Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (15 page)

“Do you have a list of those dates,” Lestrade asked, “or a copy of that letter?”

“Indeed I do, Inspector.”

She went to the secretary against the wall, opened a drawer, withdrew a journal-book, and handed it over, opening it to entries she had made in a neat and precise hand. As Lestrade poured over the entries his frown deepened; he then passed it to Jacket.

“Do you see it, Jacket?”

After a moment the junior detective nodded. “Not a journal entry for every burglary we’ve investigated, but certainly a burglary on every journal entry. What can it mean, sir?”

“Miss Cookwell, you said the sounds came from underground?” Lestrade asked.

“Actually, no, I did not,” she replied. “As I said, I included
all
details in my letter, which were cut out, but I was also not complaining about voices ‘rising from the earth like lost souls,’ as the Editor chose to write; I am sorely tempted to write a letter of protest to the Editor of that publication, but I shudder to think what liberties he would take with it.”

Lestrade smiled indulgently. “Why don’t you tell us what you really wrote.”

Miss Cookwell had first heard the sounds in her basement, and she conducted the two detectives downward, giving each of them a candle. The subterranean room was quite large, but seemed smaller because it was filled with the relics of empire, of exploration, of generations who thought their exploits in all the outposts of progress would never be forgot, but which were now all covered with webs of neglect.

“You must forgive the clutter,” Miss Cookwell said as they descended into the history of London. “My father and his brothers, and their fathers before them,  were very well travelled, and brought back  many odd and unusual things.”

Lestrade frowned and cocked his head a bit. As they made their way down the stairs, a peculiar and persistent sound had arose, starting just below the level of conscious audibility but which was now quite apparent, even if still quite soft.

“Miss Cookwell, that sound…is it –“

“Oh no, Inspector,” she countered. “That is not it at all; this is a sound I am quite used to, for I have lived with it all my life.”

“It sounds a bit like the wind,” Sergeant Jacket offered.

“The wind?” Lestrade said. “That’s daft, man!”

“No, not a draft at all, Inspector,” Miss Cookwell said, misunderstanding Lestrade. “It’s the river.”

“The river?”

“But, Miss Cookwell,” Jacket protested. “We are quite some distance from the Thames!”

“Not the River Thames,” Miss Cookwell corrected. “It’s the River Westbourne.”

“The River Westbourne?”

“You mean the River Westbourne flows on the other side of that wall?” Lestrade asked.

“Other side and below,” Miss Cookwell concurred. She paused and listened for a moment. “We must be getting some rain upriver, for the river is rising; whenever we have rain the river is quite deep, and swift.” She thought a moment longer, and one could see she was sifting mentally through her journal entries. “If the rain keeps up, I think I might hear those sounds again.”

“Sir, what is the River Westbourne?” Jacket asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Oh, Sergeant,” Miss Cookwell said, “it’s one of the lost rivers of London.”

“Lost rivers?”

“Well, it is more accurate to say the rivers are hidden, Sergeant,” Lestrade said.

“I suppose it is rather difficult lose a river,” Miss Cookwell admitted with a chuckle. “The Westbourne is one of the rivers that drains into the Thames, but it is prone to flooding in heavy rains, so its channel was entirely bricked-lined, and its course built over.”

“One learns something new everyday,” Jacket quipped.

“It’s hardly new, Jacket,”  Lestrade scolded. “Did you think that London had only one river, and that the Thames had no tributaries? There are many so-called ‘lost rivers,’ but the three largest are the Westbourne, the Tyburn and the Fleet; they all –“

Lestrade stopped and looked as if he had swallowed a fly.

“Sir, are you all right?” Jacket asked.

“Oh dear, should I get you a glass of water, Inspector?” Miss Cookwell enquired. “This basement is so unhealthy.”

“Thank you, no, Miss Cookwell,” he said, turning abruptly and pounding up the stairs. “Come along, Jacket, I want to get to the nearest crime scene quickly as possible!”

“That would be Gabriel Jewelers, Inspector,” Jacket said.

“Oh dear, Inspector!” Miss Cookwell cried as she followed the two rushing detectives back into the house. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes, it’s going to rain soon!”

They grabbed their hats and fled to the door.

“I’m sorry to be so abrupt, Miss Cookwell,” Inspector Lestrade said, though he did not pause, “but this is a matter of some urgency. If all works out well, I shall try to return on the morrow to explain it all to you, and hopefully this shall be the last time you are troubled by subterranean sounds.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

But the door had already slammed shut.

“Well, I never!” she complained to the closed door.

As they left the court’s narrow entrance, Lestrade instructed Jacket to obtain a map of Central London and meet him as soon as possible at the jeweler’s. When Jacket returned with the map, which he had had to purchase at a stationers, he found Lestrade rampaging through a basement storage area.

“Mark the locations of the burglaries on that map, Jacket,” Lestrade said. “Let me know when you’ve done that. Quickly, Jacket! Quickly!”

The Sergeant did as he was instructed, after which Lestrade appropriated the annotated map.

“Keep searching,” Lestrade said, taking out a pencil and sitting down with the map and tracing meandering lines on it.

“Yes, sir!” After a moment, Sergeant Jacket paused and looked to his superior. “What am I searching for, Inspector?”

“A way up, Jacket. Leave no box unturned.”

Jacket sighed, shook his head, and said nothing about the strange vagaries of Scotland Yard inspectors who had been pushed beyond reason by the pressures of the job and over-tasking superintendents. A few moments later, however, Jacket uttered a surprised exclamation and called Lestrade over.

“An entry has been cut in the floor,” he announced as the Inspector joined him. “An attempt was made to hide it – a good one since it escaped detection before – but you can now see it plainly.”

“Everything becomes obvious once you see it.”

“Shall we try to open it, Inspector?”

