the other three. No one in theirright mind should have assumed that
she
was the Rathbone heiress. He had been far too rash. The girl was barely visible in the dimness through that crack in the door and was sitting at the far end of a room. She likely didn’t have the color of hair he thought or the dress or anything – he had
wanted
her to be his catch. Whomever he saw at St. Neots wasn’t who he assumed she was.
Perhaps he saw a ghost in that haunted house … because he had just observed Victoria Rathbone in London. She was standing there in full public view, in the flesh, right beside her own father and a gloating Inspector Lestrade.
PART TWO
ROBBERY
F eeling ashamed and weak, Sherlock wants to go home. All his plans seem pie-in-the-sky now, far too adult for a boy his age. A detective? Sherlock Holmes? What he really needs, as Penny Hunt said, is his family. But where is home now? Is it the apothecary shop from which he has been away without permission for nearly two days? Will Sigerson Bell take him back? His dear mother is dead, his little sister too, his much older brother employed and distant, and his father … could Sherlock go south to the Crystal Palace and talk to Wilberforce Holmes? He needs his wisdom and love. But it is difficult for his father to even look at him now. Wilber will always be reminded of the death of his wife when he sees his son. Sherlock doesn’t want to put his father through that. The boy knows he has done all of this to himself: this is where his selfish pursuit of glory, his pride, has taken him.
He holds back his tears as he trudges toward Denmark Street. He can’t see Irene, he’s wary of Malefactor and his gang … he is all alone.
Or is he?
The apothecary has been like a father to him before. Perhaps, if he is contrite, the old man will accept his apology. Baring his soul, telling Bell exactly what happened would be difficult, but maybe it is what he has to do. He approaches the latticed bow windows of the little shop with his mind made up.
There’s an awful sound coming from the laboratory at the back when he arrives. But it isn’t one of those terrible explosions he has often heard, the result of Bell’s inventive and reckless mixing and heating of chemicals, that have variously: shaken the building, left slime on the walls, shattered glass, and singed the septuagenarian’s bushy white eyebrows clean off. Neither is it a gunshot, which the boy has occasionally heard in the shop too…. The alchemist sometimes empties his firearms indoors, picking off various ribs or even the eye sockets of his hanging skeletons.
No, it is music … or so Bell thinks.
He is sitting in his favorite basket chair holding his old Stradivarius violin in that awkward, gypsy-styled manner of his: low on a knee. His face is red, sweat pours down his substantial dome onto his forehead, and he is humming at the top of his lungs. Every now and then he stops playing and conducts, flailing his bow through the air. It isn’t that the music is being played so badly: Bell is as strangely gifted a violinist as he is at many other eccentric pursuits. But his sense of invention on the instrument, which goads him into experimenting with all sorts of pieces, new and old, resultsin admixtures of music at least as bizarre as his dangerous chemical concoctions. It is an alchemy of sounds, resulting in a jarring alloy.
Sherlock doesn’t mind. This is his mother’s favorite instrument.
Sigerson Bell doesn’t hear the boy enter, so when he looks up and sees him, he is so startled that he flings the bow across the room.
“Excuse me, Master Holmes,” he apologizes, scurrying, bent-over in his question-mark shape, to retrieve the implement from the porcelain sink where it has landed.
Then he stops in his tracks.
“ YOU !” he says loudly, pivoting with stunning quickness and pointing a crooked finger at the boy, “You are two days late for your work! Where have you been?”
He has never sounded so
she
was the Rathbone heiress. He had been far too rash. The girl was barely visible in the dimness through that crack in the door and was sitting at the far end of a room. She likely didn’t have the color of hair he thought or the dress or anything – he had
wanted
her to be his catch. Whomever he saw at St. Neots wasn’t who he assumed she was.
Perhaps he saw a ghost in that haunted house … because he had just observed Victoria Rathbone in London. She was standing there in full public view, in the flesh, right beside her own father and a gloating Inspector Lestrade.
PART TWO
ROBBERY
F eeling ashamed and weak, Sherlock wants to go home. All his plans seem pie-in-the-sky now, far too adult for a boy his age. A detective? Sherlock Holmes? What he really needs, as Penny Hunt said, is his family. But where is home now? Is it the apothecary shop from which he has been away without permission for nearly two days? Will Sigerson Bell take him back? His dear mother is dead, his little sister too, his much older brother employed and distant, and his father … could Sherlock go south to the Crystal Palace and talk to Wilberforce Holmes? He needs his wisdom and love. But it is difficult for his father to even look at him now. Wilber will always be reminded of the death of his wife when he sees his son. Sherlock doesn’t want to put his father through that. The boy knows he has done all of this to himself: this is where his selfish pursuit of glory, his pride, has taken him.
He holds back his tears as he trudges toward Denmark Street. He can’t see Irene, he’s wary of Malefactor and his gang … he is all alone.
Or is he?
The apothecary has been like a father to him before. Perhaps, if he is contrite, the old man will accept his apology. Baring his soul, telling Bell exactly what happened would be difficult, but maybe it is what he has to do. He approaches the latticed bow windows of the little shop with his mind made up.
There’s an awful sound coming from the laboratory at the back when he arrives. But it isn’t one of those terrible explosions he has often heard, the result of Bell’s inventive and reckless mixing and heating of chemicals, that have variously: shaken the building, left slime on the walls, shattered glass, and singed the septuagenarian’s bushy white eyebrows clean off. Neither is it a gunshot, which the boy has occasionally heard in the shop too…. The alchemist sometimes empties his firearms indoors, picking off various ribs or even the eye sockets of his hanging skeletons.
No, it is music … or so Bell thinks.
He is sitting in his favorite basket chair holding his old Stradivarius violin in that awkward, gypsy-styled manner of his: low on a knee. His face is red, sweat pours down his substantial dome onto his forehead, and he is humming at the top of his lungs. Every now and then he stops playing and conducts, flailing his bow through the air. It isn’t that the music is being played so badly: Bell is as strangely gifted a violinist as he is at many other eccentric pursuits. But his sense of invention on the instrument, which goads him into experimenting with all sorts of pieces, new and old, resultsin admixtures of music at least as bizarre as his dangerous chemical concoctions. It is an alchemy of sounds, resulting in a jarring alloy.
Sherlock doesn’t mind. This is his mother’s favorite instrument.
Sigerson Bell doesn’t hear the boy enter, so when he looks up and sees him, he is so startled that he flings the bow across the room.
“Excuse me, Master Holmes,” he apologizes, scurrying, bent-over in his question-mark shape, to retrieve the implement from the porcelain sink where it has landed.
Then he stops in his tracks.
“ YOU !” he says loudly, pivoting with stunning quickness and pointing a crooked finger at the boy, “You are two days late for your work! Where have you been?”
He has never sounded so
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