CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

AN INNOCENT’S CRY

The dash to Canynge Square took fifteen arduous minutes, running mostly uphill. Holmes raced ahead while I struggled on, my old war wound giving me merry hell. The Georgian square was quiet as we raced around the central garden looking for the entrance to Lye Close.

“There!” I said, pointing ahead. One of the townhouses was caged in scaffolding, its roof under repair, no doubt from storm damage. “I heard a shout and a great crash when blindfolded. It might have been that roof coming down.”

“A distinct possibility,” said Holmes. “Perhaps I am too hard on you.”

“Frequently,” I replied, as we turned at the far end of the garden. Lye Close lay off to the right, nothing more than a tiny dark alleyway. A wall ran along the right side of the lane, while warehouses were situated to the left.

I counted four separate buildings in the moonlight. “But which is the Lodge?”

“Think, Watson. When you were brought out of the carriage, can you remember anything else about your surroundings? Any particular smells or noises?”

“Steps! We descended three steps to reach the door. Clifford said we were going in by the tradesman’s entrance.”

Holmes ran the length of the lane, stopping outside the third warehouse. “This has to be it,” he told me as I caught him up. “It’s the only building with steps leading down. Excellent work, Watson.”

The building itself looked unoccupied, its windows shuttered. Could the League’s opulent headquarters really lie behind such a modest façade?

Holmes had already bounded down the steps and was examining the lock on the door by the time I joined him.

“Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” he said, pulling his picks out of his pocket. Sherrinford’s monocle came with them.

“I shan’t be needing that again,” he said, tossing it away.

“Holmes!” I scolded him.

“Really, Watson,” he replied, going to work on the lock. “I am on the run from the police for the second time in a week. Littering is the very least of my worries.”

The door clicked open to reveal the foul-smelling corridor I remembered from my previous visit. Holmes ushered me in and shut the door firmly, plunging us into darkness.

“How far to the internal door?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Only five yards or so.”

Holmes led us through the gloom, feeling against the wall as he went. I tried to estimate how far we had walked, but was disorientated by the darkness. My foot kicked something that clattered loudly.

“Watson!” Holmes hissed.

I bent down to stop the noise, my hand touching metal. “It’s Clifford’s lamp.”

“And here is the door.”

I heard Holmes’s picks in the lock and light spilled into the narrow passageway as he pulled the door open.

“Bring the lamp with you,” whispered Holmes as we crept into the corridor lined with portraits of the Templar Knights. “Which way to the shrine?”

“Up here,” I said, creeping towards the library door. I opened it a crack to find the room empty. “This way.”

Holmes followed me through the library without pause, although I could see his eyes sweeping over the bookshelves as we passed.

The next corridor was clear, the doors to the Warwick Room to our right. I was about to lead Holmes past the portraits of the Grand Masters when we heard something.

The cry of an infant.

I looked at Holmes in surprise, ready to dive back into the library, but the detective followed the noise. He walked away from the Warwick Room, his footfalls muffled by the thick carpet. I followed and we came to a single door, slightly ajar. Holmes looked through the gap and, satisfied, opened the door to step inside.

I could scarcely believe what we found. It was a reception area of some kind, shutters closed on the windows and a second door directly opposite us, presumably leading to another room. The floor was packed with wooden cots, each containing a small, sleeping baby. Holmes moved to the child who was grizzling, a tiny infant so swaddled in blankets that it could barely move. He – or at least so I chose to assume; there was no telling given that it was so tightly wrapped – wriggled in his cot as Holmes stepped aside for me so that I could examine the child. The baby looked healthy enough, and quietened as I placed the little finger of my right hand to his lips. Soon the only sound from the crib was contented sucking.

“Holmes,” I whispered. “What are they doing here?”

The detective’s face was grim. “I have a terrible suspicion, Watson. ‘Restore with the blood of innocent lambs’.”

“The ritual?” My stomach clenched as I realised what he was saying. “You don’t mean…?”

