THE THREE LOCKS
A SHERLOCK HOLMES ADVENTURE
Bonnie MacBird

Copyright

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

Copyright © Bonnie MacBird 2021

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Bonnie MacBird asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Cover images © Bonnie MacBird (figures); Shutterstock.com (all other images)

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

This book is a new and original work of fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, and other fictional characters that were first introduced to the world in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all of which are now in the public domain. The characters are used by the author solely for the purpose of story-telling and not as trademarks. This book is independently authored and published, and is not sponsored or endorsed by, or associated in any way with, Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. or any other party claiming trademark rights in any of the characters in the Sherlock Holmes canon.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008380830

Ebook Edition © March 2021 ISBN: 9780008380854

Version: 2021-01-06

Dedication

For Miranda Andrews

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

PART ONE – THE BOX

1 The Box

2 Thwarted

3 You Left Me Hanging

4 New Skills

5 Madame Borelli

PART TWO – ENTANGLEMENT

6 Fingering the Threat

7 The Deacon

8 A Close Escape

9 Misdirection

10 A Lady’s Desire

PART THREE – THE DOLL

11 The Floating Doll

12 The Wyndhams

13 Polly

14 Atalanta

15 Bloom Where You Are Planted

16 An Uneasy Alliance

PART FOUR – STRANGE MAGIC

17 Smell the Roses

18 Buttons Unbuttoned

19 Those Men! Those Women!

20 The Mind Reader

21 The Tables Turned

22 Danger in the Doldrums

PART FIVE – THE TUMBLERS

23 The Story Collector

24 Two for One

25 The Cauldron of Death

26 The How and the Why

27 Vanished

PART SIX – THE SETUP

28 The Spinning House

29 The Lady in the Lock

30 Freddie Eden-Summers

31 Leo Vitale

32 Lucifer’s Lights

PART SEVEN – ILLUSIONS

33 A Palpable Hit

34 Just a Bodkin

35 The Pawnshop

36 A Holy Place

37 The Sinner

PART EIGHT – THE UNLOCKING

38 Rescue

39 Gaol

40 Church and State

41 A Spot of Trouble

42 The Prestige

43 221B

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Bonnie MacBird

About the Publisher

Prologue

When a mysterious woman going by the name of ‘Lydia’ offered me a cache of unpublished tales written by Dr John H. Watson some years ago, I was astonished to discover previously unknown adventures he had shared with the master detective – and his most admirable and unusual friend – Mr Sherlock Holmes.

It soon became apparent that there was a reason within each of these newly discovered tales for Watson not to have made them public at the time he released the others. By ‘the others’, of course I mean those which were brought to light by Arthur Conan Doyle. Dr Doyle’s precise role in these, be it literary agent or in some way promoter, remains buried in the sands of time.

Without giving the story away in advance, I can conjecture that both Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes may have had cause to delay release of the tale which follows – or in Holmes’s case, to disapprove entirely of its publication.

I hope the reader – and Dr Watson and Mr Holmes, wherever they dwell at present, either in heaven or as motes of stardust – will forgive me for deciding to put forward this story now, one which has been locked away for more than a hundred and thirty years.

—Bonnie MacBird

London, December 2020

PART ONE
THE BOX

‘By the pricking of my thumbs

Something wicked this way comes.

Open, Locks,

Whoever knocks.’

—William Shakespeare,

Macbeth

CHAPTER 1
The Box

It was late September of 1887, and an unusually hot Indian Summer. For two weeks London had suffocated with furnace-like temperatures, keeping me indoors for days. The blinding heat on Baker Street rose from the pavement in shimmering waves, the stench of refuse and horse droppings adding to the misery. Only the hordes of raucous city-dwellers, whom I knew were flocking to the seaside with their dripping ice creams and shouting children, prevented me from fleeing to Brighton or Cornwall with them.

My name is Dr John Watson, and at age thirty-five I was six years into sharing both rooms and many adventures with my friend, the remarkable consulting detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes.

But sadly, Holmes seemed to have forsaken my company of late. I had seen little of him for three weeks. I longed for a distraction from the misery of this weather. Not only had he not invited me on his recent escapades, but he had dismissed my questions with a petulant wave of his hand.

When Holmes did not wish to reveal something, no cajoling, guesswork or sleuthing could prise it free. He likewise kept his personal history, which I always suspected to be tinged with the dramatic, locked away as securely as any treasure stored in a bank vault. But even I have a few secrets of my own.

Locks, after all, are in place for a reason – whether privacy, security … or safety.

It happened that a locked and deadly secret played a key role in each of the two cases – and a puzzle of my own – which presented themselves to us that fateful month. So complex were these gruesome mysteries, and so tragic the outcomes, that it took the genius, bravery and resourcefulness of Sherlock Holmes to solve them, and a certain transparency of my own to tell of them now. My hesitation in doing so earlier will become apparent, perhaps only at the very last.

