The Dragon Turn (11 page)

Sherlock brushes by them and heads down the hallway toward the street.
This is the way it will always be with Irene
Doyle. Why do I deceive myself?
He reaches the door. A young woman in her late teens is entering.
Very attractive
, he says to himself. Without thinking, he eyes her up and down, and then realizes what he is doing. Feeling guilty and aware of his own frailties, his thoughts return to Irene, and are more charitable.
She has every right to talk to those young men, just as I am allowed to notice other young ladies. If I believe that I should pursue my ambitions, shouldn’t I believe that she can too? I should admire her. She is a good person … but she’s of a different class than I am. I have to face it. Irene Doyle can’t be for me
.

He shoves open the outside stage door at the back of the theater and walks at a brisk pace toward Piccadilly Street. He has his head down, his mind still on Irene, instead of on the fact that Alistair Hemsworth seems suddenly, and unfortunately, to be a suspicious character. The boy has even stopped thinking about his role in freeing him.

“Sherlock?”

Holmes looks up. Someone has picked him out of the crowd at the front of the theater, as if she were waiting for him. Two sparkling black eyes are looking his way.

“Beatrice!”

She is like a vision at this moment. Uninterested in the fancy-dressed people and handsome young men hailing cabs near her — some of whom look at her full figure with interest — she has a different focus. She is staring … at him.

“Just the man I was looking for.”

“It is nice to see you.”

“It is?”

“Yes.”

Her face turns red. “Thank you. That is … What I meant to say was … I went to the shop to find you and Mr. Bell said you were ’ere. I was ’oping to meet again tomorrow and then visit your father … with you. I thought it might be easier if we went together. I know you said that you’d go yourself, but I spoke to ’im today and ’e said ’e ’adn’t seen you, so I thought I’d call. I’m sorry if this is an imposition, but I thought I should try, because I —”

“Because you care?”

“Yes … I do.”

“I should see him. You are right. And not some time in the distant future. Tomorrow. Are you at your work then?”

“Yes … but I can get someone to do my duties in the morning. Of course I can. Shall we meet, say, first thing, near Father’s shop and take an omnibus. I can pay.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Sherlock crosses London Bridge early the following morning and stops by Snowfields School to tell the headmaster that his father is ill and he will not be able to lead his summer class until past noon. Then he makes his way, very slowly, to the Mint area, the south-of-the-river neighborhood where he used to live with his parents in a little flat above the Leckies’ hat shop. Ratfinch, the fishmonger, slouching along with his barrels of eels in his cart is surprised to see him, and even more taken aback that his suit, so carefully brushed and
tended to, is now just secondhand. But Sherlock doesn’t respond to his greeting. In fact, he doesn’t even look up to the small window above the shop when he arrives, but fixes his eyes on Beatrice, who is spotlessly dressed this morning too, all in red and veritably shining, a recently purchased matching bonnet on her head, looking as if she has scrubbed herself all night. She slips her arm through his, secretly happy, and he hails an omnibus to travel the three or four miles south to the Crystal Palace where Wilberforce Holmes tends to his beloved birds and white doves.

Every time the boy visited his father as a child, often hand in hand with his mother, the excitement began to build even before he left home. The glorious innards of the gigantic palace of entertainment awaited them: historical displays, circus acts, choirs, and maybe, just maybe, a sweet, a flavored ice, or a drink. It would be his treat for a whole season. They had always walked, and he had always waited for that moment when he would spy the great, nearly transparent building, still a mile or more away up on Sydenham Hill.

It is a gray day, and rain threatens. The boy is up on the knifeboards of the omnibus’s roof, bare-headed, as usual, among the excited crowd of well-hatted, working- and middle-class men, dressed for the rain. Beatrice sits inside with the ladies, wondering what Sherlock is thinking. He doesn’t look up to see the palace until they have pulled into the area around the train terminus at the south end of the park.

The rain has begun by the time they have made their way through the expansive grounds, past the sculptures of the lizard-like dinosaurs, the fountains, the athletic fields,
and up the grand stone staircase to the front doors. Sherlock pays the entrance fee for Beatrice too, his coins nearly all gone now.

There aren’t many visitors today, few excursionists coming from the country, since it is a weekday with poor weather. In his youth, Sherlock would always spot his father from the entrance and get permission from his mother to run to him through the thick crowds. Wilber Holmes was always particularly active by that time of the day, watching over his birds, readying things for that moment when he would release the hundreds of white doves of peace. He would turn to his son at the last moment, somehow magically knowing he was approaching, open his arms wide and hoist him into the air, before spinning him like a top. Sherlock never laughed more than during those moments. And when the spinning had stopped, Mr. Holmes would turn to Rose, his face lighting up, before she was enveloped in his arms too.

Today, Sherlock can’t see his father at first, even though the crowds are sparse. Finally, he spots him, and sees why it took a while. Wilberforce is sitting down, and his appearance is shocking. He looks thin indeed, almost skeletal, and his big, black beard is streaked with gray.

Sherlock gasps. Beatrice takes him by the hand and brings him forward.

“Father?”

Wilber looks up. His ashen face brightens. His son had wondered if he might scowl, begin shouting, and tell him to leave.

“Sherlock? Is it really you?” Mr. Holmes gets to his feet and embraces the boy. For several seconds, he tries to lift him and spin him around, but he can’t. So, he is happy to just hold his son’s face and look into his eyes. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

Beatrice steps back from them.

