Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets (12 page)

“My grandson tells me you’ve been asking him questions.”

“Have I?” Holmes thought back. One boy in the bakery had large ears, he remembered that.

“You know it’s always best just to
be
. That’s my philosophy. Should be yours, too. And keeping away from people less than half your age, that’s another one.”

The man’s knuckles were red and bruised. Bare-fisted fighting? It was possible.

“Keep away from our kids.” He drummed his fingers. A real sound.

The skinny one said, “That was my son, Sam, who fell off, and I blame you. You had no insurance.”

Holmes felt blinded by the light. Frozen in place. Still, he smelt the lamp fuel.

“It’s not too late. Give the nod. You give the okay. We’ll worry about the rest. We’ve got it sorted, but your blessing would be nice.”

He felt smothered. Choked. As if the walls were closing in. He shook his head, not trusting them, not knowing what they meant.

One said, “Sacrifices. People don’t make them anymore. We have to step in. We’ve been making sacrifices for a hundred years.”

The creak-creak of the lanterns as they swung.

“We’re builders going back generations. We’re descendants of the men who built this town. We understand what needs doing. We got the warnings. More to come. So we did the duty.”

“Who else has the courage, ay? The courage of the lantern men. To keep the good people safe. It’ll be on you. The next building collapse, or mine disaster, or bridge failure, it’ll be on you.”

“We’ve done it, anyway. Fuck you. All we wanted was your support. That’s all we ask. We do all the hard yakka.”

They picked up their lanterns, swinging them, the bases square and criss-crossed. The lanterns creaked as they swung.

H
OLMES STOPPED AT
the council offices to find copies of the original plans for the mansion. When he approached his office, he saw a skinny boy, leaning up against the bakery window, smoking. His leg was in plaster and he had crutches under his arms. He wore a t-shirt, too big, which read
Peppertree Footy Team Go Dingoes
. It wasn’t hard to guess who he was.

“They let you out, did they, Sam?”

The boy nodded.

“All your mates at school?”

He nodded again.

“Should we sit down, have a coffee? I can show you these plans. The old house. You can see where the body was. Might help to sort things out for you.”

Sam shuddered. “Yeah, no. I’ll wait for my mates. You can come have a smoke with us later, if you want. You seem to like that kind of thing.”

Holmes was impressed that the boy could make this assertion.

I
T WAS LATE
at night when the subject of lantern men came up. One of them had smoked too much, had slipped from pleasant numbness to paranoia.

“They’re at the window! See, the flashing light? Oh, god, I don’t want to die, I seriously don’t want to die.”

Holmes realised they had developed a mythology around the lantern men.

“If you get too fucked up they come for you. Swinging their lanterns. They’ll tell you you’re a fuck-up and what they’re gonna do to your family. Then they’ll slit your throat,” one said.

Another said, “No, they don’t. They pour the oil from their lanterns all over you and set you alight. You’ll burn down before anyone even knows you’re gone.”

Sam said, “No. they’ll wall you up in a place no one will find you.”

He’d watched them smoke this peppery drug, becoming more and more distant from reality. Holmes was ever and always mere moments from ‘the other life,’ the dark sinking into oblivion which obliterated all good he had done.

Sometimes a drive from address to address to look at his creations, his structures, helped.

Other times, the less dangerous descent into alcohol sufficed.

He had tried the addiction of gaming, but there was nothing but frustration, with the simple puzzles, the idiocies of plot, the infuriating game play.

“Will you come out to the museum with me tomorrow, show me where you heard the noise?”

They agreed.

H
OLMES WALKED FROM
room to room, tapping. For the first time, he really
listened
, hoping for a faint noise. The slightest hint and he would call the police.

It smelled different. Fresh paint covered the mustiness, and with the body removed, the air was clearer again.

Watson was there, supervising the builders.

“I feel queasy,” Holmes told. “Many of them are out of kilter.

Off balance. I don’t think the drawing room is the only one with a wall extended.”

He tripped over a stair as he climbed, catching his fall with a hand against the stairway wall.

The wallpaper felt sticky, grimy, and he wiped his hands on his pants. They were destroyed, anyway.

