she’d been standing there beside him, the next she had gone.

He searched the faces in the crowd. It was then that he saw her, about two hundred yards up the street, walking away from the devastation. Where was she going? “Clarissa?” he called again.

She ignored him and continued walking, her back to him. Confused, he watched as she gave a little stumble, as if suffering from a slight weakness in her right knee. Newbury’s heart thudded.
No! It couldn’t be…

There it was again, on the third step – another little stumble. His head was swimming. He started after her, but stumbled, still woozy from whatever sedative had been administered to him. He’d never catch her now, not in this state.

He watched for a moment longer as she receded into the distance. Then, at the last moment, she stopped, turned, and blew him a kiss, before disappearing out of sight around the corner.

Newbury stumbled back towards the carriage, ignoring the protests of the bobby behind him. “Get out of my way!” he bellowed, pushing past the firemen and dropping to his knees before the makeshift hatch in the roof.

The other passengers had all been helped from the wreckage now, and as Newbury wriggled back into the gloomy carriage, he realised he was alone. He clambered shakily to his feet and crossed immediately to the heap of clothes at the rear of the carriage, beneath which the dead woman was buried. He began to peel the layers off, flinging coats, cardigans and jackets indiscriminately to the floor.

Moments later he uncovered the head of the bloodied corpse. He wrenched the hat from the head and saw instantly that the woman’s hair, pinned up, was in fact a deep, chestnut brown. Blood had been smeared expertly on her face to obscure her features, but it was clear almost immediately that this was a different woman from the one he had followed from the tearooms.

How could he have been so stupid? Clarissa had kept his attentions away from the body, had even taken great pains to cover it up so he wouldn’t realise that this dead woman was not, in fact, Lady Arkwell at all. He’d missed all of the signs.

Clarissa – the real Lady Arkwell – must have killed the woman and switched clothes with her while Newbury was out cold from the crash. She’d then drugged him and planted the evidence before bringing him round.

Newbury let the lilac hat fall from his grip and slumped back against the roof of the carriage, sliding to the ground. No wonder Meng Li had been so apprehensive when he’d spoken of the woman. No wonder the Queen had warned him of her ruthlessness. Newbury had been totally outclassed.

“Well played, Clarissa,” he mumbled, his face in his hands. “Well played indeed.”

“We find it interesting, Newbury, that she deigned to allow you to live. Perhaps she has a weakness for pretty men?”

“With respect, Your Majesty, she is a cold-blooded killer,” replied Newbury. “She took that innocent woman’s life purely to evade capture. I suspect she allowed me to live only because she considered me useful. I was her intended scapegoat, and she was relying on me to help her to escape from the wreckage.”

Victoria gave a disturbing, throaty cackle. “Don’t be so naive, Newbury. Do you think for a moment she didn’t know what she was doing? That ‘innocent woman’ you refer to was a German agent, most likely sent to assassinate Lady Arkwell following her alleged involvement in a theft from the Kaiser’s court. She probably killed her in self-defence.”

Newbury frowned. Perhaps things weren’t as black and white as he’d at first imagined. Could she really have killed that woman in self-defence? If so, that put an entirely different complexion on the matter. Perhaps she was more the woman he’d taken her to be, after all. He sighed. “I fear it is a moot point, Your Majesty. She’s probably halfway to Paris by now, or some other such destination where she might go to ground to evade capture.”

“Perhaps so,” the Queen conceded.

“Then that is an end to the matter?”

Victoria laughed. “No. You shall remain focused on the woman, Newbury. You shall track her down and bring her here, to the bosom of the Empire, where we may question her and discover her true motives.” Victoria grinned wickedly, baring the blackened stumps of her teeth. “We think she might yet prove useful.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” said Newbury. He stifled a smile. He knew that what he’d just been handed was a punishment for allowing the woman – Clarissa – to slip out of his grasp, but in truth, he couldn’t help feeling buoyed by the notion that, some day soon, he might see her again.

“Go to it, Newbury. Do not disappoint us again.”

“Very good, Your Majesty,” he replied, with a short bow, then quit the audience chamber to the sound of the Queen’s hacking, tortuous laughter.

“I was played, Charles. There’s no other way to look at it.”

Newbury crossed the room to where Bainbridge was sitting by the fire and handed him a snifter of brandy. Then, with a heavy sigh, he dropped into his battered old Chesterfield and propped his feet up on a tottering pile of books.

“Don’t look so dejected, Newbury,” said Bainbridge, unable to hide his amusement. “It’s no reflection on you that you were beaten by a pretty young woman.”

Newbury offered his best withering glare, but couldn’t help but smile at the gentle provocation.

The two of them had met at Newbury’s Chelsea home for dinner, and now it was growing late, and the mood more contemplative.

“It’s just… I was completely taken in by the woman, Charles,” replied Newbury. “As if she’d somehow bewitched me. I can’t believe I missed all the signs.”