Our rooms faced east on Baker Street, and on that day I had closed the heavy curtains against the morning sun, leaving the windows behind them cracked open and myself sitting in half light, too hot even to read. Despite my claim that I had become inured to the heat during my army years in India and Afghanistan, I suffered mightily.

I contemplated asking Mrs Hudson for an iced lemonade, but the poor woman was no doubt prostrate on her bed from the heat. A paper fan lay next to me, useless in this oven. My ruminations were interrupted when the postman arrived with a small rectangular package, addressed to me and postmarked Edinburgh.

I welcomed the distraction.

The package was perhaps half the size of a shoebox, and heavy. The sender was a mystery, one ‘E. Carnachan’. I unwrapped it, only to find a smaller box inside covered by another layer of brown paper wrapping, this one stained, faded and tied with string. A note had been slipped under the string.

I removed and unfolded it, my hands sticky with sweat. The handwriting was old-fashioned and feminine, shaky, perhaps with age or illness. I read:

Dr John Watson—

You do not know me, but I am Elspeth Carnachan, a name you may not recognise. Carnachan is my married name, but I was born a Watson and your father’s half-sister. Your father and I parted ways while still in our youth, and I was effectively erased from the family history before you were born. It is doubtful that he ever mentioned me to you.

Your mother, bless her kindly soul, maintained contact despite your father’s ill opinion of me. You can confirm my familial connections if you so choose by public records in Edinburgh.

I am an old woman now and consumption will soon take me. In clearing my affairs, I came upon something in my attic last week that was meant for you. It is enclosed.

When you were only eleven your mother gave it to me for safekeeping with the direction to give it to you on your twenty-first birthday. She was in perfect health when she entrusted it to me, and so I wondered why.

By a strange twist of fate, she died only two days later. Perhaps she was prescient? We shall never know.

I placed it in my attic, intending to deliver it at the designated time. But life intervened and it slipped my mind.

I will now make a shameful admission. Upon rediscovering this last month, dear nephew, I was feverish with the thought that I might have caused some disaster by my careless delay in sending it to you. To quiet my mind, I tried to open your gift, even going to the extent of having several of Edinburgh’s finest locksmiths apply their skills, to no effect.

I hope you will forgive me. I think your mother would have done so. Please receive this in her spirit – she was the soul of kindness and generosity – and not with the judgemental anger so characteristic of your father.

God bless,

Elspeth Carnachan (née Watson).

A tumult of emotions coursed through me. Anger at this woman’s carelessness, her imposition, and my own grief at the reopening of an old tragedy vied for captaincy with tender childhood memories.

My mother. The soul of kindness and generosity. Her unexplained death when I was but eleven was a wound that had never healed. It was mystery that I thought would never be solved. I wiped a rivulet of sweat from my brow.

Elspeth Carnachan, an aunt I had never known, had not only forgotten her promise to my mother, but then tried to open something meant for me. No wonder my father had forsaken this careless and duplicitous creature! I flung down the letter.

I turned my attention to the package, wrapped in aged brown paper. On it, inscribed in delicate handwriting which I recognized as my mother’s, I read: ‘For John, upon the occasion of your twenty-first birthday. I hope you will understand. In my heart always, Mother.’

I tore off the string and paper. Inside was a worn cardboard box with a faded floral label, once containing two fancy bars of soap. I raised it to my nose. A scent from my childhood – Lily of the Valley – emanated from it. It had been my mother’s favourite. I was blindsided with a sudden wave of grief, and my vision blurred. I blinked and regained my focus.

I opened the soap box and discovered within a strange silver box about the size of two decks of cards. It was ornate and complicated. Engraved on its surface in finely traced lines were Celtic dragons, and the box itself was bound up with a dozen flat metal bands of different colours: silver, gold, copper. These were braided and wrapped around it, fastened securely along the front edge in a kind of Celtic knot. The ends of these bands were tucked under the edges of a large lock of a type I had never before seen. At the keyhole of this lock were many scratches, as though a breech had been attempted numerous times.

It was a beautiful object, like something from a fairy tale. But what was within? And why had my mother left this for me?

No key was included. I tried opening it, pressing and tugging here and there in case the keyhole was a ruse. Perhaps the box was locked in some way which could be released by pressing the right spot. But the lock and the metal banding did not move.

A second wave of sadness swept over me. Many miles had passed under my feet since my mother’s tragic and puzzling drowning. Suicide? Accident? But she had been a stable and formidable woman, and a good swimmer. Painful ruminations tormented me in my youth, but medical school, my war experiences and my exciting life with Holmes had eventually rendered my childhood grief a pale and distant thing. I had successfully pushed the mystery of my mother’s death from my mind.

Until today.

Here, in my hands, was a word from beyond the grave. Once again, I fingered the metal bands.

‘Leave it,’ came a sharp voice behind me.

