George Mann: Associates of Sherlock Holmes

Mr Holmes and Dr Watson approached with the bearing of men who’ve looked into the abyss and lived to tell about it, Lestrade close at their heels. Trailing only slightly, though my nerves hummed and sparked, I watched as the independent detective whipped out his pocketknife again and bent to one knee at the top of the steps.

“We haven’t any warrant, Mr Holmes!” Lestrade hissed.

“You directed my notice to a trail old enough to be considered positively historical, and now you’re quibbling about warrants?” the detective snapped in return, fiddling with the lock and producing a sharp snick . “Supposing we find anything, claim you investigated because the door had been forced. It would even be true.”

Lestrade struck his palm against the rusted iron rail, but made no further protest. Indeed, we were all about to burst into the house when Mr Holmes flung his arms out, causing Lestrade to stumble and Dr Watson to catch his friend’s shoulder.

“Enter, and then don’t move a muscle,” Sherlock Holmes ordered. “I must read the floor.”

We crowded inside and my senior edged the front door closed. We were in a murky room, lit only by the undamaged windows, with a thin haze of wood particles tickling our throats. Stack after stack of carved boxes filled the chamber, only interrupted by a deal table with an unlit lamp resting upon it, and next to it a bowl of soup with dried broth staining its lip. Mr Holmes tiptoed along the walls, hands hovering in midair, reading the sawdust as we watched in silence.

“All right, come in.” Mr Holmes’s brows had swept towards his hawklike nose. “There’s been traffic within the past day or two, but –”

He cut himself off and stalked across the room, staring down at a row of boxes piled six and eight high. When we followed him, it was plain to see that a single column had recently vanished, for its rectangular outline was printed clearly in the dust on the floor.

“Dear God,” Dr Watson breathed.

The trio sprang into action, opening doors and cupboards, urgently seeking more evidence. My efforts to assist soon bore morbid fruit when I took the corridor leading to the back area and discovered a bloodied hatchet lying on the ground.

“Mr Holmes!” I shouted (though I ought to have called for Lestrade). “In the rear yard!”

Both men were there in seconds, gathering around my hunched form. Mr Holmes’s eyes darted hither and thither over the cornsilk-hued grass and the chipped flagstones but, seeing nothing he deemed important, he sank to his haunches next to me, peering at the dull blade with its encrustation of gore.

“What do you see?” he asked. Lestrade opened his mouth. “No, no, my dear fellow, let us test his mettle a bit further. Inspector Hopkins, tell me what you observe.”

A needle of panic shot through my breast, but I soon rallied. “The blood is not more than five days old, which fits our timeline – it rained on the twenty-eighth, which would have washed much of this away, and the arm was found on the first, quite fresh. Additionally, there is not a large amount of it. While it coats the edge of the hatchet, the ground beneath is spotted, not soaked.”

“Meaning?”

“The body was moved.”

“Or?”

This required thought, but I soon had it. “The body had been dead for long enough for the blood to begin to coagulate.”

“Top marks.” Mr Holmes stood. “This is manifestly the scene of the crime, and it would do to call in –”

“Holmes!” Dr Watson’s face appeared in the door, his pleasant features sombre and still. “You had better see the bedchamber.”

Not twenty seconds later, we were standing in the queerest room I’d ever encountered.

Two beds nestled against opposite corners, indifferently dressed in stale bedclothes. The single round table hosted dirtied teacups and several amber bottles, which the doctor shifted to study.

The rest of us gazed in astonishment at the walls, which were entirely covered with maps. Maps of the world, maps of Great Britain, maps of our dozens of colonies. Maps of America and its southern neighbours, maps of Arabia and Brazil and the Sahara, maps of Japan and the Bering Sea, maps showing entire constellations of islands I’d never heard of before. Stuck into these scores of maps were pins of every colour, some with notes – “tropical, parrots and pineapple trees!” – and some without, creating a dizzying spectacle of a smashed globe spread out flat and fixed to the plaster.

“Well, someone’s taken an interest in geography,” Lestrade muttered.

“This was recently a sickroom,” Dr Watson reported. “Here is a willow bark tonic, elderberry syrup, yarrow extract, ginger… whoever was being treated had a severe fever.”

“By George, Liza was taken ill,” I realised. “And only her brother left to care for her. But did he speed it along, or –”

“Hsst!” Mr Holmes lifted his palm.

I heard nothing, and from their faces neither did the others. But an instant later, dashed if Sherlock Holmes wasn’t out of the room and already halfway down a flight of steps. Quick as we ran, he had the advantage of us, and we reached the cellar (which housed a single combined workshop and lumber room) just as a guttural moan reached our ears.

“Stop! Slowly, now,” Mr Holmes said in a calm, clear voice, and we proceeded at a more measured pace. “Watson, I need you.”

Mr Holmes was half-kneeling with his forearm resting on his upraised thigh, looking for all the world as if he’d happened upon a friend in a quiet lane on a summer’s day. The lad cowering behind a stack of alder planks looked to be around eighteen years old, his face streaked with tears and sawdust, his sandy hair matted into a squirrel’s nest, his blue eyes round and anguished. His lip bled where he gnawed at it, and the boy was thin enough to be a wraith. Lestrade cursed as we stood aside for the doctor to pass.

“Your name is Arlie, I think,” Mr Holmes said with a voice like warm syrup. “I am Mr Sherlock Holmes, and this is my friend, Dr Watson.”

“She don’t need a doctor no more,” the boy replied, almost too thickly to be understood.

“I know she doesn’t, but do you think that you might?” Mr Holmes continued. Dr Watson sat unobtrusively on a crate to Arlie’s left. “We’d be grateful if you allowed my friend to take your pulse. He’s a very good sort and would never dream of harming you.”

Arlie was too far gone to protest when Dr Watson slipped his fingers around the lad’s wrist. Tears continued to stream from his eyes, his wasted body shaking.

“He’s dehydrated, in shock, and in considerable need of food, but otherwise healthy.” Pulling a brandy flask from his coat pocket, the doctor offered it. “Take a sip, if you please. That’s right! Good man – you’ll feel calmer in a moment. You say that your sister needed a doctor but doesn’t anymore?” he added, casting a tense glance at Mr Holmes.

Arlie nodded, choked on more tears, and swallowed them back. “All she wanted were to see more’n that back room. For a long spell we managed on our own, but a week ago my sister done showed signs o’ the sickness, and I’d nary a choice save hiring meself out for the medicines and tonics. It were too soon for her to be ill, too soon by far. She didn’t want to stay in London, in that room, not forever .”

“Do you mean to say your sister was too weak to leave the house?” Mr Holmes prompted softly.

“Aye.” The boy winced. “These ten years she has been, for all the poultices and teas the Wus tried. Me, I done brung all such maps as I could find, and she’d tell me what it were like there, in other lands. Dragons and beasties and tigers ten foot tall. She wanted to see ’em with ’er own eyes. Liza said as the Thames don’t look like much, but the Thames can take you anywhere in the world, anywhere , and one day we’d sail down it together and see something other than Limehouse. But then she stopped breathing. For hours. ” Racking sobs did violence to the boy’s lungs. “I done sent her off to the islands and the deserts like she wanted. Down the Thames, she said. She always said as that were the way to get there. She knew the way. I were careful never to lock the boxes. When she lands, she’ll be worlds away from London.”