A Scandal in Battersea Read online

  Leaving Alexandre alone with the girls, now lying on the stone flagging of the floor, panting with fear, illuminated by a single lantern. Aside from that pool of shadow, the basement was strangely normal, just a cold, but not unnaturally cold, room, smelling slightly of damp.

  All right, then, I have them here as it wanted . . . I wonder, should I repeat the invo—

  The pool of darkness became a pillar of darkness, and the temperature in the basement plummeted abruptly. Muffled, strangled screams came from both girls—scarcely loud enough in the sudden silence to qualify as squeaks.

  The basement had turned from a prosaic room to a freezing, silent, portico of Hell—not the Hell of the Christians, all fire and demons, but the silent, cold Hel of the Norse. Was that a clue? Was this thing Nordic? But what about—

  The offerings are acceptable, said the voice in his head. And the darkness erupted into tentacles that seized both writhing, horrified girls and dragged them inside it within a second or two. It all happened so fast it took his breath away, and he was left gasping, cold fear closing around his heart. Remain, it commanded, when he started to back away.

  He swallowed hard, all his earlier exuberance gone. Time seemed to stand utterly still—but he was afraid to move. The pillar of darkness remained motionless, neither shrinking nor growing. The silence was absolute. Alexandre couldn’t even hear Alf moving around upstairs.

  Then, with no warning whatsoever, the first girl stumbled out of the pillar and collapsed facedown on the basement floor.

  Take her away, said the voice, and the pillar once again became a pool.

  The silence vanished; in its place were the sounds of Alf shuffling around overhead and the girl breathing. The air warmed, and the scent of damp returned.

  The girl was no longer tied and gagged, but she wasn’t moving except for breathing. Cautiously, Alexandre went to her, and turned her over.

  Her eyes stared fixedly into nothingness, the pupils so dilated that he couldn’t see any iris at all. He touched her face; she was cold, almost corpse-cold, even though she was clearly still breathing. At the touch of her clammy, chill skin, all thoughts of enjoying her before turning her loose on the street vanished out of his mind.

  Bloody hell . . . am I going to have to carry her? He decided to see if he could get her to her feet first, before trying to carry her. Taking one hand, he tugged on it, saying “Stand up.” She obeyed him like some sort of automaton, getting easily to her feet and standing on her own. Encouraged by this, he turned her so that she faced the stairs.

  “Go over there, climb the stairs, open the door at the top, and go into the kitchen,” he ordered. And just like a clockwork toy, she lifted her feet, one after the other, and did as she had been told. He followed behind her, both of them surprising Alf as he laid out a cold supper on a tray in the kitchen.

  “Bloody Jesus!” he choked, catching himself on the back of a chair. “The ’ell! Did—is—”

  “Our guest got what it wanted,” Alexandre informed him. “This is what it left.”

  Alf left his task and prowled around the girl like a nervous cat investigating something it was not at all sure of. The girl paid him no more attention than she had anything else.

  “I can order her about, and she’ll do what I say,” Alexandre continued, as Alf peered into her black eyes and shook his head. “My thought was to take her to the street and set her on her way. I think she’ll just keep going until someone stops her.”

  Alf pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and mopped his face with it; Alexandre saw he was sweating nervously. “Sooner ye do thet, guv, th’ better Oi’ll loik it. Thet thing . . . Oi dunno wut ’tis, but ’tain’t ’ooman no more.”

  Alexandre blinked, a little surprised at Alf’s perceptivity. “I think you might be right,” he said. “But at least our guest left her with enough that we’ll have no trouble disposing of her—and there’s not a chance in the world she’ll betray us.”

  After making sure there were no potential witnesses, he steered the girl-husk out the front door and down to the street. He pointed her in the direction he wanted her to go; she evidenced no more will nor personality than a giant wax doll. But she did manage to navigate all the hummocks and ruts in the snow, which solved the question of whether or not she was actually going to be able to walk far enough away to erase any connections between them and her.

