Chapter Text
I suppose I am more familiar with the thin barrier that waves between life and death than are most men.
I found myself there, once, when a bullet shattered my right shoulder and another nearly severed the quadricep of my left thigh. I remember very little of my time in the field hospital, a fact for which I often thank God. The memories that do remain often refuse to abate, leaving me paralyzed and perspiring.
I was told during my recovery that I had required resuscitation. The common practice at the time had taken after Henry Silvester, and required lifting the patient’s arms far over their heads to broaden the chest and induce ventilation. This, according to Murray, was what shifted the bullet still buried in my shoulder and caused it to tear the subclavian artery. The procedure which saved my life very nearly ended it all the same.
Sherlock Holmes once resided there, too, in that in-between; dead of a broken neck or crushed spine, dashed against the ragged rocks of the Reichenbach Falls—then, living once more. Standing, dressed in dirty clothes and cradling a stack of books as he smiled at me in the consulting room of my old practice. I had wondered if he were a ghost, clasping his bony shoulders simply to assure myself of his earthly form.
Indeed, I believe I am quite familiar with undeath.
It was in the late autumn of 1902 when the bodies began to surface in the Thames, and it was a gray and dreary morning when I found myself on Berner Street after paying a house call. A fog had been cast low over the street, consuming the glow of the lamps and plunging the buildings which rose on either side into a haunting realm of their own. I tugged my coat closer around my chest and unwittingly shivered, recalling the last time I had walked that awful lane. It had been just after the murder of poor Elizabeth Stride. She had been spared the gravest mutilations by the Ripper, but my mind still rebelled at recalling that case, no matter the decade or so it had been.
It was from these black musings that I was drawn when the shouting reached my ears. A woman, stumbling from a nearby building, yelled and banged against the door that had been shut unceremoniously in her face.
“My child!” She wailed, crumpling on the curb. “God, my dear girl!”
I was at her side without a thought, kneeling on the cobble despite the ache that rose in my chilled leg at the action. Her face was wan and drawn, though flushed high on the cheekbones with the red of fever. Her eyes, peculiarly light and gray, were bloodshot and glossy with both tears and illness. Fluttering, desperate hands grasped and curled tightly around my shoulders.
“Easy, good lady. Easy,” I soothed, searching my bag for a flask of brandy. I feared she might faint from lack of air, for the great gasping breaths she took nonetheless sounded thin and pained. It would take a doctor far lesser than I not to see her condition for what it was, even precluding the area in which we were.
Holmes and I have helped many sorts over the years. I am not one to turn away from a soul in need, no matter her occupation. I had, as it were, just been on one such call; one of the Irregulars had a sister in the same line of work that I imagined this young woman was forced into. I would not have frequented Berner Street otherwise, knowing very well how easily memories are stirred in me.
“My Violet,” she sobbed, ducking her head against my chest in weakness and shame. “Where is my Violet?”
“Your daughter is missing?” I prompted softly, a churning uneasiness in my gut. My free hand found the flask as the other supported her neck, but she had apparently calmed some on her own. I let it lie as she nodded against me, too overcome with tears to make any sound but that of grief.
“Come, my good woman,” I said, gently grasping her elbows in support. “I know someone who might help, and I can see to your fever.”
She startled slightly, as though suddenly returning to awareness. I have seen many have such a reaction when faced with kindness. It is so unknown to them that it sparks flares in their mind, warning of danger. Holmes has himself had similar reactions in the past. It never grows easier to witness.
“Who—” Her question was broken by a wet, rasping cough. She clutched a dry, dirty rag to her mouth, turning her face away from me.
“My name is Dr. John Watson,” I answered simply.
I saw a brief flash of familiarity in her eyes, and she nodded slowly. “Dr. Watson…You're the one who helped Lily and her boys, aren't you? You say you know someone who can find my girl?”
I nodded in turn, though I will admit to being a touch bewildered at being recognised for my doctoring and not my writing. A rare occurrence these days. “If anyone can, it will be him. Here, rest for a moment and sip this slowly. I shall find us a hansom.”
It was not easy to flag a cab in that district of the city, but my appearance favoured me. I brought it around the corner where I had left the young woman and was relieved to find her sitting there still, nursing the brandy. I helped her into the seat, and soon we were off towards Baker Street, with the autumn wind whipping through the open-air cab.
I learned on our journey that my new companion’s name was Laura Rothwell, and that her daughter, Violet, had disappeared two nights prior from their room on Berner Street, leaving behind no trace. She had gone to the police, but had been turned away under the assumption that the girl had simply run off. I once again assured the poor woman, who had grown increasingly agitated while giving her account, that my friend would do all in his power to help her. I spoke it with conviction enough to calm her, but I briefly found myself doubting my own words.
