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“It is bad enough,” said Holmes, that Charles Augustus Milverton is the most sordid blackmailer in London in the ordinary sense of the word. It is repugnant that he conducts his business with the sort of thoroughness and calculation that would have done credit to a legitimate endeavor. But it is worse--a hundred times worse!--that he uses your brand of talents to ensnare victims he would otherwise have no hope of trapping.”
“Surely not!” John Watson cut in. He knew that his friend meant no slight to their guests or their abilities--either Nan Killian’s psychic talents or Sarah Lyon-White’s mediumistic ones--and he trusted both ladies’ sensibilities enough to know they would not take any offense. All the same, it behooved him to ensure them that there was no comparison to be made between them and the cause of Sherlock’s ire. It would not take a mind reader to know that Milverton disgusted him in a way few criminals ever had. Everything from his flashing gray eyes and his posture in his favorite chair spoke of a barely-suppressed rage that he seldom allowed to color even his most desperate of cases. “I know you didn’t mean it that way, Holmes, but I hate to think our young friends here are in any way way comparable to that blackguard. And yet I will own that that was the singularly most frustrating interview Holmes has ever granted me the privilege to sit in on. Milverton was just within reach of the law--he all but told us he was in the middle of conducting several acts of blackmail and had every intention to do more--but there was nothing we could do that wouldn’t empower him to further endanger Holmes’s client.”
“Frustrating?” said Mary, from her seat next to him. She turned to the girls with some difficulty as her lap was occupied by a rather large raven. The bird Neville, Nan Killian’s companion, had taken something of a shine to her and she encouraged this by showering him with treats and affection whenever they came to call. “Sarah, Nan, from what I recall, John was at least as angry as Holmes afterwards.”
A sardonic smile played on Holmes’s lips. “It was certainly the first time I saw him take up a chair as a weapon. The very one you are sitting on, in fact, Miss Sarah.”
The chair in question was quite a solid piece of furniture, a fact that was made even more evident now that it was occupied by a delicate-looking lass with her grey African parrot perched on the back of it. It rather dwarfed them and there was some exclamation made over this that John tried to wave away. “I make no excuses other than that it was close to hand. In any case, it all came to naught. We cannot do anything about the villain in the ordinary way, and my Water Elementals and Mary’s sylphs are unable to help in any material way.” He ignored a disparaging noise from Holmes. That was something they could work on later: Sherlock had just come around to accepting that psychic abilities existed but was still coming to terms with actual magic, never mind that two of his closest friends were Masters of Air and Water. “Which is why we have decided to consult you two.”
“Aha!” cried Nan, setting down her teacup. “I knew you wanted you wanted more from us than to share Mrs. Hudson’s excellent spread.”
“By all means, tell us all,” said Sarah. The parrot Grey echoed this with an urgent Tell! Tell! from her perch behind Sarah, and Neville quorked his assent in between the bits of biscuit Mary was offering him.
Thus encouraged, John launched into a succinct but thorough account of Milverton’s call at 221B Baker Street, with Holmes now and again interjecting with a significant detail. Slowly, John lowered the mental shields he habitually kept in place so that his surface thoughts--his memory of that singularly frustrating interview--were visible to anyone who had the power to read them, and he suspected that Holmes was doing the same. Through their own merits and aided by Sherlock’s tutelage, Sarah and Nan were astute investigators in their own right and would miss nothing in his narrative, but he wished to impress upon them the urgency of the matter and he was relying on Nan’s telepathy to pick that up.
As he spoke, John concentrated on the whole visit, from the arrival of the positively roly-poly man in his shaggy astrakhan coat to his almost cheerful refusal to compromise with Holmes’s terms to his triumphant exit, coat, notebook, revolver and all. It worked.
“What an odious man!” Nan exclaimed. “Dr. Watson, I understand you completely now. I believe I would have picked up a chair myself.”
“That’s what I told him,” said Mary as she scratched Neville’s neck feathers. She gazed up at John, gentle reproach in her eyes. “I still wish you had let me be there.”
“And I still say it would you would have been of no use.” Holmes got up and began pacing, giving vent to some of his restless energy. “Milverton takes a special delight in victimizing women. I do not doubt your abilities, Mary”--he sketched a small bow in her direction--“but we had no desire to expose you to his attentions at that stage in the proceedings.”
