Vanishing Girl (10 page)

Something roars inside the walls and the boy feels as if every little hair on his neck and down his spine stands up straight.

What, in God’s name, was that?

It sounds exotic indeed, but before he can identify it, he hears other animals respond: growling like a pack of dogs, or even wolves.
Can that be the wind?

Sherlock looks up at the bleak house stretching along the top of the hill. Webs of ivy grow across its surface.

Has he lost every last one of his marbles? Is he a
lunatic
? Why doesn’t he just turn around, sleep in a field near St. Neots, and steal back onto a train for London in the morning?

But then the opportunity to change his life would vanish, Lestrade would win, and the girl would die. There is a solution to every crime, and he can pursue this one on these spooky grounds. He must find whatever courage he needs.

Looking up at the house, he sees something that makes him want to go on.

There are lights on the bottom floor, around to the south end of the building, but there,
right there
, a very dim one glows on an upper floor.
What
is up there?
The people living in this mansion rented a place that no one would dare near, bought the rare stationery that was used for the ransom
note, and have kept to themselves the last few months. What … or who … do they have up there?

He has to get into Grimwood Hall, whatever the cost.

He should have brought a weapon. The hand-to-hand combat of pugilism or Bellitsu wouldn’t work against powerful beasts with fangs, against a lion or a tiger or whatever it is that is on the loose on the other side of this wall, but Sigerson Bell has been teaching him how to use a horsewhip in a lethal manner, and the Swiss art of stick-fighting too. The old apothecary has a large collection of heavy hickory poles and he and his protegé have shattered many windows and taken down numerous skeletons while practicing. Sherlock wishes he had one of those long weapons with him now. But he has no choice. He must go in unarmed.

At least he will have the advantage of being unexpected. No one in the house or on the grounds, either animal or human, is apt to be looking for an intruder. Grimwood Hall is protected by its gruesome legends and by what may lurk in the night.

And so he boldly scales the damp, mossy wall and the fence atop it, directly in front of the part of the manor where the lights are glowing. He drops onto the other side as silently as a panther, and moves forward on his hands and knees. It is like being in a jungle. He hears crows cawing and answering, making their mysterious sounds, deeper voices like ravens’, and the jungle talk of parrots. There are whistles and shrieks from bigger voices. He begins to sweat despite the cold air. Twigs snap, leaves rustle, something snake-like slithers by and a creature laughs, the way a hyena
might. Scurrying as fast as he can, Sherlock moves along the hedges, into the bushy labyrinth, under copper beeches and weeping willows, and finally, gets up and sprints through the twisting avenues of the maze. Instantly, he hears something following him, charging forward, gaining on him with every stride!

He doesn’t dare look back as he moves in the direction of the house, racing through the green tunnels, getting closer. The dark, granite building has three storeys. The lights on the ground floor, now visible just above the hedges, appear to illuminate several rooms. The small, single glow above is two floors up: the highest storey, where the castlelike turrets loom. There is darkness in between.

Sherlock emerges from the labyrinth. Now only a stretch of tall grass separates him from the house. There’s an entrance in the darkness to this side of the ground-floor lights. It’s under an alcove with an ironwork fence in front.

He makes for it.

But he seems like a goner when he’s still ten feet away. Summoning extra energy, he takes three bounds, of Spring-Heeled-Jack proportions, and leaps up onto the top of the fence. He scrambles over, but loses his grip and falls hard onto the cobblestones on the other side, right on his sore arm.

He doesn’t care. He’s inside the gate.
Safe
.

Sherlock looks back into the jungle. All is silent. Only the cold breeze wafts through the mist. He thinks he sees movement up in a tree, the glint of yellow eyes, but he isn’t sure. In a blink they are gone.

Then there’s a rustling in the undergrowth right near
the fence. A beast is about to appear, just a few feet in front of him!

“Meow,” it says in a tiny voice.

A kitten, as white as snow, steps out of the jungle and marches through the fence. It walks up to his face, regards him, and licks his hawk nose. Then it turns and disappears into the tall grass again.