“See, Watson?” Holmes held up the original plans he’d collected from the council. “This room is smaller by a metre at least.”

He took out his tape measure. “One metre, five centimetres.”

He tapped.

“This is where you heard tapping? When we were kids?”

“You said you never heard it, Holmes. Remember? I felt like an idiot and you didn’t help. You said you heard nothing.”

Holmes tapped on the wall. Cocked his head sideways. “Nothing.”

They heard the noise of construction start up below again. Lunch break was over.

“What room were you and your friends in last week?” Holmes asked Sam.

“The top bedroom. It’s like a little attic. One of the guys reckons a kid was starved to death. They reckon he was born without any arms or legs. And he was white and fat like a slug, and even though no one ever fed him, he lived for seventeen years. He snuck out at night to suck on the blood of anyone in the house.”

“Did he suck your blood?”

Sam’s hand rose to his neck. “No, not me.”

“But you did hear tapping.”

“It was that kid. The one they sacrificed in the walls. He’s gonna haunt me for life.”

They walked up the stairs to the attic room. “Shhh,” Holmes said. They listened; just the distant sound of construction.

Holmes rapped on the wall. “This room is smaller than it should be by ninety seven centimetres. Very strange.”

Holmes stood pressed up against the wall, his nostrils flared. His nose almost flattened.

“Oh, God,” he said. “Watson, can you smell it? Oh, Christ, I think there’s another in there.”

He looked around the room for a tool. “Let’s get it open. Now.”

There was no sound, but a sense of urgency took them.

Watson called downstairs to his men. “Don’t worry about being careful. Just get the wall down.”

The wall was new indeed.

Inside, with a lantern in her fist, was a young woman. She was gagged and bound, apart from the hand that carried the lantern.

She was long past saving.

Holmes swung the lantern against the wall. Tap. Creak. Tap. Creak.

“She was alive. They heard her. We could have saved her, if someone had listened to them.”

“And the night we stayed here? When we were kids? Oh, god.”

They went to the upstairs bedroom and knocked down the wall. There were remains.

It was a sickening moment. The tapping they heard as teenagers was a person trapped and dying; perhaps every ghostly haunting had been another victim, swinging the lantern for attention.

“Watson. I think the house is full of such poor souls.”

He was so logical. He knew he wasn’t hearing ghosts, so he dismissed the noise. He realised now that his so-called logical brain had meant death. It meant he did not investigate further, that he took no action.

“If only I had listened. Then and now. These innocents could have been saved.”

For once Watson had nothing to say.

T
HEY FOUND BODIES
going back a hundred years. Holmes couldn’t take responsibility for all of them, but as he stood beneath a peppertree, he did contemplate climbing up there and letting himself drop. Seeking oblivion that way.

It wasn’t the first time the tree’s limbs had tempted him.

I
T SEEMED TRITE
, but he understood the genius loci of the place now.

The walls needed to be transparent, made of Perspex. The beautiful old beams apparent. The nail holes, the plane marks. The dark uneven stains where the sacrifices stood for long, long years.

They should be seen.

I met Emma standing on opposite stalls at BristolCon one year, while she was pursuing quite the most thorough, professional bid at self publishing I’ve had the pleasure of encountering. Fearless—and utterly committed to everything she does— Emma’s a delight to work with, and a delight at any rate. ‘A Woman’s Place’ tackles an old favourite of the Holmes canon— the unflappable, ever-present Mrs. Hudson—and asks: why exactly
does
she put up with so much of Holmes’s crap?

M
RS
. H
UDSON ARRANGED
concentric circles, taking the sandwiches on the plate in care that none of the corners overlapped and that the gaps between them were even. She was more creative than people gave her credit for. Once the hot water was poured into the warmed teapot, she carried it all up the stairs into her tenant’s rooms.

The latest potential client was there, sitting in the armchair always given to those under Sherlock’s scrutiny, with Dr Watson sitting to the left of the coffee table. The good doctor’s fingers were skipping over the virtual keyboard projected a couple of inches above her lap as the client spoke, but she paused long enough to give the landlady a grateful smile.