“Yet you wish to involve us?” asked Nan with a twinkle. John hoped he appeared sufficiently contrite. She was not above a little teasing to remind he and Holmes that the fair sex were not all delicate, fainting flowers.
“Miss Nan, I think you should know me better than that,” said Holmes, mock-wounded. “The simple truth is that the situation has evolved. Then my priority was to reach a favorable settlement for my client, Lady Blackwell--it was the most prudent option, owing to the time constraint and I resolved to deal with Milverton more thoroughly at a later date. Now, since that has fallen through, I intend to bring all of my resources to bear, and that includes the skill and expertise of you all. I have,” he continued, “already begun work on a plan that will enable me to get hold of my client’s letters, but it is far from foolproof.”
John snorted. “What he means is that he learned the layout of Milverton’s house and a good approximation of the man’s habits, and intended to burgle the place under cover of night!”
“Naturally, John told him he wasn’t having it,” said Mary.
“Your husband used stronger language than that.” Holmes smiled. “He threatened to go to the police himself if I didn’t accept help.”
“We are at your disposal, if only to keep Dr. Watson from hauling you off to Scotland Yard for your own good,” Sarah laughed. “But, please, how do psychical talents come into it?”
“Milverton obtained Lady Blackwell’s letters from a young country squire with whom she entertained a brief flirtation before she made her debut into society--a flirtation, mark you, and nothing more. I wished to be sure of every detail in the case, so I interviewed the man who was to be her ruin.” Holmes paused by the mantelpiece and picked through the stack of notes fixed there with a large knife. “He is, in my estimation, a foolish man who was a good deal more fond of Lady Blackwell than she was of him, but not a mean-spirited or vengeful one. Indeed, he has good reason to wish to stay out of the papers himself, since he is to be married in a month’s time to a lady far better suited to him in temperament. Milverton came to him, on the strength of a rumor from a member of his household staff, and he found himself turning over the letters for a laughable sum compared to what Milverton is demanding of Lady Blackwell and yet large enough that no one will believe that he did not mean to profit from the venture. He told me that he tried to buy the letters back himself once he realized what he had done, but all Milverton did was laugh in his face.”
“That sounds to me like a coercion spell, at the very least,” said John. “And with a man like Milverton, it is only a matter of time until he seeks to sink his claws into a head of state.”
Holmes laid out four sheets of paper crammed with notes next to the tea things. “I have found at least three similar such instances in the course of my investigation, and I have no doubt I will uncover more if I continue. However, time is of the essence: tomorrow is the last day of grace for Lady Blackwell and Milverton will make good on his promise. In the time since our interview, he has ruined one marriage already, and I mean to thwart him so soundly that it will be years before he considers another victim.”
“Then let us get to work,” said Nan with feeling.
The day was grim and dark, and the evening was not shaping up to be much better. Charles Augustus Milverton drew his astrakhan coat about himself and shivered in the relative warmth and safety of his carriage. He would not be the man on the street on a winter’s day such as this for any amount of money. And thanks to what he thought of as his little enterprise netting him any amount of money, he had not been the man on the street for a good long while, and he had absolutely no intention of going back. To his mind, it was not all that long ago that his spectacles had wire rims instead of gold and his coat was nothing like so fine. As for the carriage-and-pair--ha! He would have counted himself lucky to have shared a cab ride.
He had certainly come a long way from being a young clerk worried about keeping his berth. And to that end, he had three more stops to make before he could go home to Appledore Towers: one to open a line of business, another to collect on a matured investment, and a third...well...a third to deliver on his promise.
He much preferred when they paid up, but as he had told that meddler Holmes, he profited just as well from setting an example every now and again.
This particular wench was going to be especially enjoyable. She had thought to threaten him--threaten! him!--just because she was a Fire Magician and rated his skills as no better than that of a common hedge witch. Well. Her husband might have been inclined to be forgiving of her indiscretions, but a few well-chosen words whispered in his ear, with the right sigils in invisible ink upon the envelopes, would dash any hopes there had been for reconciliation.
Yes, Milverton was looking forward to reading about that in the morning editions. It always did him good to see a member of the Elemental set brought down a peg. But he had to tread lightly there. Lord Alderscroft, the so-called Wizard of London and his Hunting Lodge might think that the more ordinary kinds of magic were beneath their notice, but that lot took exception to things that affected one of their own.