I was sure that Holmes would never turn her away for her occupation of necessity or her lack of means, as such things had never disturbed him before; furthermore, I had often borne witness to his fondness for children, which seeped through even his most severe of countenances. I only worried that he might be caught up by the case of the bodies in the river.
It was an entirely bizarre and grotesque affair. In the three months since July, a series of four corpses had been discovered at low tide by mudlarkers on the banks of the Thames. Each victim was so opposite to the previous that it was not until the fourth and most recent body that the press began to associate each death with a single perpetrator rather than as a series of drownings. Of course, Holmes and I had been involved since the first, and the relation of the second was evident the moment I examined the bodies.
They had both, remarkably, been drained nearly entirely of their blood, despite having no open wounds.
It was not often that Holmes was employed in matters of serial killings—the last, in fact, had been the Ripper itself. That case had troubled Holmes so greatly that I had of late been terribly uneasy. Now that a similarly awful series of murders had once again arisen I feared for his health. Holmes slept and ate little, sitting instead with his pipes and fogging our rooms as he thought. Even my own appetite flagged, constantly reminded of the gruesome state of the corpses each time I glanced at Holmes’s board, where he had strung up photographic prints of each of the victims.
The first was a dockhand, identified by the tattoos on his shoulders as a Mr. John Byrne, an Irish-born man who only recently came to London in search of work. If not for the bizarre state of the body and lack of fluid in the lungs, the police would have assumed he had tipped over the banks and drowned after a night in his cups. The second victim was an elderly woman that remained unidentified, with no one stepping forward to claim her body. The third and fourth victims were similarly without kith or kin; one a young Japanese man and the other an urchin girl.
It was a cruel criterion, and one that made Holmes’ efforts nearly futile. It preyed not only on the most vulnerable of our great city, but also the most unremarked. None of those we managed to identify had been noticed to have gone missing, and none had any witnesses to account for where they may have disappeared from. Each thread Holmes managed to grasp seemed to snap in his hands the moment he pursued it, and I feared, too, for his state of mind in the face of such hopelessness.
I was roused from this morose recollection by the clatter of the wheels and the braying of the horses as we stopped before 221B. I stepped out first, wincing as my leg, stiffened by both the chill and the journey, half-buckled beneath my weight. I managed to keep upright, tensing against the waves of lightning-like pain shooting through my side, and turned to help Miss Rothwell. Fortunately, she was too caught within her own worries to notice my momentary faltering.
The warmth of the entry hall was like a balm to my aching bones, though it did little to truly soothe the roots of pain that were nestled beneath my skin. As I hung my hat on the stand and shrugged out of my coat, I glanced at Miss Rothwell. She shuffled from foot-to-foot, unbalanced in equal measure by fever and uneasiness. I imagined she felt as out-of-place in the warmth of Baker Street as I did in the chill of Whitechapel.
At the sound of a door ringing open, both Miss Rothwell and I startled, turning towards the landing at the top of those seventeen steps. Sherlock Holmes, eyes alight and sharp features slightly flushed, sprang forward in a leonine leap to grip the bannister and peer down at us. His eagerness dampened somewhat as he caught sight of Miss Rothwell at my side. “Ah, Watson! Good, you have returned…with company, at that. I see. I should hate to take you away from your work.”
“Actually, Holmes,” I began, but as was often the case, Holmes mastered the conversation alone.
“I simply thought you should know,” he said, in that deliberate way of his that he knew always captured my interest, “that a fifth body was found in the Thames this morning. Lestrade was by just minutes after you left.”
My eyes widened, and I quickly hung up my coat and made my way up the stairs to join my friend. “Dear God. A fifth body? Have they identified the victim?”
Holmes shook his head, that familiar look of consternation crossing his features. “Of course they haven't.” He exhaled harshly. “It's a young woman, this time. Between seventeen and twenty. A prostitute, most likely. Once again, the police have labeled it an accident, despite the decided evidence of hypoperfusion throughout the body. An accident! Pish!”
At the mention of prostitution, however, I quickly gathered my senses and turned back to the young woman I had so rudely abandoned in my astonishment and curiosity. Holmes did the same, a hint of surprise flickering in his eyes as he registered the fact that we did, indeed, still have company. Miss Rothwell blinked at us owlishly from the bottom of the stairs, and I flushed in profuse embarrassment.
I made to descend and aid her up to our rooms, but Holmes raised a thin hand with a glance to my leg so brief that I nearly did not notice it. I flushed deeper, a faint sense of shame unfurling in my chest. He made his way down with an enviable ease, taking the steps two at a time.