I turned to see that Sherlock Holmes had soundlessly entered the room. He was pale and drenched with sweat, his dark hair damp and awry.

‘Put it down, I say!’ he cried.

CHAPTER 2
Thwarted

‘What?’ I asked. ‘Why should I leave it?’

‘Why are you sitting in the dark? The sun is past our windows now!’ said Holmes. He peeled off his frock coat and crossed to the window, throwing aside the heavy curtains. He opened the window wider to let in a draft. ‘Ah, air!’ he said. ‘A breeze at last!’

‘Holmes? Why should I leave it?’

‘Do you know who sent it?’

‘Yes. An aunt.’

He turned to face me, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

‘You don’t have an aunt. As I recollect, you had no one when you returned to London after the war.’

‘Well, I didn’t know I had this one.’

He tossed his waistcoat onto a chair. ‘Then you do not know the sender. It could be anyone.’

He approached me and glanced down at the silver box, undoing his tie. His face was shiny with sweat. ‘Ah, it is a bonny little thing. Careful, Watson.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged, moving back to the window. Throwing his tie onto the table, he unbuttoned his collar and began splashing water from a carafe onto the front of his shirt. The back was already drenched in perspiration.

‘There’s a letter which explains—’ I began.

‘You do not know the person who sent this. Instinct tells me you should leave it.’

I shook my head. ‘What on earth are you worried about, Holmes?’

He ignored the question, then rolled up his shirtsleeves, pulled back the sheer lace curtains and opened the window even wider, standing now quite exposed, his shirt soaked and clinging to his bony frame.

I felt a faint breeze move languidly into the room. Holmes untucked his shirt and was now preposterously flapping its soggy front in the stifling air to cool himself.

‘Holmes!’

If our sheer curtains were not in place, the elderly couple who lived straight across Baker Street had a direct view into our lodgings, and I’d caught them more than once peering over at us with birding glasses. His state of undress would surely provoke remark.

He ignored me, but of course Holmes cared as much for propriety as I did for knitting.

‘Holmes! If you think for one moment that either of us might be a target, aren’t you inviting danger standing in the window like that?’

‘Hmm,’ said he, nevertheless stepping back and closing the curtains. ‘For a moment, I thought you might be concerned about the neighbours.’ He flashed a quick smile at me. ‘I am sorry, dear friend. I am being perhaps too careful.’ He dropped down into a chair facing me. ‘By Jove, this heat! I have just put my eleventh case to rest this year. A couple masquerading as Japanese royalty who were actually importing adulterated opium into – Watson, I said put that box down!’

‘Holmes, this is my business.’

‘Come, Watson, you have no business. Oh, sorry, don’t take offence. It is one of the things I most treasure about you; you are almost an entirely blank page. Which means you are then free to accompany me on my cases.’

I was nettled to hear that my availability seemed to be my greatest asset. ‘What do you think is so dangerous?’ I asked, waving the box at him. ‘Have you set off some munitions expert recently?’

‘It is unlikely to be a bomb at that size, Watson. But please put it down! Locks can be rigged, you know, and even fatal.’

‘Balderdash.’

‘Spring-loaded, poison-tipped darts. Blades that pierce the eye when you look inside. Oh, yes, Watson!’

I set it down, reluctantly. ‘Are you receiving death threats, Holmes?’

He said nothing.

‘Are you?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Nothing specific. But in my line of work it is wise to take care.’ Holmes sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Watson. It was not my intention to leave you out of my recent cases. Some of them require – they happen so quickly – I must stay nimble-footed.’

Hot with anger, I stood. I had recently declined to join friends for an excursion to Bath, but in a fit of pique changed my mind that instant. ‘In any case, let me not be your anchor. I’m leaving in an hour for a holiday.’

Holmes was the picture of dismay. ‘For how long? Where? Why on earth?’

‘I have had enough of this heat. A friend invited me to Bath. Several of us are going. Cards, a great deal of swimming, dining. Nothing that you would enjoy.’

‘Bath! Cards, you say? Dear fellow, I have had to lock your chequebook away for the third time! Your gambling debts will sink you. And as for fine dining, you really might reconsider.’ He said no more but eyed my middle.

That confirmed it. ‘I’m off to pack. Unlock your desk and have my chequebook out, or I shall break open the damned drawer.’ Normally I am a patient man, but perhaps it was the heat.

I was off within the hour, chequebook in hand and the mysterious box tucked safely in an inner pocket of my linen jacket. I would see to finding a locksmith in Bath, far away from prying eyes.

As the train steamed westward that evening, I slid open the window in my first-class carriage and felt the evening air rush in as a cooling breeze. I was relieved to be departing London, and to be honest, Sherlock Holmes.

An image of his thin face when I left, drawn and, dare I say, a bit sad, floated into my brain. Let him miss me, I thought crossly.

It was not one of my finer moments, and one I came to regret.