However, Milverton was nothing if not patient. He could wait years to play his hand to his best advantage; he could spend just as long stalking his prey, watching for any signs of weakness. These Elemental Masters were only human after all, and Milverton was intimately familiar with human foibles. One day, something on the almighty Lord Alderscroft would fall into his lap. And he’d be ready for it.
“To be absolutely clear,” said John Watson in tones that brooked no argument, “nobody is going to burgle anybody tonight.”
They were all crowded around the table where Sherlock had laid a quick sketch of the plan of Milverton’s house. He had just finished explaining the layout to them, along with an unrepentant account of how he had gotten himself engaged to Milverton’s housemaid to obtain the information. The tea things had long since been cleared away, with the tray left on the landing for Mrs. Hudson...except for a plate of petit fours that had somehow escaped consumption and was now doing double-duty as a paperweight. John absently reached for one of the pastries and began to munch.
Mary smiled to herself. John did like his petit fours. And he did so like to think of himself as the only sensible adult in the room. She seldom had to disabuse him of that notion, but this was one of those times.
“John, my love, I think Sherlock was the right of it here.”
“Pardon me?” John looked askance, the pastry frozen halfway to his mouth.
“What I mean to say is that you were right to stop him: Sherlock proceeding as he originally intended would have been foolish in the extreme, given how he would have been at the mercy of Milverton and the law if things had gone wrong. However, because Milverton will hardly be persuaded o give up Lady Blackwell’s letters and we need to assume that he will be ready to place them in the Earl’s hands the very next day, our options are rather limited.”
“Thank you, Mary.” Holmes, if you knew the signs (which she and John did), looked uncommonly pleased. “That is near enough to my reasoning, as I explained it to Watson earlier. There are risks of course, and I was unwilling to share them.”
“Come off it, old fellow--you’ve done enough of that for several lifetimes. Two, to be precise, when there are those of us who would have happily helped you bear that burden.” John, bless him, knew when not to dig his heels in during an argument. “You should know better by now than to trust us to let you go off into trouble alone. If it must be burglary, then we are with you, every man, woman and bird of us.”
“Well, be it so.” Holmes clapped John on the shoulder. “We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell.”
“I suppose Mary, Sarah and I will languish in a separate part of the prison,” said Nan, briefly looking up from Holmes’s sketch. “And I hate to think of what would become of Neville and Grey. Or poor Suki,” she added, naming their ward.
“Oh, Nan, that doesn’t bear thinking about,” Sarah chided her. Then she turned to Holmes. “It seems to me that what you need most from us is a way to avoid the necessity of discussing who gets chained to whom when we land in gaol.”
“That is what I hoped,” said John. “As fond as I am of you, Holmes, I should like to be able to see my wife from time to time.”
“And I should like to see my husband every now and then, and not from the other side of the prison yard.”
“Very well.” Nan put her finger on the part of the sketch that showed where Milverton’s bedroom opened into his study. “Am I correct in assuming that the biggest risk comes from Milverton detecting the burglary in progress?”
Holmes nodded. “By all accounts, he is an extremely sound sleeper, but since we do not have an exact gauge of his abilities, we had best not leave that to chance.”
“We must either drug him or distract him then,” said Sarah. “Now, I’m sure Dr. Watson has any amount of things that can put a man to sleep but--”
“We do not have the time for any of us to pose as a maid and slip him his medicine in his nightcap,” finished Mary. She picked up one of the two remaining petit fours on the plate and bit into it. She liked them as much as John did, if not more so, though she did break off a corner to share with Neville, who had moved to the tobacco stand.
“Quite,” said Holmes. “And while I can count on my fiancee to keep the dog chained for me of an evening, I doubt her affections would extend to drugging her employer.” He gave John a look that in another man would have been described as sheepish. Mary had no doubt John had given him what-for over this particular method of investigation. “She does not care for the plumber Escott as much as she claims, for all that she accepted my proposal. She mentions my rival far too often, and I don’t think I would be mistaken in saying she is using me to make him jealous.”
“So it must be a distraction.” Sarah stroked Grey’s chest, lost in thought, and the parrot leaned against her affectionately. “At that time of night, it will be difficult to draw Milverton from his house. Someone screaming Fire! in the street may not have the desired effect.”
