Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(53)

“He’s a very nice giraffe, but I love him because I know him. I don’t know why anyone else would want him. I’ve had him for as long as I can remember, and he looks a bit . . . sort of used. I tell him all my secrets, and he listens to me. He really listens, not just pretend, until it’s his turn to talk.”

He understood exactly what she meant, and it surprised him.

The waiter brought the orange juice and she thanked him solemnly. Marcus glanced at the door, hoping to see a woman looking frantically for her child. But there was just an elderly man with a white moustache and a walking stick.

“Tell me about your journey,” he said.

“You’re going to help me, aren’t you?” Her voice was steadier, filled with hope now.

This was absurd. He had no idea at all how to detect anything. He worked from a script! He wasn’t a detective, he was Hamlet, agonizing whether to be—or not! Or Henry V, “once more into the breach,” and so on.

She was waiting.

“Yes,” he said decisively.

She smiled at him, suddenly, and beautifully.

“So you arrived at the airport yesterday, with your mother, and Raffa?”

“Yes.”

“And you took a train in, and then a taxi?”

“Yes.”

“In which you accidentally left Raffa?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose.”

She shook her head.

“Then finish your juice, and we will go upstairs and look again to see if your mother has come back, or if someone found Raffa and returned him.”

Obediently she drank the juice and put the glass back down.

He signed the bill, and they walked side by side out of the dining room. He wondered for an instant if he should take her hand, she looked so small and alone. But it was not a natural gesture, and she might resent it. Better not to.

They went across the huge foyer and up to the reception desk.

“Good morning, Mr. St. Giles,” the clerk said with a touch of awe in his voice. He did not even notice Sarah, who was barely taller than the desk.

“Good morning,” Marcus replied. “Perhaps you can help me. My friend, Sarah, has become separated from her mother. Room . . . ?” He looked at Sarah.

She stood up on tiptoe. “Two seventy-three,” she replied. “She wasn’t in her room when I woke up.” She slipped her small, cool hand into Marcus’s and held onto him. For the first time he realized just how lost she was, in a strange city halfway around the world from her home, and the only person she knew had vanished. He closed his fingers over hers.

The clerk looked at the register and soon found what he was looking for.

“You’re Maria Waterman?” he leaned forward to see Sarah.

“That’s my mummy. I’m Sarah Waterman.”

She was telling the truth. That was all Marcus had wished to know.

“Have you seen Mrs. Waterman this morning?” he asked the clerk.

“No, sir,” the clerk replied. “It appears she is not down yet.”

“Thank you,” Marcus said quickly. “We must go upstairs and find her.” He turned away from the desk, holding Sarah’s hand firmly to make sure she was with him.

“Do you have a key?” he asked.

“Yes, but she’s not up there,” Sarah said with a touch of impatience.

“I believe you,” he replied. “But I think it best we don’t tell him anything we don’t have to.”

“Oh! Yes, of course.” Her hand tightened over his and she tried to fall into step with him, though she needed two steps to every one of his.

They went up in the elevator in silence. Marcus’s mind was racing. What was he going to do if the mother really was not there? His playing Sherlock Holmes had dulled his wits. Sarah had not even questioned that the desk clerk called him St. Giles. Did she just assume it was one of Holmes’s aliases?

Please heaven the mother was there, and this was the end of it.

But she was not there. The key worked perfectly. It was an adjoining room and the one bed was slept in, but tidy. A suitcase sat open on the luggage rack. The door to the other room was closed.

Sarah walked over to it and opened it wide. “Mummy?”

There was no answer. She went inside and Marcus followed. The room was in chaos. The bedding was all over the place, cases off the pillows, stuffing tossed haphazardly like the remnants of a snowball fight. Clothes were strewn on every surface. Drawers and cupboards were all open. Two suitcases were turned out. Internal pockets and compartments were out or broken. The door to the bathroom was open, and in no better state.

“She isn’t here,” Sarah said in a very small voice.

The enormity of it hit Marcus. It was real. This eight-year-old’s mother really was gone, maybe violently. She believed he was Sherlock Holmes, and could do something about it. She looked at him now, enormous eyes swimming in tears. She had let go of his hand at the door, and stood totally alone.

He had never felt so utterly helpless. He was not acting. There was no script to give him his lines, no director to tell him where to go or what to do.

“This is very serious,” he said quietly. “I think we had better tell the police.”