“Forgive us, Miss…?” He prompted, taking her arm gently as they came up to join me. I held the door to the flat open, tipping my head apologetically as they entered.
“Laura Rothwell. And you are…?”
I saw Holmes’ eyes widen minutely. He, too, had gotten rather used to having a reputation. As he led her to the settee, he had a queer sort of smile on his face. “Sherlock Holmes, miss. I am a consulting detective.”
Miss Rothwell startled at this declaration. Her pale eyes snapped to me with a sting of betrayal as she leapt to her feet, stumbling in her weakness. “You're police?”
Holmes, quicker on his feet than I, quickly guided her back to the settee. “No, not at all. I apologise, Miss Rothwell, I had not meant to frighten you. While I occasionally work alongside the force, I am in no way beholden to them. Or their laws.”
Excited with agitation, Miss Rothwell coughed harshly into the rag she had pulled from her skirt. I saw Holmes wince faintly at the painful sound. “A private detective, then?”
Holmes tilted his head, smiling a bit. “Of a sort. Please, Miss Rothwell, be at ease. Shall I send for some tea?”
I was about to insist on the fact myself when Miss Rothwell gasped suddenly. The strength of the inhale soon set her coughing once more, and both Holmes and I stepped forward to attend to her, but she waved a hand of dismissive reassurance as she rose to approach Holmes’ gruesome board, which lay prominently on the dining table. I winced at how openly the awful photographs were displayed. Miss Rothwell cleared her throat thickly into her wad of cloth, then lifted a trembling hand to one of the pictures pinned across the chart. “These are the bodies? From the river?”
Holmes stepped to her side, a thin hand lifted in anticipation that she might collapse. “Indeed. You recognise one of them, do you not?”
Miss Rothwell nodded. She held her rag still pressed to her mouth, but now, I presumed, for the comfort of its pressure rather than to catch any fluids expelled from her lungs. “That’s Minnie. Minnie—Minerva Odell. She…worked the same lanes as me.”
She was pointing to a photograph I did not recognise. The most recent victim plumbed from the depths of the Thames that morning, then. I shifted slightly, uneasy. If this murderer was frequenting the area around Berner Street, was it not possible that he was also involved in young Violet’s disappearance? He had already killed one child. I forcefully drew my eyes away from the photograph of the young girl, my heart aching.
“When did you see Miss Odell last?” Holmes asked, crossing the room in a few strides as he approached his map where it lay stretched across his chemistry set.
Miss Rothwell thought for a moment, and I subtly guided her back to a seat on the settee. She leaned back against the wicker, scrunching the antimacassar with her weak slump. I crossed to my medical bag as she finally replied to Holmes.
“Not for some time now. I—what day is it today?” She squinted her eyes, as thought that might make her own thoughts clearer. I pulled my medicine case from my bag with a renewed urgency, quickly extracting a bottle of quinine.
When I turned to administer the drug, I found Holmes frowning at her. It may have appeared as an expression of distaste to the unaccustomed observer, but I had not lived with Sherlock Holmes for nearly two decades without learning to recognise the concern that lay behind those steel eyes. “It is Tuesday the eleventh, miss.”
I handed Miss Rothwell a dose in a small cup, which she took immediately. I had not even a chance to warn her of its bitterness, but she did not seem to notice. She handed the glass back to me with a faint, black-toothed smile, and I nodded in return. She then shifted to face Holmes once more. “It must have been Sunday, then, that I last saw Minnie.”
My eyes widened as Holmes nodded, taking up one of his pipes and holding it between his teeth without lighting it. He paced to and fro for a moment, then crossed to the fireplace to take up some tobacco from the Persian slipper. I saw Miss Rothwell blink at the action, but she said nothing.
Sunday had been the same day that Violet was to have gone missing. Surely it was not a coincidence?
“Did Miss Odell have a customer that night? One that… took her services elsewhere?” Holmes’ voice was low, and noticed a faint strain at his temple. I wondered if he, too, had been reminded of the terrible Ripper case.
Miss Rothwell considered this for a moment as Holmes lit his pip with a coal from the fire. “Yes, I think so. A very well-to-do man. Even more so than the two of you.”
Holmes hummed. I noticed the corner of his lip curl slightly in distaste, as it often did when we were dealing with the sort of wealthy men who cared not for anything, or anyone, who might stand in their way. “Can you describe him? Any distinguishing features—appearance, voice, attire? Had his own private transportation?”
Miss Rothwell’s eyes widened at the sudden rapidity and intensity of Holmes’ interrogation. He had come to half-crouch at her side near the settee, his long legs bent awkwardly beneath him. I winced purely at the sight of it, one hand trailing absent-mindedly to rub at the knot of scar tissue on my thigh.