“Not in this case,” agreed John. “Even if that trick has served us well enough in the past.”
“So we must fashion some sort of bait...” said Mary slowly. She had the beginnings of an idea and didn’t want to scare it off.
“Something he’d want badly enough that he’d stay up half the night waiting for it.” Nan sounded like she was picking up on Mary’s thoughts--which she was perfectly capable of doing, of course, but the girl would never do anything so ill-mannered as to look into someone else’s mind without their express permission.
“We know what will tempt him,” said Holmes darkly. “I believe what remains is the question of who would make an exceptional victim.”
John frowned, a furrow appearing between his brows. To Mary’s mind, they were just as expressive as Holmes’s and deserved some little mention in the stories given to Doyle for publication, as did his fine mustache, which he was now stroking in thought. “The very idea makes me uncomfortable,” he said, “but Milverton is undoubtedly familiar with the peerage, and if he’s any sort of magic user in the London circles...”
“...then Lord Alderscroft must have a target on his back at least a mile high.” And there it was. Mary found the idea as discomfiting as John did, but it was the very thing she had been working up to. Bringing down Alderscroft was, if not the dearest wish of many a practitioner of the dark arts, at least the key to ensuring they could pursue their dearest wishes unimpeded.
“It’s a good thing his worst qualities are a tendency to wear his hair longer than is fashionable and a habit of spoiling small children with presents.” Sarah was clearly thinking how a good portion of their ward Suki’s wardrobe and her toy chest consisted of gifts from his lordship.
“I would venture that he could be quicker about getting the Exeter Club to accept women as members, but not everyone would consider that a blackmailable offense.” Mary stepped back as Neville gave his plumage a shake and abandoned her for the back of Nan’s chair. The sudden absence of petit fours may have had something to do with that.
“I can’t say I disagree--heaven knows it would be nice not to risk our necks on the servants’s staircase whenever we need to use their library--but his dragging his feet might be an act of charity for the old boys who might have a fatal fit if they saw an unchaperoned female walking around the premises. Not that I have any sympathy, of course.” Nan sniffed disdainfully. She was a thoroughly modern young woman, so much so that she shocked John at times--which Mary privately thought was good for him every now and again. Though what Nan said next shocked even Mary to her core. “No, you blackmail Lord A with us.” She gestured at Sarah so there could be no doubt which us she meant.
Holmes smiled thinly. Mary put a hand to her mouth to keep herself from exclaiming aloud. And John, bless his heart, actually said, “I don’t see what you mean.” More, Mary suspected, from being unwilling to believe what Nan was suggesting rather than simply not understanding what she had said.
“Think about it,” said Nan, warming to her subject as Sarah nodded her approval. “Or think what it must look like to a stranger. He pays for the lodgings of two unattached, apparently unemployed young women in the city, regularly gives them gifts, and frequently sends for them, sometimes in his own carriage.”
“It wouldn’t take much imagination to leap to all the wrong conclusions,” added Sarah. “Thankfully, we have so far been fortunate in our friends and our landlady.”
John huffed into his mustache. “You’re not wrong. But I would hate to put you two ladies in that position. Suppose we are right about his powers and he compels you to provide evidence?”
“”I wouldn’t worry for our friends on that front. Part of Milverton’s genius is that he has never targeted a victim who is truly innocent.” Holmes had his fingers steepled and his gaze turned on something far beyond the walls of the flat.
“Besides, you don’t actually need us to give him anything, yes? We only need to keep him occupied for as long as it takes you to get Lady Blackwell’s letters and get out again. I believe we can spin a yarn long enough for that, can’t we, Grey?” Sarah tickled the little parrot under her beak. “Even if he throws us out on our ears afterwards, and we’ll be able to suffer that indignity.”
“And I’ll come with you,” said Mary in her best governess voice. It was the tone she used to head off arguments before they happened. “You won’t be within each other’s sight for Nan to communicate psychically if something goes wrong, but I can send my sylphs with you to relay messages. I’ll station myself in the garden, here”--she pointed to a spot in Holmes’s diagram that indicated shrubbery-- “and should be able to warn you of anything within minutes.”
“That means I’ll need to come with you, Holmes, since you wouldn’t be able to see a sylph to save your life. I told you you couldn’t tell what may happen.” John sounded pleased. Or perhaps relieved was the word Mary wanted.