Before Sherlock can smile, something else attracts his attention. The sound of human voices:
inside
.

He gets to his feet and tiptoes over to the door. It is wooden and rounded at the top, thick as a chopping block, exactly like the castle entrances Sherlock always imagines when he reads the romantic tales of Sir Walter Scott. A big iron latch holds it shut. He tries the handle.
The door opens
.

Inside, a tall vestibule widens into a grand hall. Far away, on the other side of that long room, through an open door, Sherlock can see figures moving about in a smaller space. They are laughing and talking loudly: two men and a young woman.

“Tomorrow is our Lord’s day … Lord Rathbone’s day!”

“The day his daughter dies.”

“Or … comes back to life!”

Their laughter bursts through the door and echoes in the great hall.

Sherlock feels a thrill go through him. He has to get closer. He slides from the vestibule into the hall, glides along the wood-paneled wall … and slams into something. The collision is loud. At least it seems so to him. But the conversation and laughter continue. Sherlock has caught
what he ran into, which he now sees is a full suit of armor, with a helmet, sword, and spiked ball and chain.

He gently repositions the armor and moves cautiously toward the open door at the far end of the hall. On his way, he comes to an entrance on his left. It is an opening into a corridor that leads to the central part of the house. Way down at the far end of the passage, a staircase is dimly evident.

“A quarter-million pounds!”

“A mere trifle.”

“All mine,” cracks the young woman.

Though Sherlock is anxious to see their faces, he doesn’t dare stick his head out from the wall. He can hear the clink of glasses; words sound slurred.

“Not quite all!”

“But in a sense …”

“Yes, in a sense … child.”

Sherlock is hearing everything he needs to hear. Or is he? When he considers it, he realizes that they haven’t actually said anything incriminating. Perhaps they are simply making light of what is on everyone’s lips at the moment – the famous kidnapping. It is the biggest news in the land, on the front page of every paper. It is true that he also has the evidence provided by the watermarked paper, but that is not nearly enough.
Where is Victoria Rathbone?
That is what matters.

He keeps glancing down the corridor that leads away from the hall toward the staircase. Should he try to get closer to these three people or …

That staircase would take him one floor nearer to where the soft light is glowing from the upper-storey window. He is here ahead of Lestrade and Irene and Malefactor. He must be bold.

Sherlock slips from the hall and into the corridor. It grows dimmer as he nears the end and enters a big room where the staircase sits. It is magnificent: made of wood, its banisters elaborately carved, and wide like a platform at the bottom. He recognizes the images in its surface: they are all of Narcissus, a character from Greek mythology. Each one depicts an identical scene: a face staring at its own reflection in a pool. Sherlock looks up the staircase. It ascends into total darkness.

The trio of voices is still echoing in the house, but has become indistinct.

Up he goes, treading carefully on the creaking steps. When he reaches the next floor he can’t see more than a few inches in front of his face. There is silence – the downstairs voices have entirely faded. He inches around on a landing until his foot bangs up against another step: the next staircase, leading up.

Sherlock ascends again and comes to a hallway. It seems to him that he is on the correct floor now and that the glow he’d seen outdoors came from a room off to his right. He turns that way, though there isn’t any illumination down the passage. Feeling his way along, his heart begins to pound. This is a massive building. He could get lost in here. It may soon be difficult to find his way back; perhaps he should turn around.

No. It is time to strike
.

He must walk blindly on until he finds that room.

But something else disturbs him. His mind has been so riveted on the presence of the three people downstairs and the upstairs light, that he has pushed the manor’s eerie history to the back of his mind.

“It is haunted if ever a house was.” That’s what Penny said. Despite her class, she is a well-spoken woman and doesn’t seem like the sort who is given to wild superstitions. Sherlock feels his stomach burning.
Such tales are nonsense
, he tells himself. In the end, she is just a poorly educated country woman.
Be like steel; use cold reason
.