They say nothing for a few moments, then Mr. Holmes motions for Sherlock to sit beside him. “Thank you for your letters.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“I am delighted, you know, as I believe I once mentioned in a note, that you are dedicating yourself to justice. It makes me very happy. It would have pleased your mother as well.”

For an instant, Sherlock can’t speak. But he gathers himself. “You don’t think it is just a childish dream?”

“Ambition is a desirable thing, if it is in the service of good. Remember that.”

“I … I want us to see each other more often, Father.”

“I would like that. And I would like to help you pursue this dream of yours.”

“Catching criminals is really just science of a sort, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely!”

The boy beams.

“Perhaps, Sherlock … perhaps we needed some time apart.”

“I think you are right, sir.”

“Well … let us imagine, my son, that nothing terrible ever happened, that we are just meeting again after a day or
two, or perhaps your mother and I were just out for a long walk.” Wilber has to pause for a moment, then continues. “Let us converse as we used to. So … I want to know what you are doing, right now, this week. Let’s talk about that. What is occupying your time? What is on your mind?”

“A case, Father.”

“A case! Tell me!”

Sherlock does. He tells him everything. When he is done, the elder Holmes is left rubbing his beard.

“This Riyah fellow. He said he was a Jew?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever notice, Sherlock, that I never actually called you a Jew? I never quite put it that way.”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I never did, and that was for a reason. You know me to be very particular about the things I say, very scientific?”

Sherlock grins. “Yes, Father.”

“Well, you are not a Jew.”

“Pardon me?”

“Not strictly. One only calls oneself a Jew when one’s mother is Jewish.”

Sherlock’s eyes grow large as he begins to understand what Wilber is driving at: Riyah, as the boy has just related, said that
only
his father was Jewish.

“You see!” remarks Mr. Holmes, suddenly looking much healthier. “You will recall how I told you to observe everything intently at all times and to always listen very carefully too.”

“Yes, and I do, I always do.”

“Well, I was listening to you, very carefully, when you recounted your conversation with this Riyah chap. He calls himself a Jew … but he isn’t. And his
real
name is Abraham Hebrewitz? It might as well be plucked from the pages of a novel! I smell a rat.”

“My nose has been detecting a similar odor.”

“Your big nose,” says Wilberforce, gripping his own.

Sherlock laughs. “Yes, my big Jewish nose!”

They spend more than an hour together. Wilber neglects his duties, though he doesn’t seem to care. But when it is time to leave, after they have hugged and promised to talk again, many times a week, his father appears to begin shrinking in size again, his hair seems grayer, and his expression saddens.

Sherlock can’t look back again as he leaves.

“I wonder,” he says, and a tear rolls down his face, “if I’ll ever see him alive again.”

“Nonsense,” says Beatrice.

“I will get him to a good doctor. No, I’ll do better than that: I’ll take him to Mr. Bell!”

“Next week, Sherlock: we’ll talk to your father about it next week.”

“We?”

“Well, if you don’t want —”

“Yes, that would fine. The two of us: let’s do it together.”

He mentions his worries about the Nottingham case. She listens and appears concerned.

As Sherlock looks into her face, it becomes clear to him that he will be leaving the Crystal Palace with two realizations. First, that he could never have shed a tear in front of Irene Doyle, but had no trouble doing it with Beatrice, and secondly, that his brilliant father, who gave him all the tools he needed to do what he so desperately wants to do in life — to avenge his mother’s murder many times over, until the day he dies — has hit upon something that he himself suspected: there is something not quite right about Oscar Riyah. And that deeply increases the suspiciousness of Alistair Hemsworth.
Have I, because of my desire to impress a young lady, been the instrument of releasing a murderer? And what if this murderer has further horrors up his sleeve?

BELL CHIMES IN

S
herlock has been to see one of his fathers, now he needs to talk to the other. He wakes the following morning, thinking of what they must discuss. It is a Thursday. He doesn’t teach summer school classes this day of the week, and Bell is usually already out the door by now, visiting clients, so the boy expects to get some work done around the shop. He’ll talk to his master after Big Ben strikes noon. But as he gains consciousness, Holmes hears the old man fussing about in the laboratory, knocking over torts and flasks, and banging impatiently on powders as he works with his mortar and pestle. It is obvious, from all this racket, that the alchemist is experimenting. When Sigerson Bell has a chemical idea he is like a dog worrying a meaty bone. He hears nothing and sees nothing, except his ideas and the components — the chemicals or alkaloids — he is mixing and matching. Sherlock hears him gently cursing in his polite manner and knows his master’s mind is tightly engaged and far away.

Holmes quietly opens one of the doors of his wardrobe and peeks out. There is Bell across the room, facing his work, humming a violin concerto, punctuating it with a few of those benign but deeply-felt oaths.

“Horse manure!”

“Sir?”

Bell’s head swivels around as if his neck were made of rubber. When it comes to rest, it seems to almost be on backwards. There is a look of horror on his face, as if he has been interrupted while performing a very personal act. The boy can see two huge flasks about five feet apart and between them all sorts of tubes and little homemade turbines and burning Bunsen lamps. Something is being turned to liquid in one flask and impelled toward the other at tremendous speed under white-hot pressure. There are rocks and powders and a couple of croaking frogs nearby, obviously the items he is attempting to transform into something else. At this very moment there is an explosion. It shakes the shop and all the equipment in front of the alchemist smashes and is propelled toward the ceiling. The force of the explosion is so great that the old man is slammed backward, landing at Sherlock’s feet.