“I’m afraid I don’t really know, Mr. Holmes. It was dark, and I wasn't about to shove myself into Minnie’s business,” said Miss Rothwell. I wondered, too, if she had pushed the strange event from her mind in the wake of her own daughter's disappearance, as she appeared to have not yet linked the two events herself.
“Think,” Holmes insisted. “How did they leave together? Did you hear the clatter of wheels or horses?”
“Yes. Yes, I believe I did.” Miss Rothwell’s eyes darted back to the board of corpses. She paled further and I shifted slightly to block the thing from her view. Holmes waved a hand, urging her to continue.
“We don't often go with the men to other places,” she said, her voice subdued. “Too dangerous. I remember, I was surprised, seeing Minnie get into one of them growlers.”
“She got into a clarence?” I repeated, surprised. If it was owned privately—and on such an endeavour, I imagined one certainly would not hire out—then our suspect was wealthy indeed. I saw Holmes’ eyes narrow the way they did when he caught a scent.
“Was there a crest?” He asked quickly.
Miss Rothwell furrowed her brow in thought, but shrugged her shoulders. Holmes made a soft, frustrated noise in the back of his throat, then stood and crossed the room. “You said this took place on Berner Street?”
She shook her head. “The next way over. On Batty, just outside the Red Lion.”
Holmes clicked his fingers, darting over to his map. “A public house, excellent!”
As Holmes scoured over the various lanes and alleys of London, Miss Rothwell glanced at me. “And my child?”
Before I could do so much as open my mouth to respond, Holmes had whirled around, brow furrowed in confusion. “Your child?”
I cleared my throat slightly, knowing Holmes detested little more than being drawn from a lead, but my suspicions had been growing that these two incidents were related. Not to mention my promise to Miss Rothwell, which I intended to keep, even if Holmes could not. “Miss Rothwell’s daughter, Violet, has also been missing since Sunday evening. She vanished from their room on Berner Street.”
Holmes’ proud brow deepened as he stepped away from his map, one hand in the pocket of his waistcoat and the other tapping lightly against his chin. “How old is your child, Miss Rothwell?”
“She’s only eight, sir. But she knows better than to run off; she's a very good girl, she is, and—” A rough, wet cough cut off the terrified mother’s increasingly frantic description. I took to her side on the settee and braced her shoulders, rubbing a firm hand over her back in hopes of helping dislodge whatever soaked her lungs. Holmes’ expression softened as he knelt before us.
“I am sure she is, Miss Rothwell,” he said in that soothing manner which he oft employed to calm distressed clients and witnesses. It was always rather a marvel to see; in an instant, Holmes the sleuthhound had vanished, leaving only the picture of cordiality. “When did you notice she was missing? Come morning?”
Miss Rothwell shook her head as tears began to well in her already glassy eyes. “No. I had been out. Working. I’d seen her to bed before I went, and I know she was sleeping when I closed that door behind me. I came back sometime after midnight, I figure, and the door was unlocked. I knew something was wrong right away, and when I walked in the room, her bed in the corner was empty. The…the blankets were all neatly folded and everything.”
“She folded the blankets?” I asked, somewhat incredulous.
“No signs of forced entry, then,” Holmes said, sitting back on his heels as he considered Miss Rothwell’s testimony. “The door was unlocked, you said. No scratches around the lock or tearing in the wood panels?”
Miss Rothwell shook her head. “I cannot imagine why she would leave! She knows better than that.”
Holmes said nothing, his eyes drifting from Miss Rothwell to the board of pinnings. She followed his gaze and paled further. A sudden realisation seemed to strike her and she turned to me. “You said ‘also.’”
“Pardon?”
Her weak, trembling hand shot out to grip my arm. “You said Violet also went missing on Sunday. Oh, God, I hadn’t realised it was the same evening as Minnie. Do you think—my dear Violet—no, surely not—”
Her eyes had returned to the board, glued to the gruesome image of her acquaintance’s corpse before shifting to that of the young urchin girl. Holmes, in a fit of sensitivity rare to him, rose and placed the board face down. His expression was grim as he turned back to us. “It is possible, Miss Rothwell, but not certain. I should like to examine your lodgings, if you are amenable.”
Miss Rothwell coughed into her rag, eyes red. “Yes, that's fine. Oh, God, my little Violet.”
“Come, Watson. We shall see the lady home and examine the scene,” Holmes said. Already, he had crossed to his room and disappeared beyond the threshold. I pressed Miss Rothwell’s hand reassuringly as I helped her to her feet, and soon the three of us were trundling along in a four-wheeler, with Holmes now lugging a travelling case I recognised as containing his makeup and wigs.
