“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.”
Horror had spread like a plague across our faces, Lestrade standing with a hand over his mouth and Dr Watson and I staring as if somehow the force of our sympathy could undo what had been done. Only Mr Holmes remained impassive, his skin marble-white and his eyes positively metallic.
“Did anyone notice you?” he asked in the same hypnotic tone. “Packing the boxes, or perhaps carrying them?”
“Not I. I went by night down to the river steps.”
“Hopkins, run and fetch us a constable,” Lestrade commanded with uncharacteristic gruffness.
“No, not on my life,” Mr Holmes growled fiercely.
“Can you be serious?” Dr Watson demanded of my senior inspector.
“Now who’s theorising in advance of facts?” Lestrade snapped, brushing an angry hand over his face. “Get this Arlie lad to his feet, come with me, and we’ll find a cab. Hopkins here is about to report that an abandoned building has been broken into. Aren’t you, Hopkins?” he added meaningfully.
“Yes, sir,” I answered with some passion.
“What of the bloodied hatchet?” Dr Watson wondered as he and Mr Holmes together helped the distraught youth to stand.
“The family had just killed a hare for supper when they suddenly vanished,” I supplied at once. “It’s a great mystery as to where they went. I daresay it’s possible they left a letter of intent somewhere, however, and I daresay I can bring it to the constable’s notice.”
“Right, that’s settled.” Lestrade shook his head in despair. “Lord have mercy. Doctor, can you find him a place?”
“I’ve a friend with a thriving practice for neurotics in the Kent countryside.” Dr Watson sighed. “It’ll be temporary, but I’ll wire him at once. Arlie, we’re taking you to our home in Baker Street where you’ll have a bath and a warm meal, all right?”
Arlie made no sound, but leaned on the doctor and nodded his tangled head.
“Good,” Lestrade approved. “Gentlemen, are we all in complete agreement?”
After a pause, Mr Holmes said, “Poe referred to the Thames as the River of Silence. Ever since reading that, I’ve thought of it so.”
“Very well,” said my fellow Yarder. “Let no more words be spoken on the subject, then. Ever. Inspector Hopkins, I regret to say that your first case remains unsolved.”
So my first case was a failure twice over, and I am glad of it.
It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do, and the best thing to do.
Yet my heart has been tugged in so many directions today that it feels quite unravelled, loosened sinews and arteries now doing their utmost to weave themselves back together again inside my chest.
Dearest Mum,
My first case, once so bright in its promise of removing a villain from our streets, turns out to be the basest of hoaxes. A rogue medical student was guilty of chopping a body into seven parts and setting them adrift. Women of your constitution don’t shirk at such macabre news, yet I loathe telling you, for it means after all that there is nothing of importance to relate. I am nonetheless weary for this having turned out to be a prank, however, and so will write you properly tomorrow or the next day. The bubble and squeak turns out to travel very well indeed in wax paper, and will serve as my breakfast.
Exhausted but hale,
Six months after the business of the false Chinese box, three cases total logged working with the incomparable Sherlock Holmes (and the estimable Dr Watson), and today I received the shock of my life when he arrived at the Yard with fresh evidence for Inspector Bradstreet. Mr Holmes never vacillates once a course is set, sails ahead like a schooner with an aquiline prow. But he paused before my alcove as if he’d expected to find me there.
“A word when I’m through, if you please, Inspector Hopkins,” he decreed, whisking off without awaiting a reply.
I’d no notion of whether to feel excitement or anxiety and settled on a queasy combination by default. Meanwhile, I had need of a case file and thought a brief dash to the archives might settle me. It would have worked, too, had Sherlock Holmes not been seated in my chair when I returned, his fingers steepled and his stork’s legs crossed in front of him. Greeting him as cheerily as I could, I dropped the papers and leaned against my cubby’s dividing wall.
“Can I help, Mr Holmes?”
Inspecting me with hooded grey eyes, the detective considered. “That depends entirely upon your response to a query of mine. Three possible outcomes present themselves. Either you’ll give me a satisfactory answer, an unsatisfactory answer, or you’ll refuse to answer altogether, as I’ve no right to wonder what I’ve been wondering of late.”
“You may ask me anything, Mr Holmes.”
“In that case, I wonder that you didn’t try for another profession,” he observed idly.
“By George, I don’t… why… what do you mean by that, sir?” The effort not to appear slighted was excruciating.
“Dear me, no, put the thought from your head. You’ve a natural talent for police work.” Mr Holmes made a lazy figure eight of dismissal with his forefinger. “It’s the income, you see. Detection doesn’t pay the official Force well, not when they’re honest, which you are, and rewards are rare – maybe more so than you’d hoped. You could easily have been a City clerk with your acumen and risen accordingly, but instead you live week to week, probably because you are forced to support someone who is not in your immediate family but is nevertheless dear to you, following a tragedy which affected that person gravely.”
Someone who’s never spoken with Mr Holmes might think they’d anticipate his omniscience, maybe even expect he’s about to throw open the curtains of their lives and survey the mess in broad daylight. Well, I record it here for posterity: no one save Dr Watson himself fares any better than I did.
“Heavens, lad, sit down!” Mr Holmes tugged me towards my own chair, pivoting so his lean body rested against my desk. “Upon my word, I didn’t imagine you’d react so strongly. The brandy flask I once observed in your top left drawer –”
“No, thank you.” I chuckled weakly as Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street offered me both my own chair and my own brandy. “I’m surprised at myself. Forgive me.”
“Pray don’t ask such a thing. It’s hardly the first time I’ve staggered a stout fellow. Recently, at that.” He glanced away, an unreadable look briefly warping his perfect suavity. “I did you a disservice. Let us abandon the topic in favour of –”
“Not a bit of it!” I exclaimed, recovering. “Now you explain how you knew. I shall catalogue every detail.”