  “Walk forward, move quickly, keep on this street, and don’t stop until someone tells you to,” he ordered, and exactly as if he had wound up a clockwork toy and set it in motion, she began walking. She was able to maintain quite a good pace; he waited, shivering in the cold, until she was three blocks away before going back inside.

  He an Alf looked at each other. Alf mopped his face again. “Oi’ve seen a lotta thin’s, guv,” he said finally. “But Oi hain’t never seen anythin’ thet give me th’ shivers loik—thet. There weren’t nobody in there, guv, Oi swear it.”

  Alexandre thought that over. It was as good an explanation as anything. “How about a brandy?” he suggested.

  “’Ow ’bout a bottle?” Alf countered.

  Alexandre thought about the moment that pillar had erupted into grasping tentacles and engulfed both girls, hauling them into its blackness.

  “I think that’s a capital idea,” he said fervently, and went to get the bottle himself.

  9

  THE flat was much quieter. Suki was back at school, and Roan had followed her there; Memsa’b said both had arrived and were settled safely. From what Durwin said, Roan was as happy as could be with a workshop full of broken and worn-out toys to repair. Durwin himself was a cheerful absence rather than a presence in the house. They seldom saw him, but his satisfaction at being here was palpable, and demonstrated in the way that the flat was always in spotless order—and they had fancied themselves to be good housekeepers! Not that they shirked—Nan, for one, was determined to give Durwin no chance to think they were taking him for granted—but no matter how clean and tidy things were before they went to bed, they were somehow cleaner and more tidy when they woke.

  For their part, despite Amelia’s prescient dreams and their own forebodings, it appeared that life had elected to grant them a temporary holiday, for until three days after Suki left for school, nothing came up that required their talents and attention.

  Which was just as well, really, since while Suki had been with them, they had not had a moment when the three of them weren’t doing something—generally a lesson disguised as an outing, like the entire day they spent at the British Museum. With Suki gone, and their time to themselves, they got the chance to put their spring and summer wardrobes in order, doing all the mending and retrimming they’d put off after cleaning the garments and putting them away. The trimming was the enjoyable part—making old gowns, waists and skirts look new with new lace, ribbons, and other trims. The mending part . . . not so much. They even got a chance to mend what needed mending in their winter clothing before a message came from Sherlock Holmes.

  They had just started on the incredibly dull task of darning stockings when there was the sound of the bell at the front door of the house. They looked at each other with hope; a moment later, there were footsteps on their stairs, and a knock at their door.

  Nan opened it to find one of the Irregulars on the doorstep, with a note. He presented it to her with a flourish and a grin. Doctor Watson has a patient that needs your talent, Nan, who has given me a satisfying puzzle to solve. Please take the cab Billy brings to Baker Street.

  Nan looked at Sarah. Sarah’s eyes were alight. “Thank God,” she said. “If I’d had to darn another sock, I think I would have thrown them all out the window.”

  Nan smiled. “All right, then,” she agreed. “The game’s afoot! Let us get our cloaks, Billy, and we’ll be right down.”

  The sable cloaks were so warm—and so very welcome with the weather so cold�
�that they’d long since got over the faint embarrassment of swanning about in something so ostentatious. As Nan tossed hers over her shoulders, she wondered where Sarah had gone—until her friend came out of the bird room, already swathed in sable, with a carrier in either hand. “You think?” Nan asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “They haven’t been out of the flat since before Christmas,” Sarah pointed out. “And if we need their help and don’t have them with us, we’ll feel the fool. Or worse! It would be horrid to have something go wrong because we hadn’t brought them.”

  “Point taken, and besides, Sherlock likes Neville,” said Nan, and took Neville’s carrier from her friend. Inside it, she spotted Neville’s black beak just sticking out of his sable muff. Nan locked the door of the flat behind them, and they both ran down the stairs and out to the waiting cab, with the Irregular right behind them.