I was grateful for the enclosed cab, as I dreaded another chilled ride, what with my leg aching as it was, and was glad that Miss Rothwell would remain in warmth for some time longer, too. Her colouring had evened out slightly with the draught of quinine, but her cheeks still held that telltale bright flush. Holmes was silent during the ride, so Miss Rothwell and I endeavoured to fill the still air with rather idle chatter.
I explained in some more depth the role Sherlock Holmes played in our city’s legal system; or, rather the role he played outside of it. Miss Rothwell made for a charming conversationalist. Despite the illness and lingering anxiety over her daughter, she engaged in asking questions and even shared some stories of young Violet with a proud gleam in her glassy eyes.
“She sounds like a very impressive young girl,” I commented upon hearing of Violet’s delight and skill in sewing and needlepoint.
“She is,” Miss Rothwell said with a smile. “She has even taken to stripping all her old dresses of their thread so she might continue creating her designs.”
I showed a suitably amused expression, but felt internally rather heartsick. To think that a child would have to resort to such measures simply to practice that which she enjoyed!
Perhaps my reaction was not as adeptly put on as I had hoped, as soon Miss Rothwell’s own countenance grew more dour. “Say, Dr. Watson…I can’t read the papers myself, but I hear people talking a lot about those bodies. Is it true?”
I stared at her in some confusion. The papers had largely only reported a slight increase in drownings in the Thames. “Is what true?”
She glanced at Holmes briefly, then out the window at the foggy streets beyond, before finally leaning forward and resting her hands on her knees. Her voice was low when she spoke. “About their blood.”
I blinked in surprise, and even Holmes finally returned to us from his venture into isolated pondering.
“How did you know about that?” He asked, a brow raised. “No mention was made in any of the papers.”
Miss Rothwell rubbed her bony hands together, trying to generate some warmth. “I wouldn’t know about that, sir, like I said. But the lads who do the mudlarking, I know some of them and their mothers. It was them who found the bodies, after all, and they said that it was like there was no blood left in the poor souls at all. White as clean sheets, they said.”
I glanced at Holmes, intending to follow his direction. I have, on occasion, revealed more than he would have liked to clients, witnesses, and suspects alike and had of late been attempting to correct that fault. His long fingers steepled beneath his chin, considering. “They were not completely bereft of blood, no, but they were indeed… drained, to some extent.”
Despite the disturbing emphasis of the word, I still found it altogether too kind a description for what we had witnessed in that morgue four times over. I have seen far too many corpses in life; as a student studying anatomy, as an army surgeon scouring a battlefield, and as biographer to Sherlock Holmes. None compared with those drudged up from the Thames, even beyond the foul pollution which clung to them from the infamous river. Once cleaned, their unnatural state had become even more obvious: they seemed equal parts corpse and porcelain doll. The skin was white and ashen, shiny with a waxy hue. It stretched unnaturally over their cheekbones to dip in sunken cheeks and eyesockets. Livor mortis was almost entirely absent, even in the corpse of the young girl, which had been found lying on the bank for some time. Instead of the usual violet-red that pooled, there was only the faint hint of pink.
They reminded me of the corpses we used for dissection back at the University of London, and later during my practicum at St. Bartholomew’s. Still, it was difficult even for my rational mind to imagine that such a state could be achieved by human hands.
Miss Rothwell’s eyes widened faintly at Holmes’ confirmation, and she surprised both of us by quickly raising her trembling hands into the sign of the cross. Any further discussion of the matter, however, was prevented by our arrival on Berner Street.
Holmes' examination of the Rothwell lodgings—if they might even be called that, cramped and lightless as they were—revealed nothing that Miss Rothwell had not already told us. Violet’s bed was, in essence, a number of moth-eaten blankets lain on the floor and a single quilt overtop, with plain squares occasionally adorned by embroidered flowers (courtesy of young Violet herself, according to her mother; despite my lack of knowledge in the area, I would declare she indeed had quite the practiced hand). All of these accoutrements were neatly folded as though nothing were amiss.
With a reassurance to Miss Rothwell that we would inform her the moment we had any sort of news, Sherlock Holmes and I took our leave. Instead of hailing a cab, as I imagined he would, Holmes strolled down Hampshire Court then tucked himself in an alley, setting down his travelling case. As he unlocked the thing, he briefly glanced up at me with a smile. “This case grows darker and darker, does it not, my dear Watson? I wonder if you would confer on me the favour of returning to Baker Street and awaiting me there.”
I was surprised at this. “Return to Baker Street? Whatever for? And what makeup are you applying now?”
Holmes had unscrewed a pot of some kind and, with the aid of a small looking glass and a small, bristled brush, was applying the powder to his brows. Darkening them, I gathered, but for what reason I did not know.
