第 18 页

Watson’s expression was the most perfect example of shock I have ever seen on anyone’s face. Colour drained from his cheeks in a matter of seconds. He stammered at Holmes, looking at him in the hope that he would deny such a preposterous accusation but of course he could not.

Watson looked strangely lost, as if the reality he clung to had just disintegrated before his eyes. He turned on his heels and left the room in disgust. We heard his footsteps descend the stairs and the front door slam behind him.

“We are leaving. Come Jude.”

I took Jude’s hand and started to pull him up from the settee. He stood weakly and regarded us both with much curiosity.

“Where shall we go?” he asked me.

“As far from here as we can,” I replied defiantly.

Holmes stood in front of me blocking my way.

“You are forgetting that you are a criminal and it would be against every principle I have left to let you simply leave this room and walk free.”

“I think it’s a little late for principles Mr Holmes, don’t you?” I retorted, but just as I was about to push past him a loud crash startled us all. Two bricks smashed through the windows quickly followed by a succession of flaming torches which set the rugs and furniture alight.

“Run!” I screamed. “He knows we are here!” and with that Jude and I headed for the door.

I paused and looked back to Holmes. He was standing in his wonderfully dishevelled rooms watching as the flames began to gather.

“We have to leave!” I shouted, but even as I spoke he was tearing down the heavy curtains to smoother the flames. I couldn’t just leave him, I had felt an invisible force pulling me towards this man for so many years and now I felt bound to protect him.

The bells of fire engines outside offered renewed hope.

“The police will be here soon, how will you explain all this?” I asked.

“I shall tell them nothing of the professor until I have evidence. Otherwise I shall be dismissed as a fantasist. But I do need your assistance, Red. Are you truly prepared to transfer your loyalties?”

I knew in my heart that my loyalty had already been given. I snatched my revolver from beneath the chair where I had tossed it and the firemen burst into the room. We pushed past them and escaped into the back yard.

We looked back to see smoke billowing out of the bedroom window of 221B. Life for all of us would never be the same again. The adventure to prove my husband’s criminality was about to begin and Holmes was determined to see it through until the very end.

Chapter Ten

Holmes, Jude and I were offered refuge by Mrs Hudson’s sister on the evening after the fire. Jude went to bed early. Knowing that he had given Holmes the formula was an immense relief but also a huge shock. And of all the foolish things he had known me to do during our friendship, having a liaison with my husband’s feared enemy seemed like the most dangerous yet. He was so anxious that I plied him with alcohol and sent him to bed in a stupor.

Holmes and I sat under a single gaslight in the kitchen with embers glowing in the grate. I told him all I knew about Professor Moriarty without reservation. I sat on the kitchen table with my feet on a chair and a bottle of claret in my hand. Holmes sat on a chair beside me taking occasional sips from a glass. The wind blew heavy rain against the window.

“Why won’t you talk about what happened between us? Are you ashamed?” I eventually asked.

He took a sip and watched the raindrops slide down the window pane.

“Until today, I have led a life of intense focus on my work. It has been my life, and the cornerstone of that is my sense of justice and reasoned judgement. Now, I have lost everything, even that.”

Holmes stood from his chair and walked to the window, turning his back to me.

“I had a prolific criminal in my grasp,” he continued, “someone who has robbed, murdered and even played a part in starting this dreadful plague. And yet, what did I do?”

He turned to look me. “Did I call for the police so that justice could be done? Did I berate her for her part in running a cruel and dangerous criminal empire? No. I ran away with her instead. She who has taken everything I have and everything I am, and shattered them all. No Red, I’m beyond ashamed, I’m just simply very afraid.”

I stood down from the table and took his face in my hands.

“I haven’t broken you; I’ve just breathed life into the machine. And now that there is nothing else to lose, just take a deep breath.”

I touched his lips with my own and felt his hands around my waist.

The door opened and Jude stumbled in, wearily, and sank heavily onto a chair.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I think your involvement with each other is a serious mistake. But as Red never listens to me and always does exactly as she pleases, I don’t think there is any point in my objections.”

