Vanishing Girl (9 page)

Within an hour, Sherlock Holmes is at the tobacconist’s shop in Little Barford. The old man is indeed very much in the land of the living. And more importantly, he appears harmless.

Inside, the shop looks like no one has purchased a thing since Shakespeare’s days. The cracks in the plank floors are lined with dirt, cobwebs hang from much of the merchandise.

“You want
WHAT
?” shouts the wizened little owner in the long orange garment from behind his dusty counter. He
places his tin hearing horn, which looks like a silver petunia, into an ear that is flowering with a mass of thick white hair. “Speak into the machine!”

Sherlock puts his lips right into the spout and loudly repeats his request for paper with a two-headed watermark.

“Fourdrinier brothers?” asks Muddle.

“The very one.”

“Or two!” exclaims the old man, almost collapsing into a paroxysm of laughter. “You see, there are two Fourdrinier brothers!” He holds onto the counter in order to keep himself from falling backwards with mirth.

“Yes, I am aware of the source of the humor,” says Sherlock.

“Speak! Into! The! Machine!”

The boy firmly grips the hearing aid again.

“Much call for it lately?”

“You haul for it bladely? That doesn’t make any sense, my boy.”

“
MUCH
…
CALL
…
FOR
…
IT
…
LATELY!
”

“You don’t need to shout!”

Sherlock steps back from the counter, awaiting the answer.

“As a matter of fact, yes, I have had, as you say, call for it lately; but just lately. Had one sale of this marvelous paper in the past thirteen years. It came about two months ago. I believe the folks who bought it lived up there.”

He motions over his shoulder and upwards with his thumb.

Sherlock’s pulse quickens.

“Up where?” he asks.

But the old man can’t hear. He has set down his hearing aid. The boy seizes it to bellow, but the owner snatches it back and waves him off.

“I am tired. My nap was to begin at precisely …” he fiddles around in his faded red waistcoat under the orange garment, searching six pockets until he finds his watch, “… three minutes and thirteen seconds ago. I never miss my forty winks, you know. Good day, sir. You may come back tomorrow.”

He drops his hearing horn into a drawer in the counter and swiftly locks it.

At the very point of a sale, old Muddle walks away, heading for a door at the rear of the shop. It seems incredible. He trudges through the door and closes it behind him. The latch clicks. Still standing at the counter, the boy is frantic. The man was about to tell him who purchased the old paper: the
only
customers to buy it at the
only
place it has been available for the last thirteen years.

Sherlock considers following the old man and getting it out of him. But Muddle is in a locked room and his hearing aid is secured in the drawer.

The boy walks outside. He
cannot
wait until tomorrow.

Then he notices something up on the hill and thinks of where Muddle was standing at the counter, which direction his thumb pointed when he said, “… from those folks
up
there.”

The shop owner had been motioning up the hill. Sherlock turns to it. Sitting there in the distance, looking
down on the town like an enormous watchdog, is the manor house he had seen just as he fell asleep last night: the one with the lamplight swinging on its grounds, the one with the looming phantom shadow, with the eerie sounds rising in the darkness, the ghostly place he thought he had dreamed. He looks at again. It is real indeed. It appears bleak and abandoned: a haunted house on a hill.

Sherlock turns toward St. Neots and starts walking, careful not to allow anyone near, especially vigilant for the local constable. He has a dangerous day in front of him. Word will be out that a stranger is about. That foreman will be talking and saying he lied, that he seemed injured. Even worse, those children saw the blood on his waistcoat. The stains are fading into the graying black material now, but he buttons up his coat anyway. His stomach grumbles and he’s cold. He must steal food, perhaps from the back of the baker’s shop he’s noticed at the edge of town, and drink from the river. It isn’t right to steal, he knows, but murder is much worse. No matter what, he has to survive … until nightfall.

I
t is getting dark when Sherlock touches Penny’s dress as she glides past on her way home from the mill. He’s been hiding in the long grass by the river. Thankfully, she is alone, and the little cry she utters doesn’t travel far. He is betting that he can trust her.

“I need some information.”

“Master Bell, I must be off. My husband owns a pocket watch. I am expected home within ten minutes. I’ve promised the children a bonfire for Guy Fawkes Night, too. I
really
must be rushing. Rumpleside wouldn’t give us the day off.” She pauses. “I know you are a runaway. You need not play games with me; mothers know. You should get back home.”

“My mother is dead.”

Penny gently puts a hand on his shoulder. “I am grieved to hear that. But you must go home anyway, to your father or your siblings, whoever you can be with. I know about family troubles…. My daughter, the one your age I told you about … when I said she was gone what I meant was … she run off, too.”

“I haven’t run away, Mrs. Hunt, I promise you. Could we walk together? That wouldn’t slow you down.”