“I refer you to my previous sentiment,” said Bainbridge, grinning. “You’re not the first man to be distracted by a feisty, intelligent – and beautiful – young woman, and you won’t be the last.” He took a long slug of brandy. “And let’s not forget, your brain was somewhat addled by the sedative. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

He knew that Bainbridge was right, but couldn’t shake the feeling that, in losing this first round of the little game he had entered into with Lady Arkwell, he was now on the back foot. He wasn’t used to being the one running to catch up.

Newbury shrugged and took a sip of his drink. “What of you, Charles? Are you faring any better? Tell me about Algernon Moyer.”

“All over and done with,” said Bainbridge, merrily. “It turned out he’d pushed his luck just a little too far. He got careless.”

“And you managed to find him?” asked Newbury.

“In a manner of speaking. It looks as if one of his victims might have bitten him after he’d administered the Revenant plague. We found him climbing the walls in a hotel room in Hampstead, utterly degenerated. The hotel called us in because of the noise and the smell.”

Newbury wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You had to put him down?”

Bainbridge nodded. “The blighter got what was coming to him. His corpse was incinerated yesterday.”

“It brings a whole new complexion to that old adage, ‘treat others as you mean to be treated yourself,’” said Newbury.

Bainbridge laughed. “It does that.”

There was a polite knock at the drawing room door. Newbury glanced round to see his valet, Scarbright, silhouetted in the doorway. He was still dressed in his immaculate black suit and collar, despite the lateness of the hour.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, gentlemen, but I have a message for Sir Maurice,” he said, holding up an envelope.

“Come in, Scarbright,” said Newbury, intrigued.

“A message? At this time of night?” exclaimed Bainbridge, with a frown. He sat forward in his chair, glancing at Newbury with a quizzical expression.

Newbury shrugged. He hadn’t been expecting anything.

“It arrived just a moment ago,” explained Scarbright, “brought to the door by an urchin, who insisted the message it contained was quite urgent.” He passed the envelope to Newbury and waited for a moment while Newbury examined it. “If there’s anything else you need…”

“What? Oh, no,” said Newbury, distracted. “We’re fine, Scarbright. Thank you.”

The valet retreated, closing the door behind him.

Newbury turned the envelope over in his hands. There was no addressee. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed the seal. It smelled of roses.

“What the devil are you doing?” asked Bainbridge. “Just open the ruddy thing, will you?”

Newbury chuckled. “It’s advisable when one receives anonymous post, Charles, to first ensure it’s not going to kill you.”

Bainbridge’s eyes widened. “You don’t think it’s poisoned, do you?”

Newbury shook his head. “Thankfully not.” He ran his finger along the seam, tearing it open.

Inside, there was a small, white notecard. He withdrew it.

Printed on one side in neat, flowing script were the words:
Still on for dinner?

Newbury dropped the card on his lap and threw his head back, laughing.

“What is it?” said Bainbridge. “What does it say?”

“It’s from her,” said Newbury.

“Who? The Queen?”

“No. Lady Arkwell. Clarissa.”

Bainbridge looked utterly confused. “And?”

“She’s letting me know that the game is still on,” replied Newbury. “That there’s more still to come.” He handed Bainbridge the note.

Bainbridge glanced at it almost cursorily. “The gall of the woman! You should toss this in the fire and forget about it.”

“That would hardly be following orders, Charles,” said Newbury. He drained the rest of his glass. “You know what Her Majesty had to say on the subject.”

“So you’ll do as she asks?” said Bainbridge, incredulous. “You’ll keep up the search?”

Newbury grinned. He took the card back from Bainbridge and looked wistfully at the note. “Yes, Charles,” he said. “I rather think I will.”

A rich elderly man has fallen to his death, and his will is nowhere to be found. A tragic accident or something more sinister? The dead man’s nephew comes to Baker Street to beg for Sherlock Holmes’s help. Without the will he fears he will be left penniless, the entire inheritance passing to his cousin. But just as Holmes and Watson start their investigation, a mysterious new claimant to the estate appears. Does this prove that the old man was murdered? Meanwhile Inspector Charles Bainbridge is trying to solve the case of the “iron men”, mechanical steam-powered giants carrying out daring jewellery robberies. But how do you stop a machine that feels no pain and needs no rest? He too may need to call on the expertise of Sherlock Holmes.

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March 1895. Hilary Term at Oxford. Professor Quantock has put the finishing touches to a wondrous computational device which, he claims, is capable of analytical thought to rival that of the cleverest men alive. Indeed, his so-called Thinking Engine seems equal to Sherlock Holmes himself in its deductive powers. To prove his point, Quantock programmes his machine to solve a murder. Sherlock Holmes cannot ignore this challenge, so he and Watson travel to Oxford, where a battle of wits ensues between the great detective and his mechanical counterpart as they compete to see which of them can be first to solve a series of crimes. But as man and machine vie for supremacy, it becomes clear that the Thinking Engine has its own agenda. Holmes and Watson’s lives are on the line as a ghost from the past catches up with them…

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2015

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