THE FLYING BOY

Sherlock is considering committing a crime: the crime of extortion, in which you force someone to pay you money. His victim will be Inspector Lestrade.

What if I can prove to him that this trapeze accident was murder? he asks himself as he broils through the four-mile walk from Southwark to Sydenham. And what if I can discover who did it, and then not only withhold the evidence, but threaten to give it to the press first, unless I am handed a reward? It wouldn’t be for five hundred pounds. That’s only for upper-class villains. But it just might be enough to solve my problems … and Mr. Bell’s. He steps up his pace.

He knows the police won’t have moved any of the trapeze apparatus from the accident scene. That is routine when something like this happens. Though they suspect no foul play they must examine the area carefully. Everything will be exactly as it was when the incident occurred, or as close to it as possible, given the stampede of spectators afterwards.

When he arrives at the Crystal Palace, he blends with the growing throngs and sneaks through the front entrance at the top of the palatial stone steps. He checks the iron clock ticking inside the doors: just past noon.

The accident took place at the far end of the central transept, where events that need great space occur. Blondin once walked the high rope here above twenty thousand spectators, carrying a child on his back. The sun sparkles through the acres of curving glass ceiling, leaving flecks of light on the planked floor. The air is humid and heavy.

On his way down the transept, Sherlock notices his father, tidying up after having released the thousands of doves of peace at noon. Wilberforce Holmes doesn’t even live in the family’s old flat anymore. A Palace owner heard of his wife’s tragic death and offered him a room in one of his homes here in Sydenham. Wilber accepted the charity immediately. He is far from Sherlock now, both in spirit and place. He barely speaks these days, and just thinking of his son reminds him of what happened to his wife, so he tries not to. Their conversation yesterday had been stilted.

The boy stands still, watching his father for a moment, working industriously despite his sadness, his mind riveted on his job. Sherlock is thankful for that: Wilber Holmes will have peace, at least for a while. The boy still loves his brilliant father, the man with the wonderfully scientific brain – they are much alike both in appearance and mind.

Mr. Holmes seems to sense him, glances up … then looks away, pretending that he hasn’t seen his son. Soon, he turns his back. Sherlock wilts for a moment, but he understands. It must be this way. Maybe some day he can prove himself worthy to his father. Some time in the future everyone will know the name of Sherlock Holmes and Wilber will be proud. He can start this very minute.

Sherlock turns toward the crime scene and steels himself. The area where the trapeze artist fell has been cordoned off. A half dozen sweating Bobbies dressed in their heavy blue uniforms and black helmets, keep nosey people away.

Sherlock strolls past, pretending to be disinterested. None of the Peelers pay him the slightest attention, and yet he has a strange sensation of being watched. He looks way up at the trapeze apparatus: platforms, ropes, bars, all tied now and still. He’s often imagined what it would be like to be up there, actually flying, hearing the roar of the crowds. Leotard, Blondin, the Flying Farinis, the Mercures, are all like idols to him, as heroic as Britain’s warriors at the Battle of Waterloo. If his family had had the money to buy portraits of such daring stars, he would have filled a photograph album with them.

As he passes, Sherlock sees one of his heroes. He can’t believe his good fortune. It’s The Swallow or L’Hirondelle, Mercure’s dynamic flying son. Sherlock had seen the boy gazing down from the perch yesterday, a look of horror on his face. He seems collected now, tying up ropes at the base of a pole, tightening bolts, reaching into a sack for tools as he works. He wears a pair of checked brown trousers, the sleeveless top of his performing costume, a green felt hat with a feather tipped at a jaunty angle. His face is turned away, but surprisingly, given what happened to his father less than twenty-four hours before, he is whistling a merry tune.

Holmes glances back at the Bobbies. All of them are looking away, not vigilant in the tiring humidity. Again, he has the feeling he is being observed, though when he looks up and down the nearly empty hall, he can’t spot who it might be. He moves quickly toward The Swallow. Sherlock is not sure how to address this awe-inspiring performer, but he has more than just a rudimentary knowledge of the French language. In fact, his French grades, like his others, are always high – he can speak in the young artiste’s native tongue.

“Excusez-moi” he asks respectfully.

The boy abruptly stops whistling and turns. For an instant an expression of fear crosses his face. But it passes quickly.

“Are you addressin’ me?”

Sherlock can’t believe it. The Swallow has a cockney accent.

“Y-Yes,” is all he can sputter.

“Well I ain’t answerin’,” says the trapeze star and turns back to his job. Up close he looks no more than eleven or twelve years old, but he’s full of the regard for himself that starring on the flying trapeze in one of Europe’s great troupes would give anyone.

“I just wanted to express my sorrow at what happened to your father,” offers Sherlock.