CHAPTER 3
You Left Me Hanging

Ten days later, even though lowering clouds darkened London with the promise of a summer storm, my mood was light as I returned in a cab from Paddington Station towards Baker Street. My extended holiday in Bath had been restorative. Given Holmes’s disputatious and dismissive mood of late, it was a welcome break to spend time with James Montgomery, a fellow soldier whom I had known in India, and two other comrades, whose ready laughter and playful demeanours had lifted my spirits.

Despite Holmes’s ill-placed concern, I had won a fair amount of money at cards. And while the best locksmith in Bath could do nothing with the mysterious box, I was sure a London expert would soon have it open. And so I had allowed myself to enjoy the baths every day and partook of wonderful cuisine: roast beef, oysters, champagne.

A dense tropical heat blanketed Baker Street. My medical colleagues who still believed in the miasmic transfer of disease were likely to be frantic at this weather.

As my cab pulled up to 221, I glanced up at our windows. The curtains were closed against the morning light, which was muted through a canopy of summer storm clouds. But the windows, too, were closed. That was odd.

Just as I descended from the carriage, the sky broke open and a torrent of rain dumped down as though some mischievous god had upended an enormous bucket on Baker Street.

‘Mrs Hudson!’ I exclaimed, greeting our landlady as she glided into the vestibule. But instead of her usual warm response, she took my drenched hat and coat wordlessly, her face cloudier than the sky outside.

While I may ‘see but not observe’, as my friend so often remarked, it would be difficult for any man to miss her distinct aura of reproach.

‘Dreadful weather!’ I put on my best smile. ‘But it is supposed to break the heat. Good to be home. How are you, Mrs Hudson?’

‘Just go on up, Doctor. It has been a challenging two weeks.’

‘Ten days, Mrs Hudson!’

‘Well, it seems a month. Go see to him.’ She disappeared downstairs. This was hardly the welcome I had expected.

I passed the sitting-room on the first floor landing, but the door was shut. Upstairs in my room, I set down my luggage and took out the small silver box from my mother. It gleamed in the morning light from my window, its tantalizing mystery intact. I locked the beautiful object in my drawer thinking I would find the right locksmith tomorrow.

I was not ready for what I found downstairs.

The first thing my eyes were drawn to was the floor, awash in clutter – inches deep with scattered papers, stained napkins, dirty ashtrays, pipe dottles, plates of dried food and random oddities. A box of snake-skins sat next to a carafe of something that looked like dried blood. Flies swarmed around it.

Mrs Hudson had clearly withdrawn her usual services, no doubt in one of her rare fits of pique.

And the room was as hot as a tea kettle on full boil. Yet a fire burned in the grate! Why? A gust of wind just then shot down the chimney and a spray of sparks escaped and landed on a pile of papers. One ignited, and I ran to it, just in time to toss the smouldering paper into the fireplace before it set the room afire. I drew the fire screen across it.

A near disaster! But that gust down the flue meant a breeze, so I next rushed to the windows and opened two of them against the stifling heat. The violent summer storm continued to pour down rain. But why was the room closed up like this?

And where was Holmes?

I turned to look and that is when I discovered him: hanging silently in a corner of the room. His body dangled from a rope and was suspended four feet off the floor. He was encased from the knees up in a straitjacket! One foot was bare, the other slippered. The bare foot wriggled.

He was alive, at least.

CHAPTER 4
New Skills

I stared at him for a long moment.

He frowned in concentration and began moving silently under the canvas of the restraint. It was a rather elaborate contraption, tightly bound, with leather straps and buckles, fastened with padlocks. The toes of his bare foot wriggled in concert with his efforts.

He must have seen me come in. I cleared my throat.

Nothing.

‘Holmes.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why the fire?’

‘Is that the first question you have, Watson?’

‘Yes. Why the fire?’

‘I was cold.’

‘In this weather! Are you eating?’

‘Burning papers.’

A plate of sandwiches sat untouched next to his chair. His movements under the straitjacket now involved his legs, hanging in the air, jerking from side to side.

‘Who helped you into that?’ I asked.

‘Billy.’

The page. A predicament of Holmes’s own devising, then. A minute passed. It did not look like he was making headway. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and into his eye. He shook it away. Smiled at me.

‘You won in Bath, then. A tidy sum,’ he said.

‘What? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Holmes.’

‘Tie pin. A handsome one from here. But it is not like you to purchase adornments.’

‘Stop this. No one likes to be scrutinized in this way.’

‘You are usually amused.’

‘Never mind! What the devil are you doing there?’

‘I am attempting to replicate The Great Borelli’s hanging escape trick. I have almost got it, I think.’

‘The Great Borelli?’

‘Travelling escape artist and magician. A wonder, at least in his own mind.’

Why Holmes felt the need to emulate some itinerant performer was a mystery. He flailed about a bit, and I could see that one arm had escaped its sleeve and was snaking underneath the canvas of the straitjacket. But the other remained pinioned.

