Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

Alice approached a run-down wood structure with a rusted automaton parked outside the door. They went first to a side door, but when she rattled the handle, it was secure. “How are you at picking locks?” she asked.

He couldn’t hold back a smile. “You’ve been too much in Poppy’s company.”

She looked up at him, her face set and determined. “I wish I had her bold spirit to see me through this.”

Her mouth set, she marched around to the front where the automaton stood motionless. If there was any doubt that it was defunct, the amount of bird dung on its head said the boilers had been inactive for a long time. Alice shot it a contemptuous look as she approached to examine the wide double doors.

“I think you’re blessed with more than enough spirit,” Tobias said, and then his breath caught as a wave of pain ran through him. He tried to hide it, but he wasn’t quick enough.

“Tobias?” Alice asked softly. “What’s wrong?”

“A bilious attack. Nothing more.”

“This is more than a stomachache. You’re ill. You’ve been ill since you went to Dartmoor.”

Dread filled him. He didn’t want to tell Alice what was wrong. She had too much to shoulder already. “Let’s worry about Jeremy first.”

Alice tilted her head up to him, the light turning her hair to molten fire. Fine wisps of it curled around her ears, drawing the eye to the fine arch of her cheekbones. He was transfixed by the light dusting of freckles he found there. She was as exquisite as a fine porcelain vase, every line in perfect proportion.

Her brow furrowed. “I’m worried about you, too.”

“Alice,” he said, sounding plaintive in his own ears. “Please. This isn’t the time.”

“It never is with you.” She pressed her lips together, then thrust out her hand. “Give me your gun.”

Chagrined, he surrendered it. Then she took careful aim at the lock of the warehouse door, and fired. The padlock jumped and then fell in pieces to the ground.

“My father was finally right about something,” Tobias said after a pause.

“What?” she asked, freeing the last scraps of metal from the hasp.

“I should never underestimate you.”

INSIDE THE WAREHOUSE, THERE WAS NOTHING BUT EMPTY crates and half-forgotten secrets. The trapdoor beneath the floor creaked open with the smell of mildew and old blood, and Tobias was faced with his first view of the world beneath the streets. A narrow flight of steps led down to a derelict workshop, where worktables and equipment lay under a blanket of dust. He raised the old candle-lantern he’d taken from a table upstairs and held it high, letting the feeble beam beat against the murk. So this is where it all happened—the forgery scheme to steal the gold from Keating’s artifacts . There had been six perpetrators, including Keating’s cousin and the owner of this warehouse, John Harriman. But Bancroft had been the mastermind, and so he was the one the Gold King had blamed.

When Holmes had uncovered the crime, events had fallen like dominoes. Keating had been prepared to ruin Bancroft and his family, which had led to Tobias agreeing to work for the Gold King, which had led to him standing here. It felt as if he’d closed an insidious loop.

The memory of Holmes brought Tobias back to the present, and he thought to look down. The blanket of dust had proved a perfect medium to capture a single set of footprints leading straight ahead. So he came in the first door we tried, got in with a key, and came down here. He’ll have no idea that he’s being followed .

“Look.” Alice had followed him down the stairs and now she pointed to the far shadows. Tobias could just make out the faint gleam of old cages, decorated with brass scrollwork like some forgotten menagerie. “I heard they kept the goldsmiths locked away down here. In the end, they were killed and thrown into the river.”

Her voice was soft in the still shadows, raising the fine hairs down his neck. There had been thirteen bodies in the end, and those had only been the ones involved in this part of the crime. There had been the maidservant, Grace, and more. He wanted to love his father, but so much made it difficult. “Let’s go.”

One side of the underground room opened up into a cavern, and they walked toward it, huddled in the lantern light like children from a folktale wandering into the woods. Tension wound up Tobias’s spine. He knew little of the Black Kingdom, but he knew enough to be sure that this was their domain. His eyes flicked from shadow to shadow, knowing that what he wanted—or perhaps feared—to see was just beyond the faint bloom of the candle’s glow.

“How does your father cross beneath the streets? This isn’t his territory,” he asked quietly.

“Perhaps he obtained permission.”

It wasn’t the most satisfying of answers, and he couldn’t help looking around for he knew not what. The dark was oppressive, for all the rough rock of the cavern ceiling stretched high above. “If your father knew about this place, how could Harriman hide the goldsmiths down here?”

“But he didn’t,” Alice frowned. “It was only after, when they gave this place a proper search, that he discovered this passage.”

The cavern they were in reached another, vaster hole. The ground was strewn with pebbles, making walking relatively easy, but there was more than one way to go. After a moment of decision, Alice turned right.

“Maybe there is a clue that he came this way?” Tobias began searching the ground and wishing Holmes were there. The detective would find a mote of dust disturbed, or a thumbprint, or—Tobias squinted at a pebble wondering if it looked recently scuffed. He flicked it with his boot and noticed the underside was a paler hue. That’s odd . He brought the light closer. “Is there water nearby?”

“There is a river. Once Father said it was the Tyburn, I think. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention at the time.”

Tobias set down the lantern, touching the earth. Having only one working hand made the simplest actions awkward. “The ground is damp here, but this pebble was wet-side up. Something turned it over very recently.”

“Then that proves Father came this way.”

The admiration in her voice made him ridiculously proud. He didn’t bother to point out the stone might have been disturbed by someone else. “Where does this lead?”

“There’s a building near Manchester Square.”

He rose, feeling pain in every joint. If this was the effect of the poison with Dr. Watson’s remedy to counteract it, he didn’t want to contemplate the alternative. “Then let’s go.”

They set off, seeing more signs of the river as they went—a patch of dark water moving within the caverns, and sometimes he could hear the rush of it slipping over stone. There were signs of human habitation as well—brick vaults marking an entrance or exit to the world above. A few were recent, but most were centuries old. Many had been sealed off, some neatly, some with a hodgepodge of brick and stone obviously mortared in haste. Those doorways made Tobias uneasy. What was down here that they had wanted so desperately to contain?

In a few places, the cavern narrowed to passages so thin that they had to pass one at a time. Many of these seemed to angle downward, but after the last such passage, the caverns lost all traces of human engineering. To Tobias, they looked almost like sea caves he’d seen once near Torquay, with stone dribbling from the ceilings in long points like teeth.

Alice’s feet slowed, then stopped. “I don’t remember this.”

Tobias leaned against the cavern wall, conserving his strength. If we’re lost down here, there will be no finding our way out . Anger bubbled up, but he quashed it. Alice’s face was pinched with concentration, her eyes flicking to each landmark in turn. She will solve this before I do . He busied himself with fumbling in his pocket for one of their spare candles, lighting it, and squishing it down in place of the one guttering in the lantern. Fresh light bloomed, widening their range of visibility.