The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(88)
Three hours passed before the doorbell rang and Mrs Hudson allowed the ragamuffin form of Holly Hoskins to come up. (Young Wiggins, no longer quite so young, had long since aged out of the Baker Street Irregulars and was now, due to Holmes’s patronage, a police inspector out in the country with a young, pretty wife and his second child on the way.)
The dirty little urchin announced herself with an insolent, “Must be a bit of a carriwitchet, eh, to ’ave Mr Sherlock ’Olmes call me in direct like.”
“Quite,” Holmes agreed.
She lounged into the centre of the room, a wisp of a girl, with coffee-coloured skin and dark curled hair underneath a black-and-white checked boy’s hat, but confident and certain despite her size. Holmes had originally attempted to install a young boy named Doherty as their new leader, but Holly Hoskins had effortlessly bullied Doherty out of the position and taken over herself, much to Holmes’s surprise and chagrin. However, she’d proved herself during the Adventure of the Bloodthirsty Baron and had been so instrumental in locating the baron’s missing carriage that even Holmes had been forced to admit defeat on this particular front and accept her as the new leader of the Baker Street Irregulars. He’d told me in confidence that she was by far the sharpest of a sharp lot and had something of his admiration, but there was little to show that in his expression now.
“We are looking,” Holmes said, “for a ship that may have docked in the past two days or will dock shortly with a crew of sailors that take pains to keep below decks during the daylight. It would be a large ship capable of holding at least twenty men, possibly more. They may be a merchant vessel, but would have armaments to allow them to defend themselves at sea. They may dock at night and keep to themselves or may dock during the day with a skeleton crew. Above all, I am looking for any rash of disappearances near the docks.”
“What are the wages, governor?”
“There’s a shilling each in it for you,” Holmes said, “but you must promise to exercise caution, Holly. I would not see you or your charges added to the list of the disappeared for all the world. If you find anything that matches this description, you must report it to me or Watson here. You stay well clear of any ship that matches that description and avoid any areas demonstrating any disappearances you uncover. We shall pick up the investigation at that juncture. Is this all quite clear?”
His solemn tone must have made an impression, for Holly nodded carefully.
“Very good,” Holmes said.
*
We kept vigil throughout the rest of the night. I was no longer such an early riser, and as such it was nearly noon when Holmes bounded up the bedroom stairs and pounded on my door. He’d made so much noise coming up the stairs that the latter action had hardly been necessary. Even so, the daylight torpor was difficult to shake out of my head until Holmes shouted out: “The reports are in, Doctor, and we are bound for Gravesend!”
I completed my toilette and came down the stairs as fast as I could.
“Gravesend is a far cry from London proper,” I said as Holmes slid a teapot towards me. It reeked with the savoury aroma I craved and I poured out a cup full of the dark red liquid and drank it off without a second thought, giving no more consideration to the chicken that had given his life for this meal than I did for the pig that had donated Holmes’s bacon. Peculiar the things you can get used to.
“Holly has quite outdone herself,” Holmes said, standing up and abandoning his breakfast, untouched, in order to pace around the room. “She has ambition, that one has. Better even than Wiggins was. She passed my request and some of my shillings down the Thames and information trickled back up. One of the ships near Royal Terrace Pier has reported several missing sailors. I didn’t tell Holly to keep watch for missing sailors specifically, but I should have. It is sound thinking on her part. You’ll soon have to leave Baker Street and start writing up her cases next, mark my word!”
“That bothers you?” I asked, noting his agitation.
Holmes waved off my comment. “No, that is all to the good.”
I lifted a piece of bacon out of the serving platter and tried a small nibble, out of nostalgia, but found that I could taste only charred flesh. I hastily bundled the rest of the piece into a napkin and discarded it onto an unused plate with a sigh. “What then?”
“Things are coming to a head. Miss Winter and Somersby are coming here in a carriage to take us to Gravesend. Moriarty is very possibly waiting for us there and Dracula’s ship is due to land tomorrow night. I shall send a telegram to the Count to give him and Mina all the particulars. The pieces are all hurtling themselves across the board to meet in the middle and it shall be a strange thing indeed if events do not have a serious impact on London and possibly, just possibly, the rest of Europe. Except…”
“Except what?”
He reached the shelves at the end of the room and spun, elevating a finger like an excitable schoolmaster. “There is a piece of this equation we do not have in our hands, Watson. You remember my outrage and despair when I discovered that Moriarty had fled to sea to patiently await my demise?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It was an elegantly simple solution, remember, and I was not willing to abandon London in order to pursue him and so could devise no strategy to beat it.”
“Quite so.”
He stalked back in my direction. “So then, what has changed? Something is driving Moriarty to bring things to a head rather sooner than he had planned.”