  “Cor,” said Billy, when he was sandwiched in between them, up to his chin in black fur. “This’s more like!”

  Nan grinned. “Toasty, are you?”

  “The toastiest!” the boy replied, and closed his eyes in pure, luxurious bliss. He stayed that way all the way to Baker Street, even dozing a little, rousing with regret when they got to their destination.

  Nan paid the cabby as Billy, his errand complete, ran off, and Sarah preceded her into 221 B.

  When she trotted up the stairs to join her friend, however, there was no one there except Holmes himself. “Where’s the mystery patient?” she asked.

  “At the good doctor’s surgery,” Holmes explained. “I have just finished interviewing her parents and I wanted to have some words with you before you looked at her.”

  Seeing that Holmes was dressed to go out, except for his overcoat, Nan settled on the arm of Watson’s usual chair, and Sarah took the seat, while Holmes strode up and down as he generally did when he was excited. From the look of things, it was probably just as well this new case had turned up. There were new bullet-holes in the woodwork above the mantle, the room smelled as if Holmes had been smoking continuously for days, and there was a certain small leather case on one of the tables, although Holmes showed no sign of having used it recently.

  “Our clients are the Penwicks,” Holmes said, crossing his sitting room in a few strides, turning, and coming back. “They live in West Ham. Last night their daughter Elizabeth vanished on her way to the fish shop to purchase fried fish for the family supper. The neighborhood was scoured for her. She had not arrived at the shop, and no one remembered seeing her on the street. She is, by all repute, a sweet and slightly simple girl, of good temper, who was still enamored of dolls and tea parties and tended to play with girls three or four years younger than she—so they almost immediately ruled out that there might be a possible boyfriend she had run off to join. As you may imagine, by morning they were distraught, when a police officer from Battersea came to inform them that their daughter had been found there, wandering about, apparently witless.”

  Nan looked at him in astonishment. “Battersea? How did she get from—” She stopped herself. “Well, obviously someone took her there.”

  “The question is why. She doesn’t seem to have been . . .” he cleared his throat with embarrassment. “. . . ah . . .”

  “Raped,” Sarah said crisply. “You can say the word, Sherlock. You should know by now we aren’t wilting lilies. Good heavens, we traveled to Africa and back on our own, and defended ourselves very well too, thank you.”

  Holmes recovered himself quickly. “Yes, well . . . the only thing that seems to have been interfered with is her mind. Even the money with which she was to buy the fish was still in her pocket. She was definitely abducted; there are abrasions on her ankles, wrists, face, and neck corresponding to being bound and gagged. But she sits or stands as she has been arranged, doesn’t react to anything except direct orders, and is oblivious to any attempt to question her or converse with her.”

  “Right,” Sarah said, nodding. “So I assume you want Nan to try and read her mind?”

  “Exactly,” Sherlock replied. “I will undertake to discover who abducted her and why, but Watson needs you to see if this is merely shock or if there is something more complicated going on with her, and I need to see if you can glean any information from her thoughts.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Nan said, jumping up and getting a grumbling quork from Neville. Sarah got up with a little less vigor, as Sherlock threw on his Inverness coat and preceded them out the door.

  The surgery was not that far away; it seemed ridiculous to take a cab so short a distance. This, of course was necessary for the ruse that John and Mary lived over the surgery, rather than above Sherlock in 221C. It was much easier to slip over two streets on foot without being observed than it would have been if cabs had been involved. Holmes had many enemies, and he was well aware that if they could not get to him, they would try to use his friends against him. It was safer for the Watsons to be close at hand—and safer for Holmes to have help directly upstairs if he needed it.

  Sherlock led the way; a bell over the door, like that over a shop door, rang as they entered, but the detective went down the narrow hall, papered in pale green stripes, straight through the first door on the right into the tiny but comfortably appointed reception room, and through that to the examination room.