“So it is settled. All that remains is to set the time and lay the trap. ” Holmes got to his feet with such an air of purpose about him that Mary doubted the Queen herself could have stopped him. “Permit me to send the communication to Milverton. I know best how to tempt him and I’ll have the reply sent to one of my safe addresses.” He smiled kindly at the girls. “We shall leave your real lodgings out of this, of course. There is no need to trouble your excellent landlady.”
With that, he was on his way, barely stopping to put on his coat.
As they watched him go, Sarah said, “Thank heavens for that. I would be devastated if we were parted from our indoor plumbing.”
“And where else would we find a place with a spare room for the birds?” Nan gave Neville a pet on his crafty head.
“Speaking of your birds, I’d appreciate it if you asked Neville to deliver a message to Lord Alderscroft about what we’re planning.” John picked up the last petit four, after glancing at Mary to make sure she had no designs on it. “I know we won’t truly drag his name through the mud, but I’d prefer it if he was forewarned.”
As a rule, Milverton paid close attention to his correspondence. It was his bread and butter, more so than the calls he made in his carriage. That was how the secrets found him, and the whispers, and the hidden things. And so much of it was time sensitive. The angry lady’s maid might be mollified the next day with the gift of a new dress or the unusually knowledgeable stable lad might get dismissed and sent God-knew-where before Milverton could get to them if he dragged his feet. If the morsels were tempting enough, he would go to no little trouble to find the source and employ his own set of talents to their best advantage, as he had done with Lady Blackwell’s letters, but it was far simpler to let the information come to him.
And come it did. There was no telling what each new letter might bring.
So he took this new telegram from his secretary with no small thrill of anticipation. It could be anything or nothing or...oh.
Milverton found himself smiling at the words. This was something indeed! The very thing, in fact, that he’d been hoping for, wishing for, for years. It was sudden, to be sure, and the young ladies were requesting an appointment at an unusual time and at the very last minute on a night that was promising to be wild and tempestuous, but he was nothing if not accommodating. And eager.
Oh, so very eager.
As with anything to which he chose to turn his mind, Holmes had spared no effort in preparing to briefly become a criminal. John wasn’t going to ask where he had obtained his neat little leather case of burgling tools, or where he had practiced the use of them (for Holmes would never be so foolish as to rely on techniques he had never tested). But then, John had quite readily stepped into his rubber-soled shoes and had found it surpassingly easy to fashion two masks out of a scrap of black silk from Mary’s sewing kit.
“I can see you have a strong, natural turn for this sort of thing,” said Holmes, smiling as he slipped his mask into the pocket of his great coat.
“And I, for one, am grateful that the world will never know what it would have been like to contend with Sherlock Holmes, criminal genius.” John checked his revolver before stowing it safely in his own pocket. He did not know where he himself would be, in such a world: the idea of living lawlessly was entirely alien to him yet he could not conceive of a universe where his life was not entwined with Holmes’s.
“I would have had a formidable accomplice in you.” Holmes, as ever, knew exactly how his thoughts ran. “Let us go. By now, the ladies will be on their way to Appledore Towers.”
It had been agreed that they should arrive separately, with Nan, Sarah and Mary taking a cab directly to the address while the two men took a more roundabout route to alight at Church Row and walk the rest of the way. Milverton had almost immediately agreed to a midnight meeting to obtain the information on Lord Alderscroft’s hidden proclivities--Holmes deduced that he couldn’t have taken more than five minutes to compose his reply, judging by how quickly he had received the answering telegram--and had promised the utmost discretion, directing the girls to enter through the french doors that led to the library, which was fortunately on the other side of the house from his office.
“That’s Milverton’s bedroom,” Holmes whispered, pointing to one of one of the windows that lined the tiled veranda on that side of the house. “And that door opens straight into his office. It would suit us best, but it is bolted as well as locked, and we should make too much noise getting in. Come round here. There’s a greenhouse which opens into the drawing-room.”
Mary’s sylph, a wispy, winged figure just about a foot tall, found them as, masked and silent, they picked their way through the garden. John couldn’t help thinking what Holmes would have thought if he had been able to see the Elemental hovering at his shoulder. It was not so far removed from an illustration of a fairy in a children’s picture-book, with its garments and hair blowing about in the icy wind.
