Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(54)

“Aren’t you going to help me?” She looked devastated.

“Yes . . . yes, of course I am.” What else could he say? “But the police will have technical equipment that I don’t. A lot of things have happened since . . .” Conan Doyle was writing, he finished silently. His mind was racing even more. “We should put the ‘do not disturb’ signs on the doors, both of them. So the evidence is not moved. Then we’ll go.”

She nodded, too close to tears to speak.



But the desk sergeant recognized Marcus immediately.

“Oh, yes . . . ?” he said when Marcus told him the situation. “And you’re Sherlock Holmes, right?” There was a sneer in both his eyes and his voice.

Sarah looked at him. “Yes,” she said solemnly. “Mr. Holmes says you are the right people to come to, because even though he’s clever, you have technical things that he doesn’t.”

“Does he, now? So we can do the legwork, and he can take the credit, eh? Go on, kid, beat it. Go and take your wit somewhere else. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

Sarah looked as if he had slapped her.

Marcus felt real anger boil up inside him, nothing pretend about it.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, man?” he said between his teeth. “An eight-year-old child comes to you for help because the only person she knows in the country has disappeared, and you tell her to go away! Who’s in charge here?”

The color rose up the desk sergeant’s cheeks. “I’m in charge . . . sir! And I won’t have some cheap actor coming in here, wasting our time to promote his miserable career. We have real crimes to attend to. Lying to the police and wasting police time is a crime. And if you don’t get out of here and stop holding up the line, I’ll charge you. How will that look in the newspapers . . . Mr. Holmes?”

Sarah did not move.

“And involving a child in your cheap stunts. That’s low, even for one of you.” The sergeant peered more closely at Sarah. “I suppose you are a child? You’re not some kind of freak, are you?”

Marcus drew in his breath to tell the man what he thought of him; one or two choice phrases came to mind. Then he felt Sarah’s hand slide into his, and remembered what this was about. He did not matter; she did.

“I would like your name, Sergeant,” he said quietly. “And I would like you to make a note that twenty-five minutes past nine this morning, I brought Sarah Waterman, aged eight, to this station to report that her mother, Maria Waterman, has disappeared, leaving obvious signs of struggle and search in her hotel bedroom. You turned her away as some publicity stunt, and sent her back out into the street again, to fend for herself.”

The sergeant was scarlet in the face now. “But I’m not sending her out alone, am I? Mr. Sherlock Holmes! I’m sending her with the most famous detective in the world! What more could I do than that?”

“We can manage without him, can’t we?” Sarah asked in a small voice.

“Yes, of course we can,” Marcus said firmly, wondering just how big a fool he was making of himself. “Come on.” He turned to leave, taking her hand again.

“Damn actors!” the sergeant said between his teeth. “That’s the third idiot this month.”

“Fourth, if you count the clown who thought he was Superman,” the constable replied.

Outside on the pavement Sarah stopped and looked up at Marcus, waiting. How long before the trust in her face turned to doubt, and then fear? What on earth was he to do? Sherlock Holmes was about as real as Hercule Poirot! Why had he not had the sense to tell her that in the first place? He had no idea how to detect anything at all.

She was waiting, the light fading out of her eyes.

“We must begin,” he said. “Unfortunately it seems we will have to do it without any technical help, just our brains.”

She took a deep breath, and tried a very small smile.

“We will go across the road to the café over there, and you will tell me everything you know. Then we shall proceed accordingly.” He took her hand again and walked to the crossing. As soon as they had sat down, he to an appalling cup of tea, she to a dish of ice cream, he began.

“Tell me about Raffa. How big is he? What is he made of? Who gave him to you? And why would anyone want him badly enough to ask for him as ransom for your mother? That is a terrible thing to do!”

She nodded, and answered with solemnity.

“Raffa is about this big.” She held one hand about eighteen inches above the table. “But of course half of it is his neck.”

“I see. So he is quite big. What is he made of?”

That was harder. “I don’t know,” she said at last.

“Is he hard or soft? Does he bend?”

She smiled properly this time. “Of course he bends! He’s sort of like . . . cloth, on the outside. I don’t know what’s inside him.”

“Good. We are progressing. Who gave him to you?” Please heaven she did not say it was Father Christmas!

“Wayne. I think he’s going to marry my mother. But that won’t make him my father, will it?”

“Not if you don’t want him to be.”

“I’m not certain . . .”

“How long ago did he give you Raffa?”