He helped himself to claret. “But what I do need is some answers because my head is a jumble of questions and confusion. And it’s not just because of the drink, although admittedly I have rather over-indulged.”

“I suppose you two come as a pair?” Holmes asked me.

“Afraid so,” I replied.

Jude downed the contents of his glass in one go and fired off his first question;

“How did you connect Red with the plague?”

“Doctor Watson brought me the first indication,” Holmes replied, visibly relieved to be moving away from emotional conversation. “He was called out to the sister of the boxer Frankie Jones. She had been working for the professor as a nurse and had contracted the plague. Watson brought the matter to my attention and after the girl had died, I visited Frankie and extracted the truth about Red’s identity.”

I was surprised to learn that Frankie had betrayed me then realised with shock something which I had completely overlooked at the time. The young nurse who I had encountered in the cellar was Frankie’s sister but I was too distracted by the horror surrounding me to recognise her, especially as she was wearing a face mask.

I felt overwhelming sadness to think of that poor young girl who had been so very afraid, surrounded by pain and death which was her ultimate fate. I remembered her pretty blue eyes, so similar to those of her brother and took a large swig from the claret bottle.

Holmes also told us that he knew about Neville St Clare and explained how our capture of him outside the silversmiths led him to Frankie.

“So how did you find our house and how could you gain access?” I asked, realising that I too had many unanswered questions and my own mind was desperate for resolutions.

“Simple. I knew that Colonel Moran was a close associate of the professor and that he was partial to a game of cards. As card players are usually in excessive debt, I found several well-known players who were only too happy to tell me the location of his next game in return for money. I then waited for him to come out and followed him.

“Fortunately he led me straight to the professor’s house. The home he entered was clearly too expensive to be his own.

“I had gone as prepared as I could. I had the essential items any would-be intruder would bring - meat laden with rat poison for the guard dogs, a sturdy stick and various other tools. I stood at the railings looking through the darkness across the lawns at the front of the house.”

I listened intently and saw in my mind’s eye the house I had left behind, my beautiful home, my seat of power. Once the epitome of all I had ever wanted but now just a memory of false illusions.

“Sure enough, two large hounds detected my scent and came bounding towards me. I threw them the poisoned meat and they pounced on it. I seized my chance, entered the garden, and approached the house under the cover of darkness. A little light shining from a window illuminated footprints in the grass, large square-toed prints befitting the heavy black boots the guards were wearing.

“I followed them down the side of the house and found a small brick building, a guardhouse, with uniforms hanging on the walls. I changed into one hurriedly.

“I noticed that one of the side windows to the house was slightly open and climbed through into an empty room. I hoped that my guard’s outfit would afford me freedom inside the house but did not have any plan as to where to begin my search.”

Holmes filled his glass with more claret and took a sip. His expression was intense, his features softened in the pale early light of dawn.

“I believed at this stage that the professor had the antidote; no fool would buy the plague from a scientist without also obtaining the antidote. It is that which gives the whole thing its value.

“Now, presumably, once in possession of both one would have to dispose of the scientist, not risk trusting his silence. It was clear from reports in the press that Doctor Williams was indeed dead. I had been following the story of the mysterious burglary even before I connected him to the professor.

“Why would you kill the scientist before you had possession of both the formula and the antidote?

“I therefore presumed that the professor had both and that they were probably somewhere within the house. Gaining the antidote was my priority.

“Come,” he exclaimed, rising swiftly from his chair, “We must leave now.”

“Leave to go where?” I asked, as Holmes began to pull on his coat.

“To the house, of course. Though the professor has left and probably taken all obvious evidence with him, to the trained eye there will be something that betrays him.”

We followed him silently and walked out into the early morning. A strange sense of foreboding overtook me as we hailed a hansom and began our journey to my former home.

“So, how did you find out that I had the formula?” I asked, persistently trying to piece together the whole story.

“I can’t claim any credit for my discovery as luck played a far greater part in the unfolding drama than any skill of my own. Once inside the house, I began to make my way through the corridors. I heard raised voices and headed towards them.