Once at the greenhouse, Holmes took out a diamond-tipped glass cutter to work on the door. Before he could produce the dark lantern he had included in his equipment, John called up a faint glow of mage light: just bright enough to illuminate Holmes’s work yet faint enough to be easily dismissed at a casual glance and just as easily banished with a thought.
Holmes was clearly pleased. “It seems your magic is of some use after all, old fellow.”
“I can’t help wishing we were nearer a body of water,” said John, naming his Element. “My abilities would be much more helpful if I could call on Water Elementals.”
“I believe there is a fish-pond on the grounds,” said Holmes, clearly jesting as he reached in through the neat circle he had made to turn the key from the inside. “There. It is done.”
He opened the door slowly, not allowing it to swing freely, and closed it just as carefully behind them--but not locking it, in case they had to make their retreat that way. Quietly, he took John’s hand and led him down a dark passage to Milverton’s office.
That door was unlocked as they had expected, since Milverton was still interviewing Nan and Sarah, and the room was lit by a cheerful fire in the grate. John was thankful for the warmth after being out for so long in the bitter night, but there was no time to waste. Holmes turned up the cuffs of his dress coat and went at once to the tall green safe in the corner, directing John to unlock the door to the veranda.
“Stand there,” he said, voice low as he laid out his burglar’s kit. “If you hear anyone come, bolt it on the inside and we can get away the way we came. If they come the other way, we can get through the door if our job is done, or hide behind these window curtains if it is not. Do you understand?”
John nodded. And, of course, if they were interrupted, if they failed to find the letters, in case of any number of adverse scenarios, he was to send the sylph back to Mary so that the girls could work to stall Milverton for as long as possible. His heart hammered in his chest as he watched Holmes, so much so that he wouldn’t have been surprised that it was audible over the soft clink and rasp of Holmes’s tools. It was a heady feeling, this being on the other side of the law while still undoubtedly in the right.
By the clock ticking on the mantelpiece, Holmes had been working for about half an hour when there was a definitive click and the door to the safe swung open to reveal neat packets of paper, thin cardboard boxes, and a small pouch of patterned silk. The vivid scarlet of it caught John’s eye over Holmes’s shoulder and Holmes seemed drawn to it as well. He reached for it before touching any of the papers that should have been their goal, loosening the drawstrings to reveal a man’s pocket watch.
It had been a fine piece once but was now shabby with age and disuse. Holmes had parted his lips, no doubt about to expound on its history and the character of its owner, when another sylph suddenly appeared in the room, alarm all over its small face.
“They’re coming!” she said in a voice like a reed instrument. “Hurry!”
“Holmes!” hissed John, realizing in that moment that he was not cut out to be a criminal after all. No self-respecting burglar would have used their partner’s actual name during a job.
Still, it had the desired effect. In an instant, Holmes had swept his instruments back into his coat pocket, pushed the safe door close to, and sprung behind the long, heavy curtain, motioning at John to follow. John reached the hiding place just in time: no sooner had the fabric fallen about him than there were footsteps in the passage without, the snick of an electric light, and a low murmur of voices as Milverton ushered Nan and Sarah into the room.
“Now, my dears,” he was saying as he went to stand behind the desk, “you were half an hour late and you have spun me a very pretty tale in the bargain. It is true that I will pay handsomely for information of that sort, but the one thing I require above all is honesty.”
“I’ll have you know--” began Nan hotly.
“Hush. You had me convinced at the start, but I am an old hand at this, Miss Killian, and I know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
Through a gap in the curtains, John could see Milverton slide open a drawer and take out a large revolver. He was prepared to dash out and rush the man, so appalled was he that their friends had been put in this position, but Holmes took his hand firmly in a gesture that unmistakably meant wait.
“Keep your hands still, please--yes, you too, Miss Lyon-White.” Though not visible to John, Milverton had apparently noticed the girls’ slowly reaching for the knives they wore concealed beneath their sable cloaks. “As you can see, I am armed to the teeth and I am prepared to use my weapon, knowing that the law will support me. You are in my house, and it will be your word against mine that you are here with my consent. Now, tell me: who are you working for?”
“No one,” said Sarah, chin tilted up in defiance. “We told you--”
John never found out what they had told him, for he saw Sarah go very still, her eyes fixed on something behind the man. Milverton frowned, turned slowly to follow her gaze, and froze as well.