“I must visit the Red Lion, of course,” said he, “and ascertain whether there were any witnesses to the abduction, however willing, of Miss Minerva Odell. Going there in my normal habit would certainly attract attention, and I am of the idea that our mystery person’s clarence must have done so, too.”
“But why not allow me to accompany you?” I asked, a bit more stung than I had intended.
Holmes’ eyes flickered up momentarily from where he was now applying the same dark powder along his jaw with a fluffier brush, and I caught a brief glimpse of consternation within them before he returned his focus to his task. “Because, my dear Watson, you are hardly a liar. I do not begrudge you for it, of course—it is one of your noblest qualities—but it does make you quite the liability in more precarious interrogations. And, moreover, I can see that your leg is troubling you with this chill. My recommendation, then, is a return to Baker Street and the rubber hot water bottle while you warm yourself by the fire. Should you grow bored, you might spend your time pondering what sort of contraption might be needed to drain a person of about five litres of blood. We may be looking for a medical man and, there, your insight may prove invaluable.”
I was equally appeased and irritated by these instructions, as I often was when it came to Sherlock Holmes. Nonetheless, I knew better than to try arguing with him and he was right in his deduction about my leg. The damn thing seemed to grow more painful every year. Aging was a fine curse, indeed.
Though I would never admit it to the man, I followed Holmes’ suggestions entirely. I wiled away the remaining afternoon by musing over the case and warming myself and my leg. It left me well-rested but with a distinctly uneasy feeling that refused to abate. Holmes himself did not return until late that evening, long after Mrs. Hudson had taken our supper away, but, by then, I was restored and eager to learn of his discoveries.
I sat on the edge of his bed as he washed away his disguise. He eagerly launched into an account of his day, his own eyes alight with the fervour that often motivated him during a case.
“It was rather empty when I first arrived at the Red Lion, considering the early hour,” said he, peeling faux whiskers from his cheekbones. “This, of course, allowed me the time to ingratiate myself into the atmosphere. By the time the evening clientele arrived, I was just as much a part of the scenery as the eponymous lion’s head hanging above the hearth. Watching from my corner, it was simple enough to pick out the regulars of the establishment by their easy banter with both the barman and each other. I am sure your readers will enjoy what happened next, for it is as nearly unbelievable a plot device as any you have used before; I had been priming myself to approach one of these men in hopes of stirring conversation about Sunday night, when they all began speaking of it of their own accord!”
“That seems fortuitous,” I said dryly. Holmes grinned at me.
“It was indeed,” he said, clapping his hands together in a decidedly pleased manner. “Now, my dear boy, what say you to a little house-breaking?”
I nearly choked on the nightcap I had been nursing while waiting for him to return. “Pardon?”
Already, he was on his feet and crossing to his dresser. I waited impatiently for an answer while he shuffled around before emerging triumphant, holding in his hands the burgling kit we had employed in the case of the odious Charles Augustus Milverton. I felt a small thrill at the prospect, but immediately stamped it down.
“Holmes, one of these days…”
“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand. “You need not run through the motions of your protestations once more. Do you intend to join me or not?”
I sighed. “Of course I intend to join you.”
He grinned, tugging the silk masks from that aforementioned last excursion from his pocket. “I thought I knew my Watson.”
-//-
In his typical dramatic and terribly frustrating fashion, Holmes refused to reveal to me just where we were going until we had clambered out of the four-wheeler and into the brisk air of the autumn evening. I was glad for the brief respite I had had that afternoon, as my leg rebelled at the chill almost immediately. Adjusting my stance to rely more heavily on my walking stick, I glanced down the street and immediately recognised the opulence of Mayfair, with its tall brick buildings and the stables lining the mews. If I had felt out of place in Whitechapel that morning, I felt it even more so there.
Holmes skipped ahead with characteristic eagerness, his fervour intensified by the stakes that rested on the case. I shivered once more, but not from the chill. It was easy, in the rush of adrenaline that accompanied our dangerous mission, to forget momentarily what might be lost if we failed. I thought of Miss Rothwell’s hoarse cries as she collapsed on the curb just that morning, and steeled myself.
“Now may I ask where we are going?” I prompted, my newly invigorating determination allowing me to keep pace with my friend.
“Montgomery House,” Holmes answered. “There was, in fact, a crest on the clarence that carried Miss Minerva Odell to her death. Miss Rothwell may not have seen it, but my new acquaintances at the Red Lion certainly did. The description of the crest was unfamiliar to me—and I do pride myself on my knowledge in that area—but a quick visit to Brother Mycroft was suitable to clear the air,” Holmes said, and I felt a faint flicker of amusement imagining the elder Holmes’ reaction to the disguise his younger brother had put on earlier that day.