“Weren’t me father. You’d better get away, boy.” The lad turns again as he speaks and gives Sherlock a hard look. “The Force won’t take kindly to yer snoopin’ about. ’alf a minute and they’ll remove you without warm regards.” He crosses his arms over his chest and his little biceps bulge.

Sherlock looks toward the Bobbies. They haven’t even glanced his way yet.

“Was there anyone who didn’t like your … Monsieur Mercure?”

The Swallow lets out a loud laugh. “Anyone? What about everyone?”

The performer is full of surprises. But Sherlock wants more, so he decides to play a card.

“What if I told you that I know something particular about what happened yesterday … something that maybe only one other person knows?”

The Swallow hesitates and for an instant his tough exterior drops. “Don’t get me wrong, mate,” he explains. “I’m pretty broken up concernin’ this. It was a terrible accident. Don’t know what you mean by ‘knowin’ somethin’.’ You must excuse me.” And with that he turns away again and won’t look back.

It is just as well. A Bobbie has noticed Sherlock and is advancing on him. The officer stops when the boy steps away from the young trapeze star and saunters off.

But Sherlock wants to get another look at the fatal trapeze bar too. He spots it on a wooden chair directly behind one of the policemen, looking, as he suspected, even more splintered than when he first examined it.

How can he get past the Peelers and take another peek? He doesn’t need much time, just a few seconds. Maybe he can tell what kind of cuts were made: were they sawed, straight slices, what sort of instrument was used? It won’t matter if they catch him. They’ll think he’s a fanatic and simply throw him out. He just wants to grab it, glance at it, and go.

He’ll make this rudimentary – a simple bit of misdirection. He walks up close to the policeman nearest the chair and stares up at the ceiling, looking into the distance away from where they are standing. He stares for a long while, examining the thousands of panes of glass and iron frames arching two hundred feet above.

Finally, the Bobbie looks up.

Sherlock darts behind him and grabs the bar. He can still see the cuts, though they are indeed now obscured after being splintered by the spectators’ boots.

“You! Boy!”

The Peeler collars Sherlock and he drops the bar, allowing it to clatter on the chair. But just as quickly another voice echoes in the hall, and he recognizes it.

Inspector Lestrade.

“Release him!” the detective shouts. “Release him!” He has come out from behind one of the central transept’s huge potted plants, near a red iron pillar beside a wall. There’s someone with him.

Now Sherlock knows why he’d felt watched. Lestrade is a short, lean man, dressed in a tweed suit with waistcoat and a black bowler hat on his head. Holmes, who has no regard for him at all, thinks his face looks like a rodent’s. He wishes the detective would go away for now – it isn’t yet time for his involvement. And he certainly doesn’t want Lestrade trying to make amends: this man to whom Sherlock gave all the incriminating evidence concerning the Whitechapel murder and who then took every ounce of credit for himself.

“Master Sherlock Holmes?” he queries, peering into the boy’s face as he approaches, as if to confirm his identity. His son, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years of age and almost a copy of him both in dress and appearance (minus the handlebar mustache), is right at his side, staring curiously at the younger lad too. It is obvious that he is apprenticing to become a police detective.

“The same,” allows Sherlock.

“And why are you here?” Lestrade doesn’t sound like he wants to make amends at all. He sounds stern, yet interested.

“My father works here,” says the boy.

“I know that,” retorts the inspector, “I don’t mean here, in this building, I mean here on this spot … where this accident occurred … looking at that.” He points at the trapeze bar.

“I am an enthusiast of the flying trapeze.”

Young Lestrade laughs out loud. His father gives him a look, cutting him short.

“Aren’t we all?” says the detective, gazing back at Sherlock with a forced smile.

“If there is nothing else, sir, I will be on my way.”

He brushes past the other boy who is regarding him with something very much like admiration.

“We have our eyes on you, Master Holmes,” says Lestrade loudly, picking up the trapeze bar and examining it very closely.

Then I have nothing to fear, thinks the boy.

On the surface, it might seem that Sherlock had come all the way out to the Palace and found nothing, but that isn’t true. Little details are often of immense importance. Any scientist knows that. Though the bar hadn’t told him much, he had learned a good deal about Le Coq of the Flying Mercures, the Monsieur himself. He’s a man who isn’t well liked, a man whose apparently fatal fall inspires little sadness in his own protégé, a man who obviously has enemies. Exactly who they are is still to be learned, though there is already one potential suspect – The Swallow, so inexplicably happy and guarded in what he has to say. Sherlock has also observed the murder scene meticulously. It has told him that he must come back in order to make the bold move he now has in mind. His heart races when he thinks of it.

But for the time being, he has another destination to get to quickly.

