Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

The cab deposited us at the corner of Thrawl Street, deep in the convoluted warren just south of the notorious Flower and Dean Street. Evening had deepened the skies above us to a hazy sapphire. We walked down a side passage into a small mews with bits of wastepaper dancing in the dark breezes.

“There—I believe that is the den in question.” The detective nodded at a sagging wooden doorframe; an adjacent window patched with greasy paper was illuminated from within by the light of a yellow lamp. “Are you ready, Doctor?”

Edging to the door, my friend placed his hand upon the latch. He threw it open, and we stepped into the room.

A very old woman sat wrapped in a shawl before the fire, the embers of which, though dying, still cast a considerable heat into the room. I feared briefly that we would cause her grave shock by bursting into the room with weapons drawn as they were, but a glance at her fixed, clouded gaze immediately informed me she was entirely blind.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes, ma’am,” my friend replied, casting his eyes about the room.

“I don’t know you. But of course, you must have business with my son. Come near the fire; it is wonderful.” The tiny room was so stifling as to be nearly suffocating. “I live upstairs, as a rule. There’s a girl who comes up with food. But the windows have all been breaking, you see, in the night.”

“Have they?” Holmes inquired.

“Yes. My son patched the one on this floor but said the upstairs would require more careful handling.”

“I hope no harm came of it.”

“Oh, no, I don’t imagine a little thing like that could hurt Edward.” She smiled. “Another man, perhaps, but my son is quite remarkable.”

“I have no doubt that is true. Does he happen to be at home, Mrs. Bennett?”

“He’s stepped out for a moment. But who is with you?”

“This is Dr. Watson. We are both very anxious to speak with your son.”

I looked around the room from where I stood by the door. There was a filthy stove with a few pots and pans lying atop it, an ancient sofa, and bookshelves filled with dusty tomes and several glass jars. Lying in a gap between volumes was an ancient, tailless cat whose eyes flicked from one to the other of us in limpid yellow pools.

“Bless you for looking for him here. He doesn’t live here, you know, not even after his father died. He lives in the City. But he has been staying in my rooms more often of late.”

Holmes also noted the shelving and approached it, leaving his revolver on the table. When he reached out a hand for the jar beside the cat, the creature screamed in a hoarse, pining tone and fled to the middle of the stairs.

“Never mind the Admiral,” the old woman said, laughing. “He ought not to be frightened of you. He is safe enough, after all.”

“Why do you say the cat is safe?” asked Holmes intently.

“Well, that is obvious, isn’t it? He hasn’t any tail.”

My friend methodically returned the jar to its space beside the imposing bound volumes while stating, “Your son is a scholar.” I could just make out the contours of what the glass vessel contained, and concluded that Leslie Tavistock’s horror had not been quite as unmanly as I had assumed.

“Are you gentlemen friends of Edward’s?”

“Our respective occupations have thrown us very much together in the past few weeks.”

“I see—I thought perhaps you knew him. My son is not a scholar. The books belonged to my late husband.”

“And his studies held no interest for Edward?”

“Just so. The two of them could not have been more different, if you wish to know the truth of it.”

“That is very interesting. I have always thought fathers and sons are often alike.”

I little knew why Holmes was so intrigued by the tiny crone’s conversation, but his soothing tones and the sweltering heat of the room were beginning to have a soporific effect on me.

“I have heard that said also. But not in this case. My husband was a scholar, as you said. That is one difference. He was physically very imposing, which is another. And also my husband had a very weak temperament.”

“In what way?”

“If you must know, he had no ability whatever to master himself. I suffered for his weaknesses, when he was still alive.”

“But Edward did not?”

“Oh, no,” she said proudly.

“Then he was away at school?”

“No indeed. He was here for the worst of it. But that was of no consequence. Edward cannot be hurt, you see.”

“I am not sure that I understand you, ma’am.”

“He is blessed that way. Oh, he would cry at first, when he was very, very young, but he soon acquired his gift of strength, and there was an end to his suffering. I prayed every day for him to be blessed with the gift, and finally my greatest desire was granted me. He was eight, I believe—a terrible day that had been, I remember. I think it was the day the Admiral lost the first bit of his tail. But Edward has the gift now, and he can never suffer again.

“I sometimes wish I had prayed so much for the Admiral,” she mused. “It would have spared him a great deal to have the gift too. But as I said, the dear creature needn’t worry now.”

She laughed contentedly at this and held her hands out toward the dying fire.

Her movement drew my friend’s attention to the scuttle, which was brimful with fuel. “Have you another coal hod, Mrs. Bennett?”

“No indeed. What would I want with another coal hod?”

“Did your son refill it for you before he left?”

“I don’t believe so. He’s lit quite a blaze for us, as you can tell. But if we need more coal, there’s a supply down in the basement. You just go through that trap under the staircase, you see.”

Holmes knelt down to touch the floor and then recoiled as if he had been burned.

“What has he done?” he cried. “Open the door, Watson, quickly!”

My friend lifted Mrs. Bennett from her chair, and the three of us flew outside under the chilling night sky. We had not gotten five strides from the chamber when a sound like the roar of a crashing wave over the side of a storm-tossed ship washed over us and I was thrown to the bitter ground.

It seemed that I could not move for several minutes, but I was in no position to judge time accurately. I know I heard my name spoken three times, each with increasing violence and urgency, but from very far away. Perhaps only seconds passed before I managed to sit up, but when I did so, I felt a sudden splintering pain at my side, and my eyes flew open with the shock of it.

When I looked around me, I faintly noted that the courtyard was flushed with a flickering light. I met the eyes of Holmes, who lay several feet from me and had not yet managed to raise himself from the ground. Mrs. Bennett lay sprawled on her back upon the stones and did not move.

“Are you all right, my friend?” Holmes breathed.

“I think so,” I returned. I began to crawl toward them. “Holmes, you are not hurt?”

“Nothing to signify,” said he, raising himself on his forearms, though I could see in the eerie light that his head bled in a slow trickle, and either he had touched it with his hand or that appendage was bleeding as well.

“What happened?”

“The basement was on fire. When the trapdoor disintegrated…”

“What the devil has he done, Holmes? He has destroyed his own refuge.”

“He has indeed,” my friend replied hollowly. “From which we can draw only one conclusion.”

An icy chill of despair engulfed me at the inevitable inference.

“He no longer has any use for it.”

Holmes’s lids descended hopelessly for a moment, and then he turned his attention to the lady. “Mrs. Bennett?” he said, touching her shoulder. Her glassy eyes were open, but she gave no sign. “Mrs. Bennett, can you hear me?”