A chair which had been placed underneath him had tipped over, and his legs now dangled limply in the air. I stood up, walked over and replaced it under his feet.

‘Don’t help me!’ he shouted. ‘I kicked it over for a reason.’

‘What reason?’

He did not answer but struggled a bit more. His pale face grew red with the exertion. Had this been staged for my benefit? Holmes did so enjoy an audience. But, of course, he had not known my return date from Bath, so … no. I moved the chair back away from him, then took a stack of papers piled on my usual armchair and dumped them on the floor. I espied today’s Times and freed it from the clutter.

On the way to my chair I noticed on his chemistry table a black cylinder, perhaps eighteen inches long and six inches in circumference, mounted on a brass and wood device. Connected by cables were two small poles with a strangely shaped glass tube suspended between them. It had a somewhat malevolent look to it.

‘What the devil is this thing?’ I asked.

‘A Ruhmkorff coil,’ said he. ‘It’s a kind of induction coil. I can make tiny bursts of lightning at my desk. No, no, don’t touch! And a Geissler tube.’

I was sorry I had asked. It reminded me of the various quack devices I was constantly solicited to buy for my non-existent medical practice. It looked dangerous.

I sat and opened up the newspaper. After a few moments I glanced surreptitiously at Holmes, whose eyes were now closed in concentration. His struggles were painful to watch. I looked about the room and debated tidying it but decided the task was beyond my reach.

As I flipped through the pages, a review of ‘The Great Borelli’s First London Appearance’ caught my eye. The magician was appearing at Wilton’s Music Hall. A lurid picture had the handsome, moustachioed Italian performer hanging from a similar contraption, but with many straps and padlocks all around, and a beautiful lady standing in attendance.

I heard a groan from across the room but ignored it.

‘This Borelli fellow has received an excellent review in The Times today. “Spectacular! Supernatural? How does he do it?”’ I read aloud. I tapped the advertisement. ‘Of course, Holmes, he is hanging upside down.’

‘That is the next phase.’

‘And there is a beautiful assistant standing by. I wonder what her role is?’

‘That is not his assistant. It is his wife,’ said Holmes, slightly out of breath. ‘And she designed the trick.’

‘Lucky man,’ I said.

A pause.

‘This is bit more difficult than I had imagined,’ he murmured.

‘Try harder,’ I said and returned to my paper. Utterly mad. If I had not been there, the room might have caught on fire and all my things would have burnt up. And oh, yes, Holmes would be dead. I wondered if I could entice Mrs Hudson to bring me a lemonade.

‘Watson, be a good fellow. Go over to the table and read me what’s in those pages spread open. Step three, if you would.’

‘I already was a good fellow and righted the chair. You didn’t like it.’

‘Watson!’

I complied none too graciously. On the table were three pages, spread open, typed with a faulty typewriter in uneven lettering, in Italian, with some diagrams and an English translation pencilled in. ‘Step three,’ I read aloud. ‘The left hand unlocks the lock which controls the sleeve of the right. Take pick and release, then with other arm which out the shoulder – shoulder is spelled wrong – with three fingers, find the fold where are hidden the ties—’

There was a faint metallic clatter. I looked over to see that Holmes had dropped something small onto the polished wood floor.

‘I dropped my lockpick. Hand me that, would you?’ said he.

‘What would you do if I were not here?’

‘But you are here. Hurry, now!’

‘No.’

I was being obstreperous, but a man can take only so much. Instead of retrieving his lockpick, I pocketed it, then picked up the chair and placed it under him again. He could give up this foolish nonsense and step down from there as a sane person might. I sat back in my old easy-chair and once again took up the newspaper. Silence.

He kicked the chair away and struggled on. A few minutes later, his face had grown redder and the struggling more pronounced.

‘You had no idea I would be returning,’ I said. ‘What was your plan, anyway, Holmes? It is clear that Mrs Hudson has given up on this room, the mess you’ve made! And that fire!’

No acknowledgement. I went back to my paper.

I heard the sounds of more struggling, a groan, some clicks, and I put down the paper just in time to see him slip free of the jacket and drop to the floor, landing almost soundlessly like a cat.

I will admit I was astonished. ‘Bravo, Holmes!’ I said.

He smiled in delight, then bowed with a flourish and a groan. He rubbed his shoulder. At thirty-four, Holmes was wiry and fit, far too thin by some accounts, but remarkably athletic in spite of never, to my knowledge, taking exercise for its own sake.

‘All right, how did you do that after dropping your lockpick?’ I asked.

‘The locks are the least of it. Preparation is all.’

He was paper-white, and his face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat.

‘What do you mean, “The locks are the least of it”?’ He was standing oddly, favouring one side. ‘And what is the matter with you?’