“I don’t think that would be wise.”

“Then please tell me what I need to know quickly.”

“You sound desperate, Master Bell. What is this about? Truly.”

Sherlock pauses. “I am not employed by a stationer, I will admit that. But I assure you I have good reason to be here.”

“What reason is that then?”

“I am looking for someone.”

She regards the anxious boy for a moment. “Someone from your family? Your father?”

“Yes…. My father.”

“And you think he is here somewhere?”

“Who lives in the place on the hill?”

A flash of fear crosses her face. “The manor house? You shouldn’t go there.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter who or what you are after.”

“Why shouldn’t I go there?”

She looks around, then drops beside him in the tall grass. Sherlock recognizes the expression on her face, the one his mother used to give him whenever he came to her with a problem.

“Grimwood Hall has a history. No one from these parts ever darkens its grounds, let alone the buildings. Except them folks who is in it now.”

“And who are they?”

“None of them is old enough to be who you are looking for.”

“Who are they?”

“It’s a young couple and the gentleman’s brother. It cost little to rent, I suppose, maybe that was the attraction, maybe it was because they weren’t from these parts, or perhaps they just don’t care.”

“About what?”

Penny glances fearfully up the valley in the direction of Grimwood Hall. When she speaks again, her voice is low.

“It was built long ago, only God knows how long. It housed many lords and ladies. Henry VIII stayed there shortly after one of his wives went to the chopping block. An early owner is said to have put holes in the walls and secret passageways everywhere, to spy on his guests. Then, two generations ago, a lord murdered his lady. Her headless body was found one night on the grounds. A horrific scream had been heard not long before. He was never even brought before the magistrates because he had friends here and in London. But his friends abandoned him afterwards. He lived alone up there for many years, had no visitors, and was kept company only by the strange animals he brought back from India in his earlier years. One night during a terrible thunderstorm, another scream was heard and the lord was never seen again, eaten, many think, by one of his beasts. People claim the animals still live on the grounds, behind those walls with the iron fence on top.”

“No one knows that for sure?”

“No one goes near, Master Bell.”

“But what about the three who live there now?”

“They came maybe three or four months ago, spent time in town at the outset, heard about Grimwood and made inquires, and then paid for their lodgings in cash. At least that’s what’s said. For the first few weeks they was often seen in town: at the public houses, the greengrocers, the tobacconist’s in Little Barford, but then they started keeping to themselves. Those who dare to look for long up that way, say that the lights were only on in one part of the house for the first while, but then one began showing upstairs too.”

The boy swallows.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

“They’ve only ever had one visitor that folks know of. The same man come three, maybe four times: reasonably well-to-do … stood very upright when he walked, some say he had a military bearing … but he wasn’t dark-haired like you.”

“Not who I am looking for, you think?”

She takes his hand. “You mustn’t go there.”

“Of course not.”

“It’s haunted if ever a house was.”

“I am not superstitious …”

“If your father really is one of them, then find another way. Hide in the countryside near the village and see if they come down. They do go out on occasion, one at a time.”

“I won’t go there. I promise.”

She has a mother’s nose for a liar.

“What is your name? The truth, this time.”

“Sherlock Holmes, my lady.”

“Master Holmes, my daughter was a free spirit like you. She liked to play up near the manor as a youngster, though her father whipped her when she did. The day she disappeared, the blacksmith said he saw her walking up the hill toward Grimwood. It is my hope … that she just ran away.”

“I am sure she will return.”

“May God be with you, my child.”

The distance to Grimwood from the town is much farther than he’d assumed. In fact, it seems like he walks for an hour and the mansion keeps moving away. Only a few minutes into his journey everything grows black; the terrain is wet and marshy, then rocky for a stretch, like a moor. Far below, down near the town, the citizens of St. Neots are setting bonfires to celebrate that day, long ago, when England was saved from the villainy of the rebel, Guy Fawkes. Ghoulish faces watch the flames, like sinister little circles sitting atop devils warming themselves in the underworld. The town is alight. But up here, Sherlock fumbles his way forward in nearly complete darkness, almost blind, starting each time he hears a distant shriek or a Roman candle explode with a crack in the night. He struggles forward and the sounds fade. Finally, he arrives. Soft lights from a few windows cast lambent beams into the darkness, giving him a dim sense of what is before him. A tall granite wall with a short iron fence on top surrounds the expansive lawns. Though it is
difficult to be certain, when he stands on tiptoe and looks through the bars, he sees what appears to be a labyrinth of hedges, unkempt bushes, long grass, and forests of copper beeches and weeping willow trees, hanging down their manes like distressed giants on the sloping land. Sherlock cups his sore hands and blows on them.