“You keep it, Holmes,” I whispered. “I’d shoot my own foot.”
He slid it back under his belt and we began to creep up the stairs until we were on a level with the arguing voices. They didn’t hear any of the creaks the old stairs made, and there seemed to be no other people in the building.
“—could you possibly think I wouldn’t find out, Claude?” Margery was saying. “I suppose I’ve been incredibly stupid, but when I heard Friday that Mary was held captive, and then her will— That’s why you’ve been away, all this time, isn’t it? Were you planning on… Would you actually have killed her? For her
“You stupid bitch. Why do you think I married you? Why do you think I wait around in this godforsaken hell- hole every Thursday night? For your bloody conversation?”
Had we heard any movements from the room during the lengthy silence that followed, we should have moved to intervene, but there was nothing but silence. Finally Margery spoke, calmly, in a voice I’d heard her use during our lessons.
“That boy with the knife; he was from you, wasn’t he? I thought for a moment he might be, that you’d decided the beating wasn’t enough, but I couldn’t believe it. But he was. And he died. Did you arrange that, too? You must have. You wanted me dead so you could have the Temple’s money. My God, what kind of an animal are you?”
I glanced at Holmes, and knew that the look of strain on his face was duplicated on my own. “He’s going to kill her,” I whispered.
“That may be what she’s after,” he said.
“Which means,” Margery continued, slowly putting together an incomprehensible picture in her mind, “that you would have killed Mary, once you heard about her will. Why are you laughing?”
“Jesus, you really are stupid.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t write a will. I had it written for her.”
This silence was shorter, as if she were becoming accustomed to a new and foreign mechanism. “You decided to kill me for my money. She saved my life. You then kidnapped her, forged a will, and would have killed her if the police hadn’t found her. I assume you would have then made another effort to have me killed. You aren’t human, Claude. Your own wife, in order to inherit—” She stopped, and when she spoke again her voice, for the first time, was low with horror. “Iris. My God, you killed Iris. Is that what gave you the idea? Her leaving me some money?”
“Margery,” he said, with what could only be affection in his voice, “I’ve been putting this together for months now, since last summer. Long before I married you.”
“Delia?” She groaned. “Oh, no, no.”
“Look,” he said, and I heard the sound of a chair scraping back. “I have to leave. I don’t want to hurt you, Margery. I liked you, I really did. It’s all gone to hell now, anyway. A year’s worth of work and that Russell female will have the police on me, damn her eyes. I’ll have to lie low for a couple of years at least—I could never risk making a claim on your estate.”
“I’m not going to let you walk out of here, Claude.”
“You don’t have any choice, Margery.”
“If you shoot me, Claude, you will die.”
Conviction rang out in her voice, not fear, but Holmes and I were already moving, and we hit the door a split second before the shot rang out. The old wood crashed open before our joined weight and we entered fast, Holmes high with the gun in his hand and me rolling low, as pretty a joint effect as if we had rehearsed it. Franklin was standing behind a heavy oak desk, with the gun still pointing at Margery. He brought it around and got off two quick shots that overlapped with a third from behind me. I came to my feet in a crouch, in time to see Franklin stagger and go down. There was a swish and a heavy thud behind the desk. Holmes, holding the gun out, took three quick steps to the side, and then his jaw dropped and he gave vent to a brief oath.
Franklin had vanished.
I stared briefly at the floor, empty but for a smear of blood, before I gathered my wits and turned to Margery. Holmes began to run his hands over the floor, feeling for the hidden panel.
“How is she?” he asked over his shoulder.
“She’ll do. It went through her below the shoulder joint, but it looks clean.”
“There’s no hope here,” he said, getting to his feet. “He bolted it from the back.”
“I should have known there would be a secret passage here, too.”
“Would have made no difference if we’d known,” he said briefly. “Can you leave her?”
“Yes.”
We thundered down the stairs, leaving all doors open, circled the corner at a run, and swept straight into the arms of the constable.
“What’s all this now?” he said predictably. Holmes dodged his hands and flew on; I danced out of the constable’s reach.
“There’s a woman on the second floor wounded; she needs medical attention. We’re after the man who shot her. Can’t wait.” He was, naturally enough, not pleased, and he followed heavily on my heels. Unfortunately for Billy, Holmes’ assistant chose that moment to join the chase, and he was captured while I continued, despite leaden legs, to gain slowly on Holmes. I finally caught him up when he ran out of land; I found him standing beneath a crane on a pier surrounded by coal barges. He pointed out into the river, chest heaving and momentarily speechless.
A small skiff with its oars shipped, empty and drifting free, was being pulled by the current from the side of a sleek launch that lay slightly upriver. As we watched, the boat coughed and emitted a ragged burst of smoke. I looked grimly about for a boat we could steal, but Holmes threw off his coat with determination and bent to his bootlaces. Arguing all the while, I began to do the same.
“I see a boat up on the next wharf, Holmes. We can have the police telegraph ahead and have him cut off before he reaches the sea. Holmes, we can’t hope to swim it in time.”
“You will swim nowhere. In your current condition, you’d probably drown, and then where should I be?”
“Of course I’m going with you,” I said, and bent to my second boot. My vision faltered for a moment and then recovered. Holmes stood still at my side, watching my efforts.
“You’re not,” he said, and then something immensely hard hit my head and I collapsed instantaneously into the darkness.
I came to in stages, as if I were hitching myself up the side of a cliff. I finally gained the top and raised my spinning head from the boards that stank of tar and horse dung and rotted fish. I had been stunned only for a minute or two, for the launch was still there, running smoothly now and beginning to turn downstream as its mooring came free. A stocky figure with black hair moved back down the deck towards the wheel. As the boat continued to turn, a second figure came into view, a long, thin man clinging like a spider to the side of the hull, his lower half in the water. The stocky figure walked by the second one without noticing, and the instant he was past, Holmes hauled himself up and over onto the deck and lunged at him. He was a split second too late, or too slow; perhaps Franklin was simply too fast. Holmes did manage to get his hand on Franklin’s gun, and the two figures stood grappling on the deck while the boat continued to turn lazily and the other boats working the river came and went unawares. With the boat facing downstream and the two men invisible, there came a shot across the water, and another, but when the launch turned again, they were still there, still upright and grappling. Franklin was strong, but Holmes was taller, and the barrel of the revolver was now facing the deck. A third shot echoed across the water, and then the boat turned again, only now there was a sailing barge in its way, heavily laden with horse dung. I heard shouts as the crew tried to warn the launch off, but it was too late. The launch hit her broadsides.
I never knew if the third bullet punctured the launch’s petrol tank, or whether something ruptured the tank when the smaller boat hit the barge, but when I looked at the launch in the instant following the collision, the smoke from its stack had already changed character. In another instant there were sparks coming out, and then flames. Soon there was a dull crump; in thirty seconds, the launch was engulfed in flames, and the voices of the barge crew could be heard even above the roaring in my ears. They succeeded in pushing her off with poles and