Holmes moved to a side table, from which he picked up a small bottle. “‘Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup’,” he read from the label. “‘The mother’s friend’, no less.”

“Used to quieten babies, yes.”

“Not surprising, as it includes laudanum amongst its ingredients.”

“I didn’t say I approved!”

There was a sound from the corridor outside and Holmes quickly replaced the bottle. Someone was coming. Holmes indicated the second door, and we raced towards it. We had hardly made it into the adjoining room when the door to the strange nursery opened.

We stood with our backs to the wall, listening as someone walked into the room. I heard a tut, followed by the scrape of the bottle of syrup being fetched from the table. More footsteps, presumably taking the newcomer back to the distressed baby; a few seconds later, the crying stopped, the child lulled by the solution. It was all I could do not to burst out from our hiding place. If Holmes were right, the fate that awaited these children was abominable. I thought of all those adverts in the Mercury, all the women who had put their trust in this monster. By my reckoning there were twenty cots in the room, maybe more. Twenty lives not yet lived.

My impulse was halted only by the sound of someone else entering the room.

“Mrs Nell.” The name was spoken in the reedy tones of Sir George Tavener. My skin crawled all the more.

“Grand Master,” a woman replied.

“How are the infants?”

“Sleeping soundly. All will be well.”

“We are bringing the ceremony forward to midnight. We have waited long enough.”

“Of course.”

“You will show the League down when they arrive?”

“As you wish, Grand Master.”

“Excellent. I shall be in my office if I am needed, preparing for the ritual.”

“Would you like tea?”

“That would be splendid, thank you.”

“I shall bring it up.”

“You will be remembered for your part in this, Mrs Nell. That I promise you.”

I made my own promise as the two conspirators left the room. They would be remembered all right, for their sins. Drinking tea like civilised folk when preparing for deeds of such depravity? It made me sick to my stomach.

The door clicked shut, but Holmes indicated that I should stay where I was. We waited for a few moments to make sure that neither Tavener nor Nell returned, slipping back into the reception room.

“We need to get these children out of here, Holmes,” I insisted.

“Not just yet. We should see the full extent of the ritual before we spoil Edwyn Warwick’s birthday celebrations.” He checked his watch. “It is a quarter to eight. We still have time. Tell me, Watson. Did you see any stairs leading to an upper storey when you were last here?”

“No, but there must be. Nell said she would take Tavener’s tea up to him.”

“And that the League’s members would need to come down when they arrived.”

He moved to the door and checked the corridor outside. “No one around. Watson, show me this shrine.”

Retrieving the lantern, I took Holmes down the corridor to the double doors. The Warwick Room was deserted and we slipped inside, shutting ourselves in. I showed Holmes where I had been attacked.

“And this is where Sutcliffe was hiding?” Holmes asked as he tried the storage room door.

“So we think. The candlestick was hidden inside.”

“Meaning that he went back into the storage room after knocking you insensible…”

Holmes’s picks made short work of the door and he was in the room in a jiffy. “Give me the lantern.”

I passed it over and he lit the lamp, turning around in the cramped space.

“When you described your attack, I thought it bizarre that your assailant had the time – or indeed the inclination – to hide the candlestick, lock the door and then make an escape before Clifford returned from the library.”

“I said the same myself at the time. Unless Clifford was lying about how long he was away.”

“Or there is another way out of the cupboard…”

Holmes walked to the back of the storage room and tapped the wall. It sounded hollow.

“A secret door?”

Holmes ran his fingers along the brickwork in search of an opening mechanism. “My favourite kind. But how to open it?”

I looked up, seeing a long narrow window above his head. “We’re in the middle of the house,” I stated. “Clifford told me. That’s why they have lamps behind the stained-glass windows.”

“So why have a ventilation window in a store room?”

He reached up and grabbed the window’s latch. There was a dull click within the brickwork. Holmes gave the wall a shove and it swung away from him, revealing a spiral staircase of red stone.

Without another word, Holmes descended into the gloom.