‘Well, some of the locks are left in place. One has to more or less dislocate one’s shoulder to escape that particular straitjacket. Borelli spent two years stretching his ligaments to accommodate it. I had only ten days.’

‘Oh, come Holmes! You haven’t dislocated your shoulder. You would be writhing in pain. And you would need me to yank it back in place for you.’

I glanced up at him. His dark hair, usually neatly groomed, was a mess and damply stuck to his skull. He inhaled shakily, then moved to a large bookcase and slammed himself against it. There was the sound of a loud pop.

‘Good God, Holmes!’

He carefully flexed his left arm. Back to normal. He smiled at me in amusement. ‘It worked, didn’t it?’

I threw the paper down. ‘What are you thinking, Holmes? You risk serious damage, dislocating a shoulder like that! How did you do it? And more to the point, how did you stand it?’

‘A touch of morphine, going in. Borelli uses it, I will wager, but he claims not. It does fog the thinking. I shall try to do without. And I’ve learned to pop it back myself.’

‘You have learned? How many times have you done this?’

‘This is the third.’

‘Idiotic, man! Of all your bad habits, this takes the prize. What of your violin playing? Boxing? You could do yourself permanent harm! Those ligaments don’t always return to their original length.’

‘Light me a cigarette, would you, Watson?’ Still rubbing his shoulder, he stepped out onto the landing outside the room. ‘Mrs Hudson! Some ice if you please!’

He came back in and sat before me.

‘There is no ice, Mr Holmes,’ came Mrs Hudson’s voice. I detected a note of irritation in it.

‘Send Billy,’ he shouted. Then as an afterthought, ‘Please!’

No reply. Manners had eroded in this terrible heat, I thought. Londoners were unaccustomed to tropical life. And Mrs Hudson’s new ice box, purchased for us all by Holmes, was often empty. Ice was very expensive, and income, of late, had been scarce. I felt a twinge of guilt about my recent holiday.

‘We really must clean this place up, Watson. Get back in her good graces.’

He picked up a cigarette and lit it with difficulty. I shook my head.

‘Foolish, Holmes. You forget that I am a doctor. I know more of injuries than you do.’

‘I am careful, Watson. One can train one’s muscles, extend the ligaments over time with repetition. How else might one dance the ballet?’ He waved his good arm in a dramatic arc.

‘Over time, perhaps some so built can do so. But with repetition, you can also have your arm hanging uselessly out of the socket, Holmes.’

‘Watson, you win the ill temperament sweepstakes today. And this, after a successful trip in which you won money, swam, ate well—’

‘Stop! I am not interested in hearing this!’

‘You have gained two – no, three pounds. And I see you have begun a diet, starting today. Failing, however.’

‘Holmes!’ He could not possibly know this. It had only been a thought that very morning.

He grinned at me. ‘You have celery in your waistcoat pocket. You hate celery. One cannot buy celery on the train, therefore you have brought it with you all the way from Bath. I wager you planned to eat the celery on the train instead of—’

‘Stop!’

‘But a sandwich must have won you over. Salmon, no doubt. Day One of your reducing plans, and already you have failed!’

I shook the newspaper roughly and returned to my article in a fury. I glanced down surreptitiously at my waistcoat. Indeed, a piece of celery poked out. He was right about it all. In a fit of pique, I tossed the celery to the floor.

It landed next to a plate of uneaten food, a collection of seashells, a revolver, a dog’s collar, and what might have been a piece of flesh-coloured rubber and was perhaps a false nose. Home.

I looked up at him. ‘The salmon, Holmes?’

‘I will admit that was a guess. But it is your favourite.’

‘You never guess!’

‘But of course I do. Watson, let us call a truce. No luck, then, with your secret box in Bath? You would be crowing over that, if so.’

I glowered at him. ‘Two locksmiths failed to open it.’

The sound of the doorbell interrupted us, and Mrs Hudson appeared, announcing ‘a lady who would not give her name but insists that you have some papers of hers.’ She glanced about with disdain. ‘If you can find them.’

Holmes glanced about, as if having forgotten the chaos with which he’d surrounded himself. ‘Give us a moment, please, Mrs Hudson. Watson, why don’t we quickly tidy up?’ He was on his feet, scooping up newspapers in a flash and, irritation notwithstanding, I took up a stack of papers near my chair and rose.

‘Not those, Watson!’ he cried, but I ignored him and threw them into the grate where the flames caught. ‘They are my laboratory notes!’ he cried.

Mrs Hudson shook her head and departed.

Holmes attempted to rescue the burning pages but failed.

‘Holmes!’ He would set us all alight some day!

We heard footsteps on the landing and he flung himself into his chair, instantly assuming a pose of casual interest.

Our client appeared on the threshold. She was a striking woman of perhaps thirty, in a long red dress and an enormous hat topped with a red plume. Her black hair was arranged in a voluminous pompadour, her high cheekbones and olive skin conveying a southern birth. A waft of Oriental perfume assailed my nostrils. She was stunning, forthright, and despite the heat seemed coolly impervious. She put me in mind of the bow of a mighty ship.