“A maid was arguing with a butler who accused her of theft and demanded that she leave the house that instant. She screamed back that the mistress would never let her go because she knew the mistress’s secret; papers that she had hidden from the master.

“The butler struck the girl across the face for her impertinence and she ran from the room. I followed her and gave her a little bribe to tell me what was hidden and where.

“She explained that she had been called in to stoke the fire one night and heard the mistress telling Mr Jude that she had no intention of giving her husband the papers, which Mr Jude had found, even though he obviously wanted them desperately.

“Before she was able to tell me where the vital papers were hidden, the butler found us talking and shouted at her to leave. I was afraid he would realise I was an impostor and had to disappear. I knew my only hope was Jude, who I presumed to be the young man with Red at the boxing match. I began looking for him and was fortunate to find him alone. The rest was exactly as he described to us previously. I then left the house and gave what I had to the appropriate authorities.”

By now we were in the road where my former home stood. The morning light was made murky by a dense mist as we alighted from the cab. There was a smell of burning in the air.

I had been so sure of my power and superiority there that I didn’t even think the maid, who stoked the fire as Jude and I had talked about the missing papers, would be listening.

It was an artificial world, a false reality. The house we had shared was the professor’s stage, full of his actors doing his bidding. I had been pregnant in that house, losing the one thing I truly desired without even knowing until it was too late.

I stopped as Holmes and Jude continued walking. I stood alone and allowed myself a brief indulgent reflection.

Then Jude reappeared from the mist.

“It’s gone! The house has gone!”

Holmes emerged looking crestfallen.

“We are too late,” he said, “I should have known. The professor has had the house burned down taking all the evidence with it.”

I walked through the fog in shock and indeed, there behind the high elegant railings was nothing but a smouldering pile of rubble.

My home, the pinnacle of my struggle from workhouse and slums to opulence, for which I had sold my soul, now lay in ruins.

Jude squeezed my hand as we realised that life really had changed forever.

Holmes announced that we would be travelling to Paris but did not reveal any further details until we were safely aboard the Continental express train.

Jude and I watched in fascination as the city with its fog and slums gave way to lush countryside. I reflected on my parents who had left it to find a better life in the city but found only poverty and death. I wondered about how different my life might have turned out if I had been born among those rolling hills rather that the dark, brutal workhouse.

My introspection was interrupted by an announcement from Holmes.

“We will find the professor enjoying the hospitality of the French Government. I received a telegram this morning from the minister for foreign affairs, Monsieur Alexandre Ribot.”

Holmes removed the telegram from his pocket and flattened it out on his knee. Jude and I leaned over to examine it.

“I have assisted Monsieur Ribot in a previous matter. He became aware of my reputation through his work as director of criminal affairs and secretary general of the Ministry of Justice. I proved to be most useful in solving the little problem he presented me with. He sent this telegram to ask for my assistance again, not realising the full significance of what he tells me in relation to our own endeavours.”

The telegram asked Holmes to travel to France as soon as possible. An eccentric maths professor had become the guest of the French premier but Monsieur Ribot was suspicious of his intensions. He urged Holmes to stay in the old city of Narbonne where a meeting would be arranged.

I slapped Holmes on the knee excitedly, much to his alarm.

“Of course he has gone to France, I should have thought of it sooner! He is with Charles, his only friend.”

“Charles?” asked Holmes perplexed. “Charles de Freycinet?”

“Yes, that’s it. That’s the man.”

Holmes sat back in his seat looking gravely ahead of him.

“This is a most unexpected development,” said he. “In his former years, Freycinet was a great mining engineer who transformed much of the French infrastructure until rising to his current position. What is his connection to Moriarty, he who is now the Prime Minister of France?”

“James can’t make friends in the normal sense; he is incapable of sentimental connections,” I told him. “Everyone is either useful, irrelevant or a threat and will be treated accordingly but Charles was different.

“He came to England many years ago to study the growth of railways and canals. He visited the docks at Bristol and was made aware that the university had a brilliant maths professor.