“Mycroft pointed us here, then?” I asked, gazing up at the building before which he had stopped. It stood some ways away from the street, with a large wrought iron fence declaring the boundaries of the property. I stepped up the gate, which was sealed with a heavy-looking chain, and peered through the bars. The yard appeared well-tended, with low-cut grass and neat hedges lining the stone pathway which curved towards the ornate front porch. It was a more modern house, if the botanical patterns which made up the fretwork were any indication. Built sometime in the last fifty years of the Queen’s reign, I imagined, but I was neither an architect nor an encyclopedia on esoteric subjects in the way Sherlock Holmes was.
Sherlock Holmes, however, made no comment on the architecture or my leading question, instead kneeling and removing a pair of bolt cutters from his carpet bag. I immediately turned to the street, assuring myself that we would not be seen in such a blatantly criminal fashion. The emptiness around us did not ease my rapidly beating heart.
“Surely there is a more covert way of entering?” I hissed, shuffling slightly to block Holmes from view of anyone who might peer from the windows of the buildings opposite. Holmes’ only response was a resounding metal noise as he snapped a link of the chain clean in two. He tugged the thing loose with a triumphant smile, completely unaware of the shot of panic he had just sent straight through me at the loud noise, and pushed the gate open with a resounding groan of rusted metal.
“Easy, my boy,” said Holmes, finally breaking his peace as I stepped through, one hand clenched so firmly around the head of my walking stick that I feared snapping it just as easily as he had the chain. The ground itself seemed to seep the chill into my bones, an unearthly feeling settling heavily in my chest. I dismissed it as nerves relating to our criminal activities and followed Holmes up the winding path. “There is no-one home. According to Mycroft, the Montgomerys maintain a manor in the south of France as well. It is there that they spend their winters.”
“If no one is home,” I hissed as we strolled straight up the pathway. “Then what are we doing here? Clearly they are uninvolved in the murders and Miss Rothwell’s daughter’s disappearance, considering they are in France.”
Holmes sighed as he dug around in his carpet bag for the dark lantern, lighting the candle and then quickly cutting the airflow so it dimmed almost entirely. “Yes, but their clarence was seen not two days ago. Surely you have not forgotten that already. The house may be unoccupied, but the family is still linked in some way. Exactly how they are involved is what I intend to discover tonight.”
We approached the front door, which itself was just as ostentatious as the rest of the property. A bold yellow colour made up its dual panels, and I was glad for the slight cover of the porch’s columns and balustrade when Holmes quickly took to his knees and unrolled his burgling kit on the wood beside him. My tapped my fingers nervously against the head of my walking stick as he handed me the dark lantern, then carefully picked out the tools of his rather illicit trade and set to work on the lock.
I could not help but repeatedly glance over my shoulder and out into the dark evening beyond. We were far enough away from the street that not even their lamplight could reach us, painting the courtyard in front of me only in long shadows. I resisted the childish urge to swing the dark lantern around and dispel them. The temperature had dropped by some degrees after sunset, and I felt gooseflesh trailing up my arms as I waited for Holmes to finish picking the lock.
Finally, with a triumphant exhale, Holmes rose to his feet again and slowly twisted the knob. With a deep click, the door swung open before us. If I had felt cold before, it was nothing compared to the chill that suddenly rushed over me at the slow creak that filled the air, the house opening its gaping maw. Even Holmes seemed struck by a brief sense of foreboding, pausing momentarily as he arranged his tools to peer intensely down the dark hall beyond. He mastered himself far quicker than I and slipped silently beyond the threshold, taking the dark lantern from my hands as he went.
As I shut the door behind us, an unfathomable blackness descended over the room. The only sound was that of my own racing heart as it beat in my ears and Holmes’ slow, even breaths at my side. His hand found mine, pressed it briefly, then disappeared once more. A soft scraping sound filled the air as Holmes opened the shutter of the dark lantern, casting its warm glow over the long hall that stood before us. I narrowly avoided tipping over the hatstand as we crept past the entry and into the body of the house.
We passed a dining room on our left, with patterned white and blue carpeting and white linen draped over the furniture. Holmes did not pause, continuing down the hall until we came across a staircase which split in two directions. We took to the left first, but found little more than bedrooms that appeared not to have been occupied in weeks. Holmes swept a gloved hand over a thick layer of dust which covered the mantle in one bedroom and made a low, satisfied sound in his throat. Then, he darted from the room with long, quick strides and crossed to the other side of the upper storey. I followed close behind him with far less determined steps.
