Vanishing Girl (23 page)

“Come with me.”

The Ratcliff Workhouse isn’t a particularly large version of those mostly black, soot-encrusted, granite or wooden
monsters that stain London every few dozen streets or so. It is built in a
U
-shape, on three floors, with Spartan accommodations, a large work area outside, and a cavernous dining hall in the basement. Paul Dimly lives alone in a very small room on an upper floor once used as a broom closet. He has no one to live with and would shun company anyway.

When Thomas Barnardo ushers Sherlock into the little room, they are startled to find it empty. After a moment of panic, the kindly man realizes what time it is, and that the little boy must have been taken down to dinner. The dining hall (though it is hardly fitting to call it that) is tall and long and cold and filled with crude, wooden tables set with tin plates and cups. At a thick counter at the front a burly male cook is ladling out a lumpy, dark stew. It seems to have a good deal of cabbage in it, for the stench of that vegetable fills the fetid air. Sherlock spots a small, scraggly Christmas tree, undecorated, on a wooden pedestal, just over the cook’s shoulder. He has forgotten that December has just arrived, and a dart of pain pierces his chest – his mother always celebrated Christmas and his father used to join in, too. This will be his first year without her, without his family.

Paul Dimly isn’t difficult to find. He is the smallest being in the room. Sherlock is alarmed at his size. He seems no larger than a dog, a living Tiny Tim. And he crouches over his meal, not touching it, pulling himself into a tight ball in the cold, as if he were trying to get back into his mother’s womb.

“Paul,” says Thomas Barnardo. “I’ve brought a friend of Miss Doyle’s to see you.”

Sherlock thinks the boy moves a little at the sound of Irene’s name, but he doesn’t look up. His dirty, reddish-blond hair is so thin that he seems to be balding. He has no shoes and his torn workhouse uniform is the color of dirt.

“Oi!” shouts a rough from across the table: he’s a few years younger than Sherlock. “‘ere’s a bloke to look at you.” Paul doesn’t respond. “Look up! Dimly!”

As other nearby boys laugh, Paul stares up.

It nearly makes Sherlock Holmes cry. The little one’s enormous eyes are a beautiful deep brown like Irene’s and seem to fill up half his face, but they look right through his visitors and can’t focus. The lids are swollen and turned inward, the iris and pupil, even the whites, are covered with dirty clouds like those that dominate London’s winter skies. The mists that still float across Lady Rathbone’s similar brown eyes are nothing compared to this. The child seems as though he is already blind.

“He can barely see your face,” whispers Barnardo, “I would guess he has little more than a week … then he won’t see anything at all.”

Sherlock wants to leave the hall. He
must
find a way to talk to Victoria Rathbone.
Now
.

But there is another concern inside him. And it worries him. He is just as excited about gaining Irene’s admiration, the adoration of London, and the envy of Inspector Lestrade, as he is about helping this forlorn child.

He feels he should say something to Paul Dimly before he goes. As he regards him again, he notices that more than his eyes are like Irene. He has her high cheekbones, a face
that somehow looks fine and well bred. He is remarkably like Lady Rathbone too, now that Sherlock considers it.

“Is that your hat?”

Worried that the bullies would enter his room and steal it, little Paul has brought his precious hat with him again.

“It … is his father’s,” says Mr. Barnardo, smiling at the child.

Dimly’s eyes are resisting tears so the young doctor steers Sherlock away, but not before Holmes examines the boy’s treasure as best he can, half-hidden as it is in two small hands.
A cocked captain’s hat, deep blue with a camel hump in the middle, flattening at either end. Royal Navy. Initials on the brim … first one … can’t see it … second … W
.

Mr. Barnardo walks down the creaking staircase with Sherlock, his hand on his shoulder.

“There are many children like him in London, you know. We cannot help each and every one. He may be lost. But we can, all of us, attempt to reform the society in which we live. That will change everything in the long run. There are several ways to do that, even the poorest can help. The first and most important is to turn to our Lord Jesus Christ for guidance and admonish all others to do the same. The second is to petition our government to care for our poor, to enact …”

“Sir,” says Sherlock.

“Yes, young man?” There’s an air of expectation on Barnardo’s face.

“Who was his father?”

“Paul’s? I have no idea. And neither does he, I should think. He was adopted by a man and wife who died of the cholera about a year ago. He was brought here by the parish beadle.”

“How old is he?”

“Just five, God bless him.”

Sherlock’s questions have a purpose. And the answers are putting a shocking possibility into his mind.
The boy looks like Lady Rathbone. He has her eye problem. She disappeared for many months five years ago. She loves a captain whose last initial is
W
… the same letter on the little boy’s hat
. But it is a laughable notion and he rejects it the instant it enters his mind. This is simply a series of coincidences.
Impossible
.

“There he is now.”

Sherlock looks up to see the fat, uniformed beadle on the staircase landing, speaking to one of the workhouse nurses, twirling the mustache on his red, fleshy face, trying to impress her with a long-winded story filled with the biggest words he can muster.

“Beadle?”

The man turns to Mr. Barnardo, annoyed to be interrupted.

“Can you tell us about the little one with the eye infection?”

“Who wants to know?” He glances down his nose at Sherlock Holmes.

“I do,” says Barnardo.

“Yes … well … Paul Dimly … I got word of ‘im about a year ago, I did. ‘is folks passed from the cholera and ‘e was left alone in that flat they was living in.”

