A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(47)
They had just started on the incredibly dull task of darning stockings when there was the sound of the bell at the front door of the house. They looked at each other with hope; a moment later, there were footsteps on their stairs, and a knock at their door.
Nan opened it to find one of the Irregulars on the doorstep, with a note. He presented it to her with a flourish and a grin. Doctor Watson has a patient that needs your talent, Nan, who has given me a satisfying puzzle to solve. Please take the cab Billy brings to Baker Street.
Nan looked at Sarah. Sarah’s eyes were alight. “Thank God,” she said. “If I’d had to darn another sock, I think I would have thrown them all out the window.”
Nan smiled. “All right, then,” she agreed. “The game’s afoot! Let us get our cloaks, Billy, and we’ll be right down.”
The sable cloaks were so warm—and so very welcome with the weather so cold—that they’d long since got over the faint embarrassment of swanning about in something so ostentatious. As Nan tossed hers over her shoulders, she wondered where Sarah had gone—until her friend came out of the bird room, already swathed in sable, with a carrier in either hand. “You think?” Nan asked, raising an eyebrow.
“They haven’t been out of the flat since before Christmas,” Sarah pointed out. “And if we need their help and don’t have them with us, we’ll feel the fool. Or worse! It would be horrid to have something go wrong because we hadn’t brought them.”
“Point taken, and besides, Sherlock likes Neville,” said Nan, and took Neville’s carrier from her friend. Inside it, she spotted Neville’s black beak just sticking out of his sable muff. Nan locked the door of the flat behind them, and they both ran down the stairs and out to the waiting cab, with the Irregular right behind them.
“Cor,” said Billy, when he was sandwiched in between them, up to his chin in black fur. “This’s more like!”
Nan grinned. “Toasty, are you?”
“The toastiest!” the boy replied, and closed his eyes in pure, luxurious bliss. He stayed that way all the way to Baker Street, even dozing a little, rousing with regret when they got to their destination.
Nan paid the cabby as Billy, his errand complete, ran off, and Sarah preceded her into 221 B.
When she trotted up the stairs to join her friend, however, there was no one there except Holmes himself. “Where’s the mystery patient?” she asked.
“At the good doctor’s surgery,” Holmes explained. “I have just finished interviewing her parents and I wanted to have some words with you before you looked at her.”
Seeing that Holmes was dressed to go out, except for his overcoat, Nan settled on the arm of Watson’s usual chair, and Sarah took the seat, while Holmes strode up and down as he generally did when he was excited. From the look of things, it was probably just as well this new case had turned up. There were new bullet-holes in the woodwork above the mantle, the room smelled as if Holmes had been smoking continuously for days, and there was a certain small leather case on one of the tables, although Holmes showed no sign of having used it recently.
“Our clients are the Penwicks,” Holmes said, crossing his sitting room in a few strides, turning, and coming back. “They live in West Ham. Last night their daughter Elizabeth vanished on her way to the fish shop to purchase fried fish for the family supper. The neighborhood was scoured for her. She had not arrived at the shop, and no one remembered seeing her on the street. She is, by all repute, a sweet and slightly simple girl, of good temper, who was still enamored of dolls and tea parties and tended to play with girls three or four years younger than she—so they almost immediately ruled out that there might be a possible boyfriend she had run off to join. As you may imagine, by morning they were distraught, when a police officer from Battersea came to inform them that their daughter had been found there, wandering about, apparently witless.”
Nan looked at him in astonishment. “Battersea? How did she get from—” She stopped herself. “Well, obviously someone took her there.”
“The question is why. She doesn’t seem to have been . . .” he cleared his throat with embarrassment. “. . . ah . . .”
“Raped,” Sarah said crisply. “You can say the word, Sherlock. You should know by now we aren’t wilting lilies. Good heavens, we traveled to Africa and back on our own, and defended ourselves very well too, thank you.”
Holmes recovered himself quickly. “Yes, well . . . the only thing that seems to have been interfered with is her mind. Even the money with which she was to buy the fish was still in her pocket. She was definitely abducted; there are abrasions on her ankles, wrists, face, and neck corresponding to being bound and gagged. But she sits or stands as she has been arranged, doesn’t react to anything except direct orders, and is oblivious to any attempt to question her or converse with her.”
“Right,” Sarah said, nodding. “So I assume you want Nan to try and read her mind?”
“Exactly,” Sherlock replied. “I will undertake to discover who abducted her and why, but Watson needs you to see if this is merely shock or if there is something more complicated going on with her, and I need to see if you can glean any information from her thoughts.”
“Let’s go, then,” Nan said, jumping up and getting a grumbling quork from Neville. Sarah got up with a little less vigor, as Sherlock threw on his Inverness coat and preceded them out the door.