  “Ah, good, Holmes, you brought them,” Watson said, looking up from his patient as they all crowded into the chamber. Watson had a girl sitting in an examination chair, rather than lying on a table, and from where they stood, they couldn’t really see very much past Watson. It was a bit of a squeeze and there was some fumbling as they all got out of outerwear and got themselves sorted out. Nan finally freed Neville from his carrier, and Sarah did the same with Grey. Once cloaks and carriers were disposed of, they joined Watson around Elizabeth Penwick.

  Nan’s initial impression was of nothing so much as a giant wax doll, and frankly, the way the girl looked made her skin crawl. Elizabeth Penwick sat rigidly upright in the examination chair, hands folded in her lap, staring straight ahead. The only proof that she was alive lay in her breathing. She would have been a pretty thing, with a round face, curly, light brown hair, and a slight figure, if she had not been so uncannily without expression. That was not at all helped by her eyes. She had brown eyes . . . but you could only tell they were brown by the thinnest of rim of iris; her pupils seemed to be dilated to their fullest extent.

  “John, is she under the influence of a drug?” Nan asked doubtfully. Not that she was at all familiar with the effects of drugs, but some foolish women used belladonna to dilate their pupils to make their eyes look bigger, didn’t they?

  “Not so far as I have been able to determine,” John Watson replied. “It was the first thing I thought of to account for her state, of course. But any drug I am familiar with would have interfered with her balance and other automatic reactions, and I found no such interference—and a drug would surely have begun to wear off by now; she’s been in police custody since ten in the evening yesterday. She is exactly the same now as when she was found.”

  “If she was found yesterday evening, why did it take so long for her parents to be informed?” Sarah asked sharply.

  “I am sad to say that the police initially thought she was an opium-eater, and merely locked her in a cell to wait for the effects of the opium to wear off,” Watson replied. “I find it hard to fault them for that; in the ordinary run of things, if this had been a girl having a ‘thrill,’ they could have questioned her and turned her over to her parents or guardian by morning. It was only when the descriptions of the missing girl from West Ham began to circulate by messenger to the other precincts that they realized this was Elizabeth.”

  Sarah shook her head. “It’s a shame there is no telegraphy office in every precinct,” she observed, as Grey leaned down off her shoulder to peer into Elizabeth’s eyes. “You would think in these modern times people would be clamori
ng for such a thing.” After a moment the parrot went bolt upright with an alarmed growl. “What’s wrong, Grey?” Sarah asked, as all attention turned to the bird.

  “Careful!” Grey replied. “Danger!”

  John Watson stroked his moustache. “I . . . did not expect that reaction. I am having second thoughts about you using your talent on her, Nan.”

  “That’s why I have Neville,” she pointed out, with determination. “And if any sense is going to be made of this, I don’t think you have a choice except to allow me to proceed.”

  “Well said, Miss Nan,” Holmes approved. With a nod to him, she flexed her hands to limber them, stripped off her gloves, and put her fingers on the girl’s temples, closing her eyes to better concentrate.

  There was . . . silence.

  For a moment, she feared her telepathic talent had suddenly deserted her, for there was . . . nothing there, nothing there at all. She had been inside minds in shock; there was generally something like a great wall of terror, behind which were the memories of what caused the shock, and behind that a second wall of protection, behind which the self cowered. She was a powerful and well-trained telepath; unless someone was just as good as she was, it would be impossible for anyone to keep her from penetrating their barriers and reading their thoughts.

  Yet she sensed Neville’s thoughts, and Sarah’s, and Grey’s—and a little distant from that, Watson’s warm compassion and Sherlock’s calculation and blinding intellect. No, her talent was in perfect working order.

  Here there was . . . nothing. No emotions. No memories. No “self.” This was an empty, echoing, soulless hulk, which moved, and lived, and breathed, but with nothing animating it.

  Nothing within this girl but a void. A void where a personality, a soul, had once been, but was there no more.

  Impossible.

  Nevertheless, it was the truth.