Mrs. Hudson put the tray down and sneaked a peek at the stranger. She could smell cologne, too much of it, and noted the dandruff on the back of the man’s dark jumper. It was clustered just below his neck, but not on his shoulders. She imagined him trying to brush it off before putting his coat on. Poor chap.

“I just... I didn’t know who to—”

“Did your uncle give any reason why the police shouldn’t be contacted?”

The man shook his head.

“And I assume you haven’t sent in a request to the DotGov database team?”

“Of course not, Mr. Holmes. That’s worse than contacting the police! They’d be sniffing around every byte of data long before any copper came to the door. I don’t want to go against my uncle’s wishes when he’s so ill. But I can’t help thinking something must be wrong, for him to beg me not to tell anyone.”

Holmes had steepled his fingers beneath his chin and still not acknowledged Mrs. Hudson’s presence, even as she poured. If she moved slowly and kept within the usual behaviour of serving tea and plating up the sandwiches, she’d be able to listen in as long as she liked. If the conversation lasted past that—and it rarely did—she’d be able to catch up on their adventures through Dr Watson’s journal. She preferred to listen in herself, though, see the new clients when they arrived and which cases Sherlock chose to take on. She had a feeling, from the way Sherlock’s eyes had fixated on a spot a few centimetres to the right of the man’s shoulder, that he was going to pursue this one.

“Your aunt has been missing for over two weeks?” At the client’s nod, he said, “Why come to me now? Why not last week?”

The man shrugged. “I had hoped she was... I hoped she had left him. I thought I would hear from her any day, after she had time to settle in her new place. But... nothing.”

Mrs. Hudson watched Sherlock’s eyes scan the man’s face and take in all the details that Watson, bless her, had undoubtedly missed. “Hoped? A difficult marriage?”

“They’re... estranged. But still living together. Separate rooms and no common friends. They never went anywhere together— couldn’t even stand to be in the same room. Times are hard, Mr. Holmes; they couldn’t afford to pay the data amendment fee to the DotGov people if they divorced, let alone pay separate rents. Cost of living these days...” He shook his head. “I do what I can to help, but I don’t have a great deal myself.” He clasped his hands together. “I heard that there are some cases you take on without payment, just for the thrill of it, I suppose. I can offer you a little money, but—”

Sherlock waved a hand, all his contempt of money encapsulated in the movement. “All I need is their address and for you to meet me there this evening at seven p.m.”

“My uncle is very ill. He won’t take kindly to visitors.”

“I have no interest in speaking to him,” Sherlock replied, hand drifting towards his teacup. “Leave the address on a piece of paper and I will meet you there.”

“I could just ping you with the coordinates—”

“Mr. Holmes doesn’t use a Chip,” Dr Watson said, passing over the note-block and pen.

The man balanced the stack of paper on his knee precariously, adjusting his hold on the pen several times. Mrs. Hudson pitied the man, trying to remember how to write under the scrutiny of Sherlock Holmes.

“Is that all, then?” He said it with such relief.

Mrs. Hudson wrapped two of the sandwiches in a napkin, knowing what was coming. Sherlock stood, gave the man a curt nod and strode over to the window. “Seven p.m. exactly, Mr. Eddard.”

“Yes, Mr. Holmes, thank you.”

Mrs. Hudson smiled at him and led the way out, taking the man’s coat off the hook as she passed it. “I’m sure Mr. Holmes will be able to help you,” she said, not without pride. “By the time you go to bed tonight, all your worries will be over.” He shrugged his coat over his shoulders and Mrs. Hudson wished he had the wherewithal not to wear a black one, with a scalp like his. She held out the wrapped sandwiches. “Why don’t you take these with you to have on the way home? They’ll only go to waste otherwise.”

Mrs. Hudson watched the man go down the steps into the street. He turned and smiled at her before joining the crowds trying to squeeze their way out of Baker Street in the rush hour crush. She locked the door and went back up to Sherlock’s apartment.

“I will need five minutes at the most,” Sherlock was saying. “And then I’ll go on to the Albert Hall. You’re welcome to join me, Watson. I’ve heard very good things about the composer.”

Watson shook her head, reaching for what was probably her third sandwich. Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled at Hudson. “I have a date, but I don’t have to be there until eight o’clock. Do I need to bring anything special with me?”