He feels a sudden breeze blow across his face and through his clothes. The hallway is in the center of the house … without a single window.

A breeze?

Sherlock freezes. He is ashamed of himself, but he freezes. Then he thinks he might faint. He sticks out his arms to feel for the walls, to at least hold on to something. An object comes into in his hands. It is cold and round and severed from its base.

A human head
.

Sherlock does everything he can to keep his scream inside his throat and releases the skull. It shatters on the floor.

A bust – likely made of porcelain. It must have been sitting on a pedestal.

There is silence again. The boy pushes the shards off to the side so they settle against the wall. He doubts the
crash could have been heard two floors below in this huge house, but if anyone comes up here with a lantern, he wants the pieces well out of the way.

On he goes, feeling embarrassed, adamant about removing all those ridiculous haunted house ideas from his mind.

He proceeds in total darkness, edging along corridors, finding nothing. Finally, when he steps into another wall and realizes that he has come to the next
T
in the halls, he notices something that gives him hope.

He can see the passageway to his right. It is dim, but he can make out the walls, the outlines of dusty paintings, and a little hall table. There’s light in this direction!

Sherlock moves quickly down that corridor. He can see the next
T
too, and the light is slightly brighter around that corner. He rushes to it, looks along the next hall and … spots a glowing line on the floor.

A door to a lighted room!

He treads silently up to it and puts his ear against its surface.

Nothing
.

Then … the faint sound of someone sobbing … a girl.

He tries the latch, but it’s locked. The girl gasps.

There aren’t any knobs with keyholes to look through on these old doors, but as Sherlock had crept closer, he’d noticed two very slight vertical lines of light rising from the brighter one on the floor – the entrance isn’t perfectly sealed. He presses his forehead against a crack and tries to peer into the room. At first he can’t discern anything, so
narrow is the sliver of light. But then he sees her. She is sitting at a table straight ahead, near a dark window, looking toward the door with what appears to be fear in her eyes. Behind her, through the window, little bits of light from the distant bonfires flicker like tiny sparks and then go out. Her strawberry blonde hair is done up, a necklace glows around her delicate neck – she looks weary and disheveled but highborn: the skin across her high cheekbones is as white as precious china. Sherlock remembers what the newspapers said Victoria Rathbone was wearing on the day of her abduction … the girl in the room is clothed in a fine scarlet dress.

He has solved it! He has solved this impenetrable mystery in a mere two days. The crime that all of Scotland Yard, all of England, is talking about, has been unlocked by his brilliant deductions. And
only
he, squatting at this door in this frightening manor house fifty miles north of the city, knows it.

Sherlock sits still for a moment, smiling. Andrew Doyle will give him whatever he wants, he can put his bullet into Lestrade, and he’s saved two lives as well. Irene will think him a genius and have no need of Malefactor.

Then he hears a sound in the distance, yet within the building. It is growing louder with every second.
Someone is coming up the staircase
.

Sherlock springs to his feet. He has everything he needs. Now he must get out.

But the approaching person is already on his floor, moving rapidly, and will arrive in no time at all. Sherlock
has lost his bearings. It is impossible to know which way to go to get back: he will be lost if he blindly stumbles away.

An idea comes to him.
Go in the direction of whoever is approaching. It will be the way out
. It is a reckless thought, but it makes sense.

The boy is shaking as he starts to move.

“I am doing the right thing. I am doing the right thing,” he whispers. “Hide when the fiend nears.”

The footsteps approach. The boy can see the corridor up ahead getting lighter. Whoever is out there has to have a lantern. Sherlock must calculate this perfectly: he must get as close as he can without giving himself away, then duck out of sight and let the villain pass.

He walks down the hallway and turns at the
T
. The light appears at the end of the passage and shoots straight toward him. Whoever is coming this way has arrived even sooner than he imagined,
too
soon! Sherlock has made a big mistake – and there is no time to retreat. The light is glowing on the floor a few yards in front of him and advancing rapidly.