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The mantle clock chimed the hour. Then the quarter hour. Holmes barely glanced up. Watson should have returned nearly thirty minutes ago.
He had probably just decided to walk, Holmes decided. The pub was close to an hour’s walk away in good weather, and that storm had not let up all day. Watson would come through the door any minute.
Except the hour passed. Then the next quarter, and still the front door remained solidly closed. When the minute hand hit the bottom of the hour and started climbing, Holmes finally grabbed his coat and headed for that dingy pub. With only two possible routes home, and one following a much more winding path through a dangerous neighborhood, Watson’s trail should be incredibly easy to find. Even with the storm.
As proven by the deep holes exactly the size of Watson’s cane. While the downpour had washed away most of his trail, Watson’s cane dimpled the mud from the pub all the way to the nicer part of town. The occasional print confirmed he followed his friend’s path. That receipt had fallen out of Watson’s pocket. A shattered cane explained why his friend had not returned home.
The blood showed where he had gone instead. Sheltered from the driving rain, blood spatters and drips still patterned the bricks and cobblestones all the way down that narrow alley. The smeared print of a stumble landed next to a short, stocky man’s boot print, and another man’s shoe overlaid both. Two men had staged an ambush, injured Watson, and forced him down the alley. Concern grew with every step.
And became a terrified grief when he noted the direction.
“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”
Holmes ignored the young constable, his entire attention on where the basin met the canal. The alley spat him out onto the tow path not ten feet from the basin’s edge. Several constables waded and swam through the water to clean up the wreckage of an explosion as several more interviewed the bystanders that would have seen the incident. Three shrouded shapes had been laid out along the shore.
“Sir, did you hear me? Unless you can help the investigation, you need to leave.”
No. He needed to stay, to see. To know for sure. Watson could not be gone, but those three shapes—
“Sir? Inspector! Little help here?”
Two captors and a captive. Three bodies. One with Watson’s shape. Watson could not be—
Watson might be, part of him noted, but shaking legs moved forward anyway, fighting past the grief trying to dominate his awareness. He could grieve later. If this was real.
First he needed to check faces. Because while unmitigated terror screamed about one of those bodies having Watson’s shape, logic dictated the double handful of body shapes for innumerable people. Watson might not be—
Or he could. Holmes simply had to—
“Mr. Holmes?”
Short fingers landed on Holmes’ shoulder, then his next step ran into someone. Effort pulled his attention away from that line of death to find Lestrade directly in front of him, a worried frown turning his mouth.
“Mr. Holmes, is the doctor missing?”
Yes. Yes, he was missing. Injured. Abducted. Gone, and Holmes should have been there, should have prevented the ambush, should never have sent his friend to that pub, but—
“Mr. Holmes.” Lestrade’s calm voice halted the spiral that Holmes identified only in retrospect. He waited for Holmes to look at him before continuing, “You need to slow your breathing, Mr. Holmes. Doctor Watson is not under those sheets.”
Watson was…not? But—
Ah. He saw it now. A different shape to the shoulders. The body that shared Watson’s shape did not share his scars, and terror drained to make Holmes surreptitiously lean against the brick. If Watson was not laid out on the path, then where—
“Did you follow his trail here?” Lestrade asked.
Holmes nodded. Once. “Two…men ambushed him on the next street.” Lingering worry refused to bring his voice above a murmur, because if Watson had been here and no longer was, then where had he gone? “He broke his cane trying to fight them off, and he is injured.”
“He’s not in the water,” Lestrade promised, quickly halting Holmes’ next fear. “We’ve dredged and dove the basin for the last two hours searching for every piece of the narrowboat that exploded. Does his trail lead to the canal or the tow path?”
Holmes swallowed, then looked at his feet. He did not need words to admit that he had seen the direction and the results and drowned under his fear, but only a few seconds found the tiny indicators that the rain had left alone.
“They went straight to the water,” he confirmed. A spot on the path caught his eye. “This chip is fresh. They moored the boat here, and they were trying to cast off when something…” He trailed off, quickly scanning the water, the tow path, and the surrounding buildings. There. “When something in the hold exploded. They were smuggling something when they saw Watson.” A piece of wood hung from a nearby tree. He easily recognized both the half-rotten wood and the series of scratches along the side. “Clark. I have suspected Clark of smuggling weaponry, explosives, and the rarer, more expensive spices into London. One funds the other,” he added at Lestrade’s confusion. “This belongs to one of Clark’s narrowboats.”
Lestrade noted that down, but Holmes looked up and down the path, searching for any indication that another canal boat had moored here. He found nothing. “Have any of your witnesses mentioned a second boat?”
A silent negative answered him. “They were alone on the bank. The man over there complained that they ran him out of his alcove about three hours ago.”
Three hours, and a glance confirmed the man one of the “street adults” the Irregulars had mentioned. That meant this was planned, not spontaneous.
And Watson had stayed at that pub for hours. If someone had recognized him through his disguise…
“Mr. Holmes?”
He shook himself. Watson first. Guilt later. If Watson’s trail led to the only boat in the area, then Watson must have been on that boat.
If the only boat in the area had exploded, then every man on board would have been thrown into the water. With this being the basin instead of the canal proper, the water here was deeper, but not by more than a foot or two. Watson would have been able to touch, if not comfortably. Hopping contact with the bottom would have let him breathe until someone found him.
Unless the injuries rendered in an explosion had also rendered him unconscious.
“Did you check the canal or only the basin?”
Confusion bloomed. Lestrade looked at the water, then back at Holmes.
“What?”
“London canals have a current. You know this.” Pausing for Lestrade’s nod also let Holmes swallow. Watson first. Grief later. “The canal boat would have moored with its bow facing the canal. The entrance to the hold is at the stern, and the footprints enter the boat back here. Anything in the hold would have been pushed toward the canal. Have your men dove and walked the canal downstream of the basin?”
No, they had not. Growing realization, then fear, confirmed that neither Lestrade nor any of the other Yarders had considered the current for an incident in the basin, but Holmes merely nodded and turned away.
The simplest solution is usually the most accurate. He would find his friend somewhere downstream.