CHAPTER FORTY

THE SILVER FRAME

There was no locked door in all of England that could stop Sherlock Holmes. In the years when I shared lodgings with the detective, we would regularly take delivery of boxes packed to the brim with padlocks and latches sent from reclamation yards the length and breadth of the country. Of an evening, while I sat with the newspaper, Holmes would be hunched over the dining table, dismantling the blasted things like a mortician performing one autopsy after another. Manufacturers would even bring locks of innovative new design to see whether Holmes could break them. They would enter our sitting room convinced that they had invented the holy grail of locksmiths everywhere – the unpickable catch – only to leave despondent after Holmes had opened it with ease.

I had lost count of the times that Holmes had put his questionable skills to good use on a case. All I knew is that I made for a nervous accomplice every time the lock picks came out of his pocket. I would stand there while he went to work, convinced that we would be sprung before the lock. Even then, as we stood in a narrow alleyway around the side of the Bristol Regent, Holmes crouching in front of a door, I glanced nervously about. Holmes had already been arrested for theft once this week. On that occasion he had been innocent, but now, as I heard the lock spring open, we were both guilty as charged.

Holmes bundled me in and led me down a corridor until we reached a stairwell leading high into the building.

“How do you know where to go?” I asked as we climbed the stairs.

“You forget that I have been here before. The late Mr Mercer hired me to trap a thief. It turned out that the Regent had a light-fingered maid who was hiding the proceeds of her thievery beneath a loose floorboard.”

“In the servants’ quarters?”

“The very same.” Holmes reached a door at the top of the stairs and pushed it open a crack, checking the corridor on the other side. With no one to be seen, I followed him through, finding myself in a passageway full of doors, empty except for a trolley laden with laundry.

“How will we know which room belongs to Powell?” I asked.

“Only a few employees live on site,” he said, darting from one door to the next, examining each door handle in turn. “Fewer since the business of the larcenous maid. And here we have it.” He stopped, at the far end of the corridor. Out came the lock picks once again.

“Are you sure?”

The lock was opened in less time than it took for Holmes to answer. “Look to the handle, Watson. Even you can hardly miss the fingerprints.”

He was right. I could see them, dark smudges on the dirty brass. “Cole’s blacking?”

Holmes opened the door and slipped inside. “You’re learning, Watson. You’re learning.”

The room beyond could scarcely have been more distinct from the palatial suite I had stayed in during my brief time at the Regent, or even the Tombo Room at Ridgeside Manor. Illuminated by what little light pushed its way through a single grubby, narrow window, the meagre furniture consisted of a single bed with a thin mattress and coarse blanket, an empty clothes rail, and a small wooden table complete with one drawer. The surface of the table was bare and as I closed the door behind me, Holmes eagerly pulled open the drawer, to find it empty.

“Has our bird flown his cage, Watson?”

“It looks that way to me, unless he lives an extraordinarily frugal life.”

Holmes turned his attention to the bed and flipped the flimsy mattress with ease.

“A-ha,” said he, as he revealed a delicate silver picture frame more suited to a lady’s dressing table than a cobbler’s room. I knew whose face would be gazing back at me before Holmes held the frame up to the candlelight. Lady Marie Redshaw smiled from the photograph.

I looked around the dismal cell, wondering whether Marie had met with Powell here. Holmes read my expression in an instant.

“Watson, you are an insufferable snob.”

“I am not!” I blustered, offended by the accusation.

“I can see it in the way your nose wrinkles. Where do you think they met for their romantic assignations? You, a married man. Shame on you.”

I was about to offer a suitably witty rebuke when footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.

“Someone’s coming,” I hissed.

“A man who looks after his boots,” Holmes whispered as we took up position beside the door, so that it might shield our presence if opened. “In a hurry, too.”

I held my breath, willing the owner of the cared-for boots to continue past Powell’s door. Instead, he was halted by a sudden female voice.

“Nelson?” It was Mrs Mercer. “Nelson, I thought you were gone.”

“And I will be,” came a deep reply, “if you let me get on. I forgot something, that’s all. Something important to me.”

I glanced down at the silver frame in Holmes’s hand.

“I’ve had folk asking for you,” Mrs Mercer told Powell. “The police?”

“No. That brute of a doctor, and the brother of Sherlock Holmes.”

Brute of a doctor?

“What did you tell them?”

“That you are unwell.”

“And they believed you?”

“I think so. And that’s not all. Lady Marie was here earlier.”

“Marie?”

“Elsie found her in your room. You told me she would stay away. I can’t have the Regent mixed up in all this. If Redshaw dies…”

I glanced up at Holmes, who was listening intently.

“I was careful,” Powell assured the manageress. “There’s nothing to link what I did to the hotel, and soon I’ll be gone too. You need never see me again.”

There was a pause before Mrs Mercer said, “Nelson, I’m sorry.”

“That it ended like this, or that Redshaw didn’t die?”

“Nelson, please…”

I could hear the consternation in Mrs Mercer’s voice. She was worried that Powell would be overheard, and with good reason.

“He deserves everything he got,” Powell told her. “You said so yourself. Now, let me fetch what I came for and I’ll be away. My train leaves in an hour.”

“Where are you going?”

“It’s best you don’t know, but thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

“No,” Mrs Mercer replied. “Thank you.”

Thank you for what? For attempting to kill Lord Redshaw?

My mind was spinning with the revelations. Framing Holmes was one thing, but colluding in the murder of a man was another.

The conversation in the corridor outside was at an end, Mrs Mercer’s heeled footsteps fading as she walked briskly away.

Powell entered the room, and Holmes was crushed against me between the door and the wall. Powell moved quickly to his cot. I dared to peer around the door and realised that I had seen the man before, leaning against the railings when Lord Redshaw collected my luggage. The African was tall, with shoulders as broad as I had ever seen. As I watched he felt beneath the mattress and, finding the photograph gone, pulled the bedding up to search for his missing treasure.

Letting out a cry of dismay, he flung the mattress aside as if it were made of cardboard. I gasped and Powell wheeled around, his eyes widening as he saw us in our hiding place. He sprang towards the open door but Holmes slammed it shut. There was a nauseating crunch as Powell was caught between door and doorframe, but he pushed back with considerable force, and ran into the corridor.

Holmes and I took off after him, back towards the stairwell. Holmes ran ahead, throwing himself towards the cobbler. Wrestling, the pair tumbled to the ground, but I raced forward and, grabbing Powell by his jacket, hauled him off Holmes. My assistance did not go as planned. Powell used the momentum against me, pushing back, slamming an elbow into my chin. I crashed to the floor, throwing up my arms to stop my head smacking against the wall. Powell was already running for the stairwell when Holmes pushed the laundry trolley into his path. Unable to stop, Powell crashed into the trolley and ended up on the floor, draped in sheets. Holmes was upon him like a shot.

“It’s no good, Powell,” Holmes said, pinning the large man down. “We know what you’ve done. Call for a policeman, Watson. Tell them we have captured Lord Redshaw’s would-be murderer.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you, Doctor,” said a voice, “unless you want me to put a bullet in the head of Sherlock Holmes.”

Mrs Mercer stood behind us, and I would find it impossible to tell you what was more terrifying; the look of fury on the lady’s face, or the pistol in her hand, pointed straight at Holmes.