Mycroft Holmes (26 page)

“Effluence,” Douglas said.

“Yes,” Holmes agreed brusquely. “Detritus of some kind. That is what can be seen close up. But there was none on shore—at least, not yet.” He turned and made his way back to the burned-out husk, then began to poke around again amongst the ashes.

Douglas looked out a moment longer, then joined him.

The two continued to poke about in silence for a while. Something was occurring to Holmes, and he did not like it one little bit—for though it might answer their latest riddle, it made him gullible, to say nothing of culpable.

“Were you expecting the letters from your suppliers to arrive here?” he ventured.

“Yes,” Douglas said. “That is, no—they would first arrive at the post office in San Fernando, then a neighbor would pick them up and bring them here.” By habit, he looked over toward the pot-bellied stove.

“The post is usually waiting at the kitchen table,” he explained. “Emanuel is the one most likely to…”

When he realized what he was saying, he stood up, brushed the ash off his knees and ran back to the
poui
tree.

“Emanuel!” he shouted so as to awaken him. “Did you collect my letters?”

“When?” the old man asked, gazing up at him with rheumy eyes.

“Did you collect my letters at any time?” Douglas repeated. “Any time in the last month?”

“Of course,” Emanuel said. “That is what neighbors do.”

“When was the last time…?”

“That I gathered your post? Not yesterday, so it must have been the day before… Why? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, no, you did everything fine,” Douglas said, leaning down and patting Emanuel on the arm. “Get some rest. We will be headed back to town soon.”

He returned to the ruined house and squatted next to Holmes, who was investigating broken crockery.

“The letters are one with the chairs and table,” he sighed, indicating the mounds of ash by the pot-bellied stove.

Holmes felt a wave of nausea assail him.

“Georgiana knew about them,” he said.

Douglas scrutinized him. “And how would she know that?”

“Because I
told
her.” Holmes exhaled loudly and closed his eyes. “Whatever your suppliers may’ve written,” he continued, “was threatening enough that she and those beastly men came to search the property. When they could not find what they wanted, they burned down the house so that no one else would find them.”

“But I only asked them to report back on disappearances and deaths. Facts that can be easily unearthed, once someone is in this vicinity. So what could possibly be so terrible that—”

“Cyrus?” a quavering voice interrupted.

Douglas turned. Emanuel was standing behind him, smiling.

“Yes, Emanuel, what is it?” Douglas asked, forcing a smile in return.

“With all this commotion, I have not had the chance to congratulate you on your engagement.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, what is
wrong
with me?” Emanuel said. “Never grow old, Douglas. Never, for it is a terrible fate indeed. Promise me you will not.”

“Yes, yes, I promise,” Douglas assured him. “But what were you saying about an engagement?”

“Yes, your engagement!” Emanuel repeated with growing enthusiasm. “I knew that in the midst of all this tragedy, there was a bit of good news. There I was, leaving the post office with your mail, and your fiancée, she was at the counter, asking about it, just as I was walking out. Ah, such a lovely voice! Like a little bird tweeting.”

“What did she look like?” Douglas prompted.

“She looked like a beautiful woman,” Emanuel declared with certainty. “She was at the counter, and I heard her say your name, and I heard her identify herself, and that you had asked her to fetch your post. So I say to her, ‘Missus!’ I say. ‘I have them,’ and I pulled them out from under my hat, thusly!”

He mimed the motion.

“And I gave them to her,” he continued, “there and then. Oh, she was so grateful. She kissed me on the cheek. Here!”

He pointed to the spot.

Holmes stepped forward. “Emanuel. Please. What did she look like?”

“Pretty, I said,” Emanuel repeated. “Blond! And young… too young for you, Douglas,” he added with a wink, accompanied by a dark and toothless grin. “She wrapped them in a neat purple bow.”

Douglas stared at Emanuel, then at Holmes, mystified.

“Cyrus?” Emanuel asked.

“Yes?” Douglas said, distracted, turning back to him.

“I think I shall go lie down again a little.”

“No, old man, it’s getting cold. One more moment, and I’ll take you home.”

Douglas turned to Holmes again. “But if she
had
the letters, then why
this
?” he asked, and he indicated the destruction all around him.

It took Holmes a moment of contemplation, a moment when the noise around him ceased, and he was alone in the depths of his mind, which appeared to him like gears endlessly turning. Everything he knew about Georgiana, about her character, about her ideals, sifted through.

Out came a hunch that made him feel both prescient and emotionally destroyed. He hurried over to the metal flue that was attached to the pot-bellied stove, tore it off of its foundation with unnecessary force, as it was no longer anchored to anything of substance, and dug around inside the tubing.

Along with soot and cinders, out came a packet of letters. The envelopes were blackened by smoke and curled with heat, but otherwise undamaged.

They were still wrapped in a neat purple bow.

Douglas’s eyes were as round as two large coals.

“What on
earth
…” he began, but Holmes shook his head.

“I realize my feelings for her are absurd,” he said quietly. “She
is
a monster, after all.”

“You think Georgiana put them in there?” Douglas asked, astonished.

Holmes shrugged. “Who else?”

“What, is this a game with her?” Douglas shot back angrily.

“No,” Holmes replied. “I think she is in over her head, and does not know how to get out.”

“Ah, I see! She conspires in the murders of children, of adults, now she is rethinking it.”

“Who conspires?” Emanuel interjected meekly. “Your fiancée? Douglas, is she a bad girl?”

The sun had set and a light wind was beginning to blow, lifting the cinders.

The old man was starting to shiver.

He looks as if the thread of his life is ready to be cut
, Holmes thought.

“Emanuel,” Douglas said, wrapping a protective arm around his shoulders. “I will take you home now, as I promised.”

“You cannot think of leaving now,” Holmes protested, holding up the bundle. “Not when we have these in hand!”