A few hours later he is back in the city. It is mid afternoon and he is walking briskly across the rough sett stones in the gray square at Smithfield’s Market near St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Monsieur Mercure is in there somewhere, and Sherlock is determined that he will get inside and see him.

But he’s too late.

Approaching an inconspicuous door, he spies Lestrade and his son exiting a central entrance some distance away. Sherlock had to walk all the way here from the Palace, while this duo obviously traveled by carriage. They turn and step directly toward him, heading south, down to busy Newgate Street to hail a hansom cab. The day has turned gray as London days often do, and rain is drizzling in the sticky air. Sherlock steps back into a little recessed doorway and crouches down, pulling his coat up over his head, pretending to be a destitute street boy. Most gentlemen, and Lestrade considers himself one, wouldn’t take notice of such an urchin.

The detective and his son are walking at a measured pace, talking.

“Well, he’s still alive,” says the young apprentice.

“Just. He’ll never utter another word.”

“What did you make of the other two?”

“They were arguing when we arrived, weren’t they? What it was about I couldn’t grasp – they stopped rather abruptly.” Lestrade sounds frustrated.

“My perception was that they were put out when they saw us. And they didn’t seem terribly sad about Mercure, did you think, Father?”

“No they didn’t, and I don’t like it.”

They stroll past Sherlock without even glancing down.

“When you put that together with the trapeze bar –” muses the younger Lestrade.

“Yes, I know.”

“How did that Holmes boy –”

“He doesn’t know anything. He just happened to be looking at it. Let us be off.”

With that the elder Lestrade picks up his gait and the younger follows. Sherlock peels his coat back off his face and peers around the corner of the doorway after them. As he does, young Lestrade hears him and turns. The boys’ eyes meet.

Oh-oh.

“Uh, father …”

“What!” snaps his governor impatiently, a good five paces ahead.

“Nothing, sir.” He gives Sherlock a slight smile.

“Well then increase your stride, sir, and be smart about it. We have much to do.”

A few moments later Sherlock stands, but his attention is instantly arrested by the appearance of two more familiar figures leaving by the same hospital doorway the Lestrades used. It is La Rouge-Gorge and L’Aigle, known to thousands in England as The Robin and The Eagle, the beautiful young woman and muscular young man who make up the rest of the Flying Mercures troupe, elder “offspring” of the Monsieur. They walk out into the square, away from Sherlock. He leaves the doorway and follows. Their voices are raised, and the language they are speaking is certainly not French. It is English and profane.

It becomes clearer as the boy approaches. He diagnoses their accents: London working class, similar to The Swallow’s, though one from Hackney, the other Bermondsey – he can tell by the individual way they drop the letter H. It is obvious that these two aren’t related, either to each other or their young flying “brother,” and their affection for their so-called father seems to have long since reached its limits.

“Why ’asn’t this bloody-well finished ’im?” asks the woman, her bright red cloak, scarlet hair and makeup evident in the gray rainy street.

“It should ’ave,” mutters The Eagle, pulling a fat cigar out of his mouth.

Sherlock is nearing, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The two performers are engrossed in their conversation.

“I don’t like those detectives nosin’ around,” says The Robin.

“Yeah, well, they is, so quit your complainin’ and act ’eartbroke for once.”

“’eartbroke? ’ow about you, Jimmy? You’re supposed to be ’is son!”

“Maybe you care more for ’im than you’re sayin’,” says The Eagle gruffly, walking faster and moving away from her, briskly buttoning up his greatcoat.

“Leave off!” she shouts and rushes after him.

“Maybe you liked being with ’im all this time,” he spits, turning on her with a flushed face. The tips of his brown mustache are as sharp as needles.

“I done it for us!” she screams, throwing a slap at him.

He catches her blow in a big, powerful hand. “Well, being with another is an odd way of showin’ yer affections!”

The Robin notices a tall boy in a tattered frock coat passing by. She lowers her voice to a heated whisper.

“If I’d a rejected ’im, e’d a dismissed me, and you with me too! You find another job like the Mercures, Jimmy. Find another one!”

The Eagle pauses, then smiles and pops his cigar between his lips again.

“Well, we’ve got one now don’t we, Mabel. We’re the Mercures!”

“That we is,” she coos and kisses him long and hard. Then she loops her arm under his, and they prance out of the square almost as if to celebrate, giggling as they go.

Sherlock is well past them now. If he turns and follows, it will be obvious that he is listening. He has enough information: The Robin was having an affair – one forced upon her – with Le Coq. And The Eagle didn’t like it. Both young people had much to gain from their master’s death.

The chimes at St. Paul’s Cathedral ring out and echo through the narrow, old streets.

The apothecary! He’ll be on his way home. Sherlock sets off at a run.