“Where?” asks Sherlock.

“Believe it was on White ‘orse Lane,” says the beadle reluctantly.

“You have such a sharp memory, you does,” says the nurse, smiling up at him. He clears his throat.

“North of ‘ere just south of Mile End and the Jews’ ‘ospital, two buildings up from where White ‘orse Lane meets Friendly Place, beside O’Neil’s green grocer shop.”

“Thank –”

“And they weren’t ‘is own folks. They was old. Others around said they was distant relations to a captain in the navy who ‘ad fathered the lad … gave ‘im to ‘em. ‘e was from the ‘igh end of the family, such as it was. Doubt the truth of that, though. Poor folks talk.”

When Barnardo turns back to the boy, he is gone.

White Horse Lane is a thoroughfare to the north of St. Dunstan’s Church. It runs straight up to Mile End, which is the eastern part of Whitechapel Road. It isn’t the best neighborhood, but not the most frightening, either. Sherlock even spots an unkempt little park nearby.

It seems impossible that this desperate child in that dark workhouse could have anything to do with Lady Rathbone. He tells himself it is ridiculous one more time.
But the more he thinks of the lad’s face … and then hers … the more the two look alike.

It doesn’t take him long to get to the intersection of the streets he seeks. He sees the Jews’ hospital up near Mile End and spots the Irishman’s green grocery. He counts two buildings to the north. The residence he is looking for is obviously tenanted by more than a single family, one to each of the three floors. It is a non-descript lodging, neither poverty-stricken nor comfortable. There are two boys playing skittles on the street nearby, both about ten years old, dressed in threadbare trousers and shirts, but at least fully clothed and not barefoot.
Perfect. Never ask questions of adults
.

“Do you lot know of the family that used to live here?” asks Sherlock pointing at the house in question. “The old folks who had a boy?”

“The Wallers?” says one lad immediately.

It sends a chill down Sherlock’s spine. “The Wallers,” he repeats in a monotone.

“That’s what I said, you prat. Are you deaf?”

“And he weren’t their son.”

“No?”

“Me mum says he was a bastard.”

“Heard that too. A navy man, his real daddy was. Wallers had no folks left around here when they died. They croaked awful sudden like. The beadle came and took the boy away. It was winter time and he was freezin’.”

But Sherlock is barely listening. He is thinking of Lady Rathbone, fear on her face, admitting to the name of her secret lover.

Captain Waller
.

Within an hour he is on Montague Street, tingling with excitement, anxious to tell Irene, barely able to wait and see the look on her face. They may never be friends again, but at least he can have her admiration.

He is certain that what he has learned will save little Paul’s life. The child was given away at birth so Lady Rathbone likely doesn’t know where he is or even that he is alive. But if it is at all possible for her to help him now, she will surely move heaven and earth to do so. What mother wouldn’t? And even if she can’t, the Doyles can now take little Paul into their home –
the child is their relation
. And there’s still another possibility … they could all
force
Lady R. to help them. The facts are there for the three of them to blackmail her.

He wants to speak to Irene alone.

It’s been another cold, rainy day. There is green Christmas holly on the Doyles’ front gate. He squeaks the gate open and walks quietly up to the doorsteps. Looking down, he finds Mr. Doyle’s footprints on the muddy surface, heading out. If she’s here, she is on her own.

Then he hears something startling.

Singing … coming from a second-storey room of the Doyle home. And though it is beautiful, it isn’t an opera piece or a hymn. It’s the lusty sound of a music hall ditty:

Though he is surprised to hear such a song in the Doyle home, that isn’t what is startling. It’s who is singing it. Irene’s voice, a voice Sherlock never dreamed she had, sounds remarkable: strong and clear, filling the risqué song with bold intent. For a moment, he forgets what he has come for. Then he picks up a pebble and tosses it at the window. The singing ceases abruptly, the window opens, and Irene looks down. At first she appears embarrassed, then angry.

“Go away.”

“May I come up?”

“Up? … Here?”

“Yes. I have something very important to tell you.”

She hesitates, but then disappears from the window.

In minutes they are sitting far apart on the settee in the morning room on the ground floor and Sherlock is feeling a sort of homesickness. He glances around at the familiar furniture, the warm, wood walls. This was where he and Irene used to talk. But today she is close-mouthed. And she barely looks at him.

“Was that you singing?”

“No.”

“Then who was it?”

“None of your business. Why would you care, anyway?”

“I didn’t know you –”

“I have always wanted to sing. I told Malefactor about it and he encouraged me.”

“I see.”

“Father wouldn’t approve, but it appeals to me.”

“He is a wise man. That is not the sort of song –”

“What did you have to tell me?”

Sherlock isn’t sure how to begin. “I went to the Ratcliff Workhouse.”

She steals a glance at him. “You did?”

“Irene … I think I have uncovered something about little Paul, something incredible, utterly inconceivable, until I put together some facts.”

“Tell me, and then go.”

He describes what he found in Lady Rathbone’s room, the navy captain’s gloves entwined with hers, her admission that her beau’s name was Waller, how the boy’s birth occurred at the same time as her longest disappearance from home, their similar eye problems, similar appearances, and the house on White Horse Lane belonging to aging caretaker parents with the same last name as the captain, people who adopted their child from a relative in the Royal Navy.