“There is a living creature here that I am responsible for,” Douglas murmured through gritted teeth.

Holmes waved the packet of letters in the air.

“And who knows how many
other
living creatures might be saved if only we could suss this out,” he countered.

“You are being irrational,” Douglas shot back. “We are in ashes, and losing the light. How do you propose we read these precious letters?”

Holmes ran an exasperated hand through his hair and seemed ready to answer back in kind.

“Forgive me, Douglas,” he said after a moment. “You are correct, of course. It seems I am mortified that my carelessness has added to your sorrows—”

Emanuel interrupted.

“Ah, my boys, is it a place of refuge you are seeking, then?”

“Yes, Emanuel,” Douglas said patiently. “For you. The night is growing chilly.”

“But I have a place here, Douglas,” the old man declared. “It is not as spacious as your house was, as it is only one room, but it is large enough, with four sweet-smelling straw beds, hardly used, though we require but three. I have my own pot-bellied stove, and a stall for the horses, and hay…”

“I realize that,” Douglas interjected, “but it saddens you to stay there.”

Emanuel shook his head.

“If you remain with me,” he said earnestly, “if you will not leave me alone, I can survive it one night. It will almost be as when you were little, hey, Cyrus? And you would stop by for Mariana’s ginger-blossom tea. Do you remember?”

“Indeed I do,” Douglas replied softly.

“He loved my wife’s tea,” he explained to Holmes. “Always such a good little boy. So well behaved.”

“We would be honored to stay with you tonight,” Douglas said, squeezing the old man’s shoulder.

“Good, good.” Emanuel smiled, clapping his hands. “Then it is done! And perhaps soon you will introduce me officially to your fiancée. Eh?”

Douglas and Holmes glanced at each other, dismayed.

“She is not my fiancée,” Douglas explained patiently.

“I know, I know,” Emanuel said somberly. “It is not so easy for one of our kind…” The old man rubbed his skin with a forefinger. “…to marry an Englishwoman. Times have changed, but not so much, eh? Well hush, then. Let it be our secret for now. Perhaps some day, people will not see color so much.”

Douglas nodded. “Perhaps,” he said.

EMANUEL
’
S HUT HAD ONE SMALL WINDOW FACING WESTWARD TO
the sea, but was set so high up that the view was all sky and no water. It was grimy with soot, and its top hinge was missing so that it could no longer be pried open.

There was a pot-bellied stove, but its front grate had been torn off, and it hadn’t had a good scrubbing in years. The room itself was nearly empty but for a deal table and three splintered old chairs, a wooden chaise that looked like an instrument of medieval torture, and four mattresses with straw stuffing so old that some of it actually stood up in sharp little needles.

The mattresses themselves weren’t quite so sweet-smelling as promised. Holmes could smell them from the moment he walked in—and “sweet” would have been nowhere in the description.

Yet the old man was kind and seemed very glad for the company. He generously filled his lamps with enough oil that they could have burned for a month. Then he expertly lit the stove and stood back, admiring his handiwork as the ancient old receptacle coughed plumes of smoke that painted another layer of soot upon that small high window and turned the room into a sweltering oven.

But creature comforts mattered not a whit to Holmes. He was anxious only about the letters. He blew dust off the deal table and took a seat.

Douglas, after ascertaining that Emanuel did not need his help, pulled up a chair across from Holmes, when the old man called out from across the room.

“I have no beer or wine,” he said despairingly.

“That won’t be necessary!” Douglas called back.

“Ah, you’ll be playing cards, then. Hearts?” he guessed, squinting at them while removing his shoes.

“Now what prompted
that
idea?” Douglas asked.

Emanuel cocked his head, confused. “What other reason to sit up then, eh? When the beds are so comfortable? Here!”

He toddled over to one mattress, one with a particularly prominent hump, and sat upon it. Then he demonstrated how to stretch out upon one’s back, as if neither man had ever attempted such a daring feat before.

“There, you see? I do not even need a pillow,” he announced proudly. “Which is handy, as I have none. You simply lie here quietly…”

“If you are going to sleep,” Douglas scolded, watching him, “kindly do not take the worst bed of the lot.”

“And you will kindly be quiet before your elders!” Emanuel snapped. “Now, then,” he continued as if in the midst of some difficult lesson. He pulled a moth-eaten blanket around him, up to his neck. “You simply close your eyes… thus…”

Within seconds, he was snoring lightly.

* * *

Douglas took the packet of letters from Holmes and cut open the first two envelopes, both of which bore a postmark from Honduras, both sent by the same correspondent, but five days apart.

As he scanned them, Holmes watched him expectantly, and after a moment began to drum his fingertips on the tabletop.

“I am too practical,” he said, “to believe that somewhere in that stack lies the answer to all our problems.”

“Far from it,” Douglas replied sourly, “at least judging from these. They say nothing beyond the usual niceties. ‘All is well,’ not to be outdone by ‘all is
still
well’…” He pushed the first two letters aside and tore open the third envelope, this one hailing from Jamaica.

“Might you include me from the first salutation?” Holmes asked drily. “For if not, I shall surely go mad.”

At which point Douglas began translating aloud.

“‘My dear Cyrus,’” he said. “‘You shall be pleased to know that our little island has seen a rather peaceful month…’”

Holmes laughed mirthlessly.

“We are not pleased in the least,” he said.

That letter, too, was shoved aside in favor of the fourth and the fifth. Holmes’s hopes to the contrary, these were no more productive. Douglas showed his disdain by balling up both and lobbing them neatly into the stove’s open maw.

By the time he’d reached the sixth envelope—this one hailing from Venezuela—it bore the brunt of his growing annoyance.

“Careful!” Holmes cried. “You nearly cut the letter in twain!”