Becoming Holmes by Shane Peacock Page B

London.
    But then he hears something behind him. The woman has come running in his direction. She stands a hundred feet away on the foot pavement down the street and cries out, “Don’t tell anyone! Do
not
try to bring him to justice! You can’t!” She turns and rushes back to the house.
    But Holmes is barely listening. He walks the first half of his journey in tears, and the last in growing anger, from red to white hot.
    There are places I can search to find that rat. It is Saturday. He won’t be at the Treasury. He will hide during the day
.
    But Sherlock is too distraught to go anywhere other than home. Because today was perhaps his last chance to go to Hounslow without being detected, he hadn’t arranged to meet Bell and get back into their Fat Man costume. He had intended to go straight back to the apothecary shop in the dustman’s clothes. So he does, but with absolutely no concern for being spotted. He doesn’t care anymore.
    It isn’t his intention to tell Bell what he witnessed, but the moment he enters the shop, he scurries to the laboratory and pours his heart out to the old man.
    “Go to the police. Tell your young Lestrade friend. They can be in Hounslow at a moment’s notice. Both you and the woman are witnesses, and the crime scene is fresh!”
    “I cannot do that.”
    “You what?”
    “There are dark secrets there. The Governor wants them to stay hidden. That woman came all the way down the street to insist that I not tell anyone.”
    “But why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Normally, Sherlock Holmes would have been hot on this trail, consumed with not only passion but curiosity. Nothing fascinates him more than a puzzle, a real and living puzzle, and this one matters deeply. But he is heartbroken.He wonders if he can ever summon the energy again to be the crime fighter he wants to be. On top of everything, it seems to him that, once again, he has been the cause of a terrible tragedy. If he had not gone into that house and confronted Grimsby, that poor girl would still be alive.
    He says nothing else to Bell and goes to bed. The old man senses his pain and wants to embrace him. But that sort of thing has never been a part of their friendship.
    Sherlock lies in bed in his wardrobe and tosses and turns. He can’t get the girl’s blue eyes out of his mind: blue like his mother’s and kind like Beatrice’s, her blonde hair the very glowing image of Irene’s, all on a hideous face. His anger at Grimsby and Malefactor and Crew grows. Finally, he gets to his feet and goes out into the dangerous London night, seething.

12
EVERYONE SINS
    H e wakes in a sweat and cries out. He can barely remember what he did last night, running through the darkest streets of London. He doesn’t want to remember. He had returned with his head and heart pounding, stripped off his clothes, poured a cold bath in Bell’s big tub in the lab, and washed himself over and over before finally crawling to his bed and, still naked, falling into a deep sleep.
    But now, he tells himself, he must move forward.
What matters is what is before me, not behind. There are things I need to do
.
    He decides upon a bold move. There is no time to waste. He will go directly to Stonefield and speak to him. He
must
know
exactly
what Sir Ramsay’s secret is. The things he heard during that traumatic scene in the house in Hounslow paint a picture of what the Governor is hiding, but one without details. He remembers the woman calling Grimsby a “blackmailer” and the scoundrel replying that his boss was being paid but “not in coins.” The woman pleaded that Sir Ramsay had “been through too much. He and the Missus!” “He loves her,” she had said and, “Heloved the other one too.” She had screamed the poor girl’s name when she went crashing down the stairs: “Angela!” And when it was over, she had cried, “Our beauty is dead! Just like Gabriella! What will Sir Ramsay say? It will break him!” Sherlock remembers wondering why