“Great heavens,” he gasped, dropping his threatening demeanor and the pistol all at once. “Is it you?”
Next to John, Holmes tiled his head just so, so that the side of his face brushed against John’s, to be able to see better. But, being non-magical, even if he had thrown the curtains wide, he would not have been able to see the ghost standing in front of the open safe.
The ghost was a tall, slim woman in mourning dress, barely visible in the bright room, like a chalk outline drawn in the air. Yet for all that, the air crackled with the force of her presence and her unmistakable anger.
“It is I,” she said, her voice like thunder on the edge of hearing, “the woman whose life you have ruined.”
Milverton laughed, but fear vibrated in his voice. “You were so very obstinate. Why did you drive me to such extremities? I assure you, I wouldn’t hurt a fly of my own accord--”
“And yet your actions killed my husband--the noblest gentleman that ever lived, a man whose boots I was never worthy to lace--and you kept his watch as a trophy. I begged and prayed you for mercy, and you laughed in my face as you are trying to laugh now, only your coward heart cannot keep your lips from twitching.” The ghost reached her hands towards Milverton and he shrank back. “Yes, you never thought to see me again, keeping his watch--keeping me--in silk and iron, but I am here now, and you will ruin no more lives as you have ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you have wrung mine. I will rid the world of a poisonous thing.”
It was impossible for John to tell exactly what she did. It happened so fast. One instant her chalk-outline fingertips were inches away from Milverton’s substantial waistcoat; in the next they appeared to have gone through him; and, in not even the space of a breath, Milverton was crumpled on the floor, as dead as the lady who had killed him.
And who was no longer anywhere to be seen.
John turned to Holmes, who had an uncharacteristic look of surprise beneath the mask. It was his responsibility, he felt, to explain the supernatural to his extraordinary friend, just as he had been taught to see the world through the science of deduction, but he could not even begin to explain what they had just seen.
Holmes seemed to understand this, and, being ultimately practical, he tightened his grip briefly on John’s hand--Later, that said--before throwing back the curtains and going back to the job at hand.
Everything was a blur after that: John going to Milverton to see if anything could be done for him; Holmes taking all the papers from the safe and throwing them into the fire; Sarah, obviously shaken, collecting the pocket watch from where Holmes had left it (for it would not burn); Nan ushering them all through the veranda door when yet another sylph came to warn them of the servants stirring in the house; collecting Mary from her hiding place in the garden; and the helter-skelter scramble to safety over the garden wall.
“I don’t know when I was last part of something so confusing,” said Nan, echoing John’s feelings precisely, when they all met for breakfast at Baker Street the next morning. None of them had been able to get much sleep after the night they’d had. “But that was quick work with the ghost, Sarah. I didn’t even see you open a portal for her.”
“I had nothing to do with it. She had her unfinished business and left as soon as it was done.” Sarah was somber as she took the pocket watch from her handbag. “There are no traces of her lingering on this.”
“How are you holding up, Holmes?” John asked. He had not failed to notice that his friend had been unusually quiet--which was saying something for a man who was capable of sinking into wordless thought for days at a time. “I know what you saw must have been--”
“I did not see anything, aside from Milverton suffering an apoplectic fit.” Holmes stressed what he trusted most: his senses and his ability to use them to bring the most tangled of problems into startling clarity. “However, I know better than to mistrust any and all of you when it comes to superstitious twaddle, and I have not been idle.”
“You mean to say that you have not slept,” observed Mary.
“Perhaps. Could you pass me the file on the table behind you?” He took it from her and began to rifle through the clippings there. “As you might have guessed, I spent some time looking into Milverton’s past before. I found nothing that would help Lady Blackwell, but I remembered something from what you said happened last night.” He drew a newspaper cutout from the file and placed it on the table. “Is this your ghost?”
“Why, yes!” Sarah took the picture and held it up. “This isn’t a good likeness, but her features were so striking.”
Holmes nodded. “As closely as I can judge, she was one of Milverton’s first victims. Her husband died soon after her past affairs were made public knowledge, and she followed him within months. There were whispers about a surfeit of laudanum, but I do not know enough to give them credence. What I am certain of is that justice has overtaken a villain--an unusual form of it, to be sure, but justice nonetheless.”