THE THREE LOCKS
A SHERLOCK HOLMES ADVENTURE
Bonnie MacBird
Copyright
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021
Copyright © Bonnie MacBird 2021
All rights reserved
Bonnie MacBird asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Cover images © Bonnie MacBird (figures); Shutterstock.com (all other images)
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
This book is a new and original work of fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, and other fictional characters that were first introduced to the world in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all of which are now in the public domain. The characters are used by the author solely for the purpose of story-telling and not as trademarks. This book is independently authored and published, and is not sponsored or endorsed by, or associated in any way with, Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. or any other party claiming trademark rights in any of the characters in the Sherlock Holmes canon.
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Source ISBN: 9780008380830
Ebook Edition © March 2021 ISBN: 9780008380854
Version: 2021-01-06
Dedication
For
Miranda Andrews
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
PART ONE – THE BOX
1 The Box
2 Thwarted
3 You Left Me Hanging
4 New Skills
5 Madame Borelli
PART TWO – ENTANGLEMENT
6 Fingering the Threat
7 The Deacon
8 A Close Escape
9 Misdirection
10 A Lady’s Desire
PART THREE – THE DOLL
11 The Floating Doll
12 The Wyndhams
13 Polly
14 Atalanta
15 Bloom Where You Are Planted
16 An Uneasy Alliance
PART FOUR – STRANGE MAGIC
17 Smell the Roses
18 Buttons Unbuttoned
19 Those Men! Those Women!
20 The Mind Reader
21 The Tables Turned
22 Danger in the Doldrums
PART FIVE – THE TUMBLERS
23 The Story Collector
24 Two for One
25 The Cauldron of Death
26 The How and the Why
27 Vanished
PART SIX – THE SETUP
28 The Spinning House
29 The Lady in the Lock
30 Freddie Eden-Summers
31 Leo Vitale
32 Lucifer’s Lights
PART SEVEN – ILLUSIONS
33 A Palpable Hit
34 Just a Bodkin
35 The Pawnshop
36 A Holy Place
37 The Sinner
PART EIGHT – THE UNLOCKING
38 Rescue
39 Gaol
40 Church and State
41 A Spot of Trouble
42 The Prestige
43 221B
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Bonnie MacBird
About the Publisher
Prologue
When a mysterious woman going by the name of ‘Lydia’ offered me a cache of unpublished tales written by Dr John H. Watson some years ago, I was astonished to discover previously unknown adventures he had shared with the master detective – and his most admirable and unusual friend – Mr Sherlock Holmes.
It soon became apparent that there was a reason within each of these newly discovered tales for Watson not to have made them public at the time he released the others. By ‘the others’, of course I mean those which were brought to light by Arthur Conan Doyle. Dr Doyle’s precise role in these, be it literary agent or in some way promoter, remains buried in the sands of time.
Without giving the story away in advance, I can conjecture that both Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes may have had cause to delay release of the tale which follows – or in Holmes’s case, to disapprove entirely of its publication.
I hope the reader – and Dr Watson and Mr Holmes, wherever they dwell at present, either in heaven or as motes of stardust – will forgive me for deciding to put forward this story now, one which has been locked away for more than a hundred and thirty years.
—Bonnie MacBird
London, December 2020
PART ONE
THE BOX
‘By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, Locks,
Whoever knocks.’
—William Shakespeare,
Macbeth
CHAPTER 1
The Box
It was late September of 1887, and an unusually hot Indian Summer. For two weeks London had suffocated with furnace-like temperatures, keeping me indoors for days. The blinding heat on Baker Street rose from the pavement in shimmering waves, the stench of refuse and horse droppings adding to the misery. Only the hordes of raucous city-dwellers, whom I knew were flocking to the seaside with their dripping ice creams and shouting children, prevented me from fleeing to Brighton or Cornwall with them.
My name is Dr John Watson, and at age thirty-five I was six years into sharing both rooms and many adventures with my friend, the remarkable consulting detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes.
But sadly, Holmes seemed to have forsaken my company of late. I had seen little of him for three weeks. I longed for a distraction from the misery of this weather. Not only had he not invited me on his recent escapades, but he had dismissed my questions with a petulant wave of his hand.
When Holmes did not wish to reveal something, no cajoling, guesswork or sleuthing could prise it free. He likewise kept his personal history, which I always suspected to be tinged with the dramatic, locked away as securely as any treasure stored in a bank vault. But even I have a few secrets of my own.
Locks, after all, are in place for a reason – whether privacy, security … or safety.
It happened that a locked and deadly secret played a key role in each of the two cases – and a puzzle of my own – which