“I should think not,” Lestrade said. “It’s the Westbourne down there, but these days it’s more sewer than river.”

Jacket made an evil face.

“Just so, Jacket, we’ll have it looked into later.” Lestrade tapped the map urgently with a blunt forefinger. “Look at these lines!”

“They match the burglaries precisely,” Jacket said. “Each of the stricken businesses is on one line or another. What are they?”

“The Rivers Westbourne, Tyburn and Fleet!” Lestrade said, jabbing each hidden tributary so hard he nearly punched through the heavy parchment. “Every place burgled was entered from below, via one or other of the lost rivers, the floors cut through, then the entrance carefully hidden from detection.”

“But, Inspector, how is that –“

“The sea serpent, Jacket!” Lestrade all but shouted. “The Thames sea serpent!”

Jacket started to speak, but could not think of anything to say, so just stood there with his mouth open.

“Close your mouth, Jacket, you look ridiculous.”

Jacket closed his mouth, but still could not think of anything to say that would not get him into trouble.

“Don’t you see it, man?” Lestrade demanded. “The so-called sea serpent. The lost rivers. The coincidence of the rains. The patterns of the crimes. The facts are before us, Jacket, and once you eliminate everything that does not conform to the facts, what you are left with, no matter how fantastic, is the answer. It’s elementary!”

None of it seemed elementary to Sergeant Jacket, but even if the situation was not clear, what
was
clear was that Inspector Lestrade had got some sort of bee in his bonnet, and that a Detective Sergeant who hoped for advancement within the Metropolitan Police would be better off just nodding in agreement, which he did.

It was raining hard by the time the two detectives returned to Scotland Yard, and Lestrade started a whirlwind of activity that engulfed not only the police force, but the Thames River Police and even the Admiralty. The Superintendent, the Commissioner, the Home Secretary, and various commanders in the Royal Navy all raised protests, but by that time Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade had become an unstoppable and undeniable  force of nature.

And so, just a few hours later, Inspector Lestrade and Sergeant Jacket found themselves on the heaving deck of one of the supervisory steam launches belonging to the Thames Police, lashed by the rain, buffeted by the winds. They were with the task force covering the area where the River Westbourne finally ceased its subterranean journey and emptied into Thames. Arc lamps played upon the outlet, which was now gushing huge quantities of water, and reinforced nets had been hung in the Thames.

“This notion of yours is preposterous, Lestrade!” snarled Commander Bryson, of the Thames River Police. “You’re wasting everyone’s time and placing lives in jeopardy.”

Lestrade paid no attention. He knew both the chance he was taking with his career, and what he was asking of everyone, and he certainly did not need some bloody river copper telling him. Right or wrong, they would all find out soon enough, and he was prepared to take responsibility, no matter which way it went.

Abruptly, there was a pause in the flow and a rumbling sound above the roar of the storm, audible even at the distance held by the steam launch. Almost instantly, the rush resumed, but in the watery exhaust was a dark cylindrical shape, narrowed to a point at the stem, while the stern flared with rudders and diving planes, and a rapidly spinning brass propeller that gleamed in the arc-lamps. The hull was constructed of a dark wood, reinforced with copper bands and studded all around with hard rubber. A pale light gleamed from a transparent dome, through which a human figure was visible. Lashed to the foredeck was a curious shape, long and curved, and were it to be lifted into position, a distant observer might conclude he had sighted a long-necked sea serpent.

As the strange craft plunged into the Thames, it was caught in the mesh of the nets, totally restrained despite the increased spinning of its propeller and the heightened throbbing of its furious steam boilers.

The arrayed vessels closed in.

There was no escape.

And Inspector Lestrade smiled in satisfaction as a quite blasphemous oath escaped Commander Bryson’s lips.

“A submersible boat?” Miss Eliza Cookwell exclaimed as she poured tea for her guests. “How absolutely fantastic!”

“It’s steam powered and based on the design, so I was told by the Admiralty, of the
Ictineo
, a Spanish submarine built several years ago,” Inspector Lestrade explained. “How the breakers got their hands on it, we don’t know yet, but their jobs are now clear.”

“When it would rain,” Sergeant Jacket supplied, “the lost rivers would flood, and become quite navigable to their craft.”

“Flooding is why the rivers were put underground to begin with,” Miss Cookwell said. “The current must have been quite fierce.”

“Indeed it was, Miss Cookwell,” Lestrade agreed. “But their steam engines allowed them to resist the current; once they had come up underneath a business, guided by their pilot, they grappled into place, bored upward until they broke through – an easy matter because the foundations were all so old – and then they could steal at their leisure, the reason why the thefts seemed so organised. Then they concealed their entry, returned to their vessel, and either fled to the Thames or burgled another establishment, all depending on the flow of the water and the likelihood of further rain.”

“How very clever!” Miss Cookwell said. “And insidious.”

“And they might have continued undetected had it not been for the murder of the night-guard at the Tyburn Merchant Bank,” Jacket pointed out. “That brought it to the attention of Inspector Lestrade, and that was their undoing.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Lestrade muttered.

“Nonsense, don’t be modest, Inspector,” Miss Cookwell urged. “But how ever did you figure it all out?”

“A large part of the credit must go to you, Miss Cookwell, which is why I personally wanted to give you the information about the resolution of the crime,” Lestrade replied. “Your letter about the sounds underground, and your meticulous documentation of dates, led  me to link the burglaries to the rains and the lost rivers; the connection was cinched when we found the entry into Gabriel Jewelers and matched the paths of the Rivers Westbourne, Tyburn and Fleet to the establishments broken into. Once I added in the anomaly of a sea serpent in the Thames – interesting touch that – I made the only conclusion I could. And it all worked out.”

“Well, it was very clever of you.”