I rose politely but Holmes remained seated and smiled calmly at her, his hands steepled.

She paused at the doorway and waved a folded newspaper in one hand. ‘Mr Holmes, I did not know you were a famous detective!’ Her voice was a honeyed contralto, with the seductive lilt of an Italian accent. ‘You told me you write about science. But I read of you, in this paper—’

She stepped over the threshold, took in the junkyard that was our sitting-room and laughed. ‘Oh my!’ she exclaimed. But when her eyes alighted on the hanging straitjacket, the laughter caught in her throat, and she made a sudden guttural sound, like a tiger.

‘What! You liar!’ she roared, flinging the newspaper to the floor. ‘You are no scientist. No detective either. You steal our famous illusion!’ She grimaced. ‘I will kill you!’

‘Madame Ilaria Borelli,’ said Holmes cordially. ‘You are early.’

CHAPTER 5
Madame Borelli

Her face a mask of fury, the lady scanned the clutter, glancing past me as though I were something to be stepped over on the street.

Her eyes lit upon the papers mounded on the table. She rushed over to them, snatched them up and waved them at us, her face black with rage. Opening her reticule to receive them, she then thought better of it, and with a dramatic gesture stuffed the papers down the front of her dress.

She stared triumphantly at the two of us as though she had just thwarted a mad effort to stop her.

But neither of us had moved. Holmes remained seated. He smiled.

‘Forgive me if I don’t stand, Madame Borelli.’

‘You beast!’ she cried, facing Holmes. ‘You lie to me!’

Looking around, she seized upon a life-size plaster head of Goethe and hurled it at my friend, who leaped from his chair just in time to miss being concussed by the philosopher.

Goethe bounced off the chair and landed on a small Moroccan table, upending it, and sending a teacup and some books crashing to the floor to join in the general chaos there. The bust splintered into several pieces.

Given the state of disarray, this hardly worsened the room.

‘Pagan! Reprobate! Liar! Thief!’ she shouted, then lunged at him. I caught her mid-stride, grasping her by both arms. She appeared dainty but was muscled like an athlete.

‘Madame, please sit down,’ I said. ‘You are clearly distraught. Let us help you.’

‘Distraught! Help me?’ Her voice rose to a shout. ‘This man, he misrepresents himself. Says he is a scientist. But then I read in the newspaper he is famous detective. I ask Scotland Yard, one man there say amateur only.’

I laughed.

She turned to me. ‘But … what do you say? He is pastry chef? He is ironmonger? And who are you?’

‘I am Doctor John Watson, this man’s friend. Yes, he is a detective and a scientist. Please … calm down, dear lady.’

She took a deep breath and stopped struggling. I removed my hands from her arms. ‘Forgive me, Madame. May I pour you a brandy?’ I asked. ‘Please, do sit down.’

She ignored this and turned to Holmes.

‘The Great Borelli, he knows. Dario mio, he finds these pages missing, and he knows. Look!’

She undid a button at the cuff of her dress and rolled up the sleeve. A series of bruises was evident.

Holmes was instantly at her side. He gently took her arm and examined the injury. ‘Oh, Madame,’ he said. ‘I would never have – oh, not for the world—’

‘Let me have a look, would you?’ I brushed him aside. ‘I am a doctor.’

Mollified by the caring attention of two men, the woman seemed to calm herself into some semblance of normality as she let me examine her bruises.

‘It looks like someone grasped you hard enough to leave these marks,’ I said.

‘I never should give you the pages, Mr Holmes,’ said the lady.

She looked around her and took in the utter chaos that was our sitting-room. As she did so, a frown passed over her lovely features. Her skin was pale olive, her hair nearly black but burnished with red. She was indeed a fiery beauty.

‘And you lie to me,’ she said. ‘You told me you are scientist. I see no science, but only big mess.’

Her eyes fell on Holmes’s chemistry table.

‘Ah, science, yes, over there. But that is not the escape science, that is chemistry. No, it is physics. Who are you, Mr Holmes? You lied to me!’

‘By omission only, and I apologize. I shall indeed write a small monograph, Madame Borelli, but fear not, I will not reveal all,’ said Holmes. ‘Please do sit down.’ She did not. ‘Stage conjuring, and escapology in particular, has long been a topic of interest to me. Most people enjoy trickery, but it is particularly vexing that some illusions – your husband’s for example, are attributed to supernatural gifts. I wish to set the record straight.’