As I glanced briefly over the balustrade at the ground floor, subconsciously assuring myself that we had not been followed, I nearly ran into Holmes. He had stopped, eerily still, at the entrance to the first room.
“Holmes?” I asked, keeping my voice low. It still felt far too loud in the dreadful silence of the large house. I pressed up to his shoulder to peer past him at whatever had caused him to stop so suddenly and felt my blood chill to ice.
“Good Lord,” I said, aghast, one hand grasping Holmes’ shoulder to steady myself. “Surely… Surely that is not a child’s coffin?"
“A casket, my dear Watson,” Holmes said, though his voice was subdued and distant. “A coffin would have six sides.”
I did not even have the wherewithal to turn a glare upon him, so horrified was I by what might lie inside. Was this how we were to reunite Miss Rothwell with her daughter? I pressed a hand to my mouth in a vain effort to quell the nausea rising within me. Holmes stepped forward slowly, uncharacteristically apprehensive. Even in the dim moonlight and the flickering shadows cast by the dark lantern he held, I could see the tension held in his jaw and the swarming emotions in his gray eyes.
With a faintly trembling hand, Holmes attempted the lid of the casket. It did not give, and I suddenly registered the lock that fastened it shut. A wave of revulsion washed over me. For what reason would such a thing need a lock?
Holmes set the dark lantern on the table upon which the casket was laid and pulled his burgling kit out once more. I could see that his hands were still shaking, and that sight alone unsettled me so deeply I stepped back, turning away. I could not bear to face that which I knew must lay in that walnut box, no matter how deeply my heart wished it not to be so.
The corpse of a child.
After a dreadfully long moment, I heard a soft click, a slow creak, and Holmes’ sharp inhale. I mastered myself with some effort, stepping up to his side and laying a gentle hand on his shoulder as I prepared myself to perform that duty which haunted every doctor. I swallowed heavily as I fully lifted the lid from the casket, revealing that which I had expected and dreaded in equal measure.
Violet Rothwell looked a great deal like her mother. She wore the same black hair and had the same narrow nose. Her clothes were far finer than anything I supposed Miss Laura Rothwell might have been able to afford, and it curdled within me to know that young Violet’s murderer had gone so far as to dress her in white after they had so cruelly taken her life.
Her chest was still, with no breath passing through her lungs. Her skin was terribly cold when I took up her wrist, searching for a pulse I knew I would not find. As I did so, laying the unmoving limb back down after the fruitless endeavour, I realised Holmes had not left my side. I glanced up at his face and found it carefully blank. This, I found, was more telling of his inner turmoil than any outward show of emotion. “I’m sorry, Holmes.”
His jaw shifted and a flash of anger lit up his gray eyes as he snarled, whipping back around, away from the casket. “Damn it all. Damn it all!”
“Holmes—”
“Mama says it's not polite to say that sort of thing.”
Holmes and I both froze, for neither of us had spoken those words. I first glanced to the door of the room, but both it and the hall beyond remained empty. It then registered to my grieved and startled mind that it was a girl’s voice which spoke. My heart leapt into my throat as Holmes and I both whirled on our heels.
The corpse was sitting up and watching us.
I believe I let out some exclamation or curse, but that moment of shock rendered everything somewhat hazy. Miss Violet Rothwell, with her waxy white skin and limp black hair, sat upright in her own casket, small hands curled around the rim as she peered at us with large, pale eyes. I felt a wash of emotion—had I missed her pulse? Surely not; I was not as observant as Sherlock Holmes, but I was far from a fool. She had not even been breathing.
A miracle, then? I knew from personal experience that the heart could be started even after it had stopped. Relief flooded me, and I quickly approached the girl to assure myself that she was indeed alive and well, and to temper any after effects of her sudden resuscitation. A hand on my sleeve stopped me and I turned with some surprise. “Holmes?”
He was staring at the girl with such intensity in his eyes that any relief I had felt suddenly fled in a rush. His voice, when he spoke, was low. “Miss Violet Rothwell?”
The girl continued to blink owlishly at us, and I was once again reminded of her mother. Then, she nodded and spoke again, her voice high and wispy. It sent shivers along each vertebrae of my spine. “Are you afraid?”
My mouth felt dry. Holmes lifted the dark lantern higher, casting stark shadows over her unearthly pallor. “Do I seem afraid, Miss Violet?”
She shook her head slowly, wisps of greasy black hair falling over her eyes. She lifted a thin white hand to brush them away. “No. Not you. Not really. But I was. And I think you probably should be.”
Holmes raised a brow as I tensed further. “And why is that?”
She rolled her sickly purple lips back with her fingers and bared her teeth. There, in the place of her lateral incisors, jutted sharp fangs.
“A vampire,” I whispered.
Dear God.