‘I forbid it! The illusion is the magic. It is part of the performance, Mr Holmes. Dario and I – we will not be happy if you choose to expose him. You promised me to write in such a way not do this. And to do this later, much later. But—’ She gestured angrily to the straitjacket, still hanging from the ceiling. ‘Then I see you trying to duplicate this trick. Traitor! But, of course you cannot. What you do not know is—’

She broke off, staring hard at Holmes. He seemed nonplussed, but I knew my friend well enough to recognize discomfort. She walked over to him. He stood his ground. She suddenly reached around with her right hand and punched him in the shoulder. The left shoulder. The hurting one.

He gasped. I was on her in an instant, taking her from behind with both arms. But she was not to be held back. She trod on my right instep with her sharp heel, and I cried out, releasing her.

She withdrew a tiny Beretta from her reticule, pointing it at Holmes. We both froze. She backed up so that neither of us could reach her in a single move. This was certainly a lady who could look after herself.

‘You are not the first to try this. I created this trick especially for Dario. He has – how you say? – the double joints. Over time, he developed, just like a strong man develops muscles. Which he also does. But he is special: a loose man. Bends like rubber. That is not in those pages. You cannot know this unless you are very smart, and you hurt your own shoulder trying this. Ha, ha, you lying man!’

‘Madame Borelli, one thing I am not is a performer.’

I stifled a laugh. He most certainly was, although perhaps not on the stage.

‘I am a scientist and repeating results of something another man has devised is exactly what scientists do.’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘What a woman has devised. I invent this trick! Not Dario!’

‘Nevertheless, repeating the results—’

‘Are you double jointed, also?’ I asked Madame, straining to picture it.

‘Watson, good grief! Forgive us, Madame. I can see how this might be construed.’

‘No performer, you say? Then what is this?’ Madame Borelli strode to my chair and scooped up something from the floor next to it.

It took a second for me to realize what it was. The false nose. A laugh escaped me. Holmes shook his head when she turned to stare at me.

‘Madame, I can explain all that you see here,’ said Holmes.

‘Explain quickly.’ She caught me shifting my weight as I stealthily attempted to draw nearer. ‘Stop there, you. Or I will shoot Mr Holmes.’

Just then Mrs Hudson appeared in the doorway, brandishing a tennis racquet as a weapon. I had wondered where my racquet had gone. She stared at the three of us.

‘Mr Holmes, I heard the commotion. Put that gun away, young lady, unless you plan to shoot all three of us. And sit down, all of you.’ She glanced at the clutter. ‘If you can find a seat.’

No one moved. Mrs Hudson was full of surprises today. She advanced into the room, tennis racquet raised.

‘Sit, or I shall knock sense into all three of you!’

Madame Borelli did not seem inclined to shoot the eminently reasonable Mrs Hudson in cold blood. She wavered, then replaced the gun into her reticule and looked round for a seat. I removed a large box of what appeared to be human bones from an armchair and brushed off its dusty wool surface. Madame Borelli glanced down, gave it one more furious brush and sat.

‘Tea, then, in a few minutes. Meanwhile, behave yourselves,’ said Mrs Hudson. She gave our visitor her sternest look. ‘This is a civilized house.’

Some minutes later, we sat facing hot tea and ginger biscuits, a veneer of respectability floating above the sea of clutter. Madame Borelli had calmed herself to some degree. The summer shower had dropped the temperature, and a tepid, damp breeze wafted into the room with salubrious effect.

‘Now, Madame Borelli, you have come here on another matter, I perceive, and not merely to retrieve the pages you so kindly lent me,’ said Holmes in the soothing manner, absent of any sarcasm, which he used at times to great effect.

‘Yes, I come. But I am not sure you are what I need. I am not sure—’

‘Tell me what is troubling you. You did not wish to open your reticule when you located your husband’s pages. And you have been keeping it close to you for your entire visit. But as you drew your gun, I glimpsed—’

‘Yes, yes. I brought something.’

My attention turned to the tapestry bag with gold fringe, on a braided golden cord which hung around the lady’s neck and was fastened with a small gold clasp to the sash of her dress. Even at this moment, one hand rested protectively upon it.

She glanced down at it nervously, then looked at Holmes from under her heavy fringe of dark eyelashes.

‘It is true. You said when we met that you … you write for science journals. But you solve crimes. Scotland Yard man says amateur. Are you any good at this?’

‘He is very good, Madame Borelli,’ I interjected. ‘Mr Holmes is the world’s first consulting detective. In fact, he invented the term. The police turn to him on cases they cannot solve. Some of the men are perhaps a little—’

‘Jealous,’ she said. ‘Yes, I see this.’

Holmes smiled. ‘What is troubling you?’

‘Well … Dario. He has a temper. What you see on my arm, it is not serious, it is him clutching my arm when he is too nervous or excited.’

‘What is he nervous and excited about?’ asked Holmes.

‘He received …’ She opened her small bag carefully and removed from underneath the Beretta a small oblong object wrapped in a handkerchief. She slowly unwrapped it. ‘This.’

It was a human finger.

PART TWO
ENTANGLEMENT

‘The moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.’

—Omar Khayyam

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