Death in the Air

the column. Each tower is nearly three hundred feet high and full of thousands of tons of water, supplying the steam boilers and many fountains that shoot spray impossibly high.

His father once told him about a secret way into the Palace. Few employees know about it. In fact, Sherlock isn’t even sure it exists, but he has to try to find it. If he can’t, his daring plan will be lost.

An engineer who helps maintain the boilers once let the secret slip during a late-night conversation with Wilber. The man had consumed too many spirits, fallen into a chat about scientific matters, and commenced to do a little bragging.

“Around the back of the Palace, close to the north water tower, there’s a low glass panel,” he’d claimed, “which will tip inward if you give it a good jar at the bottom. If one of us engineers ever needed to get inside the building during an after-hours emergency, that’s how we’d do it. The panel is fastened with hinges at the top and a few small nails hold it in place at the bottom on the inside. It can be knocked loose but will stay in the frame.”

Sherlock moves up close to the wall near the tower. Sure enough, he spots a dozen or so small panels there, almost at ground level. He looks around. A sound – a bark – pierces the night. Sherlock stiffens. Watch dogs…. But it’s distant, coming from somewhere near the village of Sydenham beyond the Gipsy Wood.

He turns back to his task and tries all the panels closest to the tower, banging his foot against the iron frames…. The sixth one gives when he kicks it. It swings inward.

He gets down on his belly and slides through the tight little rectangle … into the Crystal Palace. Its insides are barely lit – just a few small gas lamps glow in the gloom. He turns and closes the panel, anxious not to leave a trail. His plan of escape is to hide somewhere inside and mingle with the crowd of early employees who will enter through the front gates at six o’clock – many of them boys his age. Sherlock should have enough time to examine the crime scene without being disturbed, and then race home to Denmark Street.

Yesterday, he had noticed that The Swallow had a sack with him, which he dipped into while he worked on the ropes. What was in there? A saw whose teeth marks might match the cuts in the bar when closely examined? A pocket-knife with tiny splinters of wood embedded in its steel? And what was way up on the perch? Wouldn’t that have been the perfect place to do the evil deed: a quick couple of slices in the bar while out of everyone’s view? Were there traces of sawdust on the platform? Remember, he tells himself, the police aren’t even investigating, and The Swallow knows that. He has no reason to remove such specks of evidence.

His heart pounding, Sherlock turns too abruptly. He bumps into a large potted plant and knocks it over. Reaching out, he seizes it and feels a shooting pain course through his hands. The sound of the pot falling echoes in the enormous building.

He stands still, holding what he now sees is a cactus from some exotic desert. The needles are deep in his flesh. The sound still reverberates.

Are there guards inside? There must be. Are there canines trained to attack? Sherlock gingerly sets the cactus down, waits … listens … no footsteps, no barks, and no shouts.

But then he hears something. It’s a nasty, high-pitched voice.

“Stop right there!” it shouts.

Sherlock drops down and flattens himself on the planked floor. He can’t see anyone, can’t hear feet approaching. Panicking, he wriggles back toward the panel, but he’s closed it from the inside and it won’t swing open the other way.

“Stop right there!” cries the heinous voice. Then it starts repeating itself: “Stop right there! Stop right there! Stop right there!”

A sense of relief melts over him. A parrot.

Sherlock, who has been in the Palace several times with his father, remembers that here, in the northern end of the building, there are all sorts of exotic birds, parrots among them. Wilberforce Holmes, a deposed scientist with a love of ornithology, has often helped tend to these creatures.

“Stop right there!” the parrot says again. “Cracker time, you bloody boob! Cracker time!”

A foul-mouthed little thing, thinks Sherlock, grinning.

Lying there, picking the cactus needles out of his hands, trying to ignore the pain, he looks way up past the three tiers of balconies and makes out the ghostly curving iron frames of the glass ceiling. Branches and shadows of evil-looking trees peer down at him – a jungle canopy. He is on the outskirts of the Palace’s tropical forest.

Despite the hour, it is as hot as a jungle in here too. He hears other birds: cockatoos and ordinary redbreasts and swallows, offering squawks and chirps in response to their talkative comrade.

There is a series of courts under this nave, each representing an epoch in the history of man. When Sherlock turns his head and looks along the hall, he sees twin pharaohs staring down at him with paired sphinxes below, the feature of the Egyptian Court. They are imposing in the gloom and their gigantic size and bulging eyes almost make the boy cry out.

He calms himself and gets to his feet. He has to make his way southward toward the central transept. That’s where the crime scene is. He moves stealthily around statues, ferns, and displays, feeling as though he were traveling through history, passing the Greek Court, the Roman, and on into the Medieval. Each area is filled with the dark shapes of ancient figures.

Farther on, he encounters magnificent stuffed lions and tigers, mounted on towering stone plinths, frozen in all their ferocious glory. He thinks he hears a splash in the marine aquarium nearby and looks to his right to see the side of a massive tank: octopi, lobsters, and thousands of little sea horses live there.

He smells spices from the Far East and the lingering scents of biscuits and pate from the Refreshment Department’s dining room, but since the birds settled, he’s heard very little. The indoor fountains, whirring wheels of inventions, and children’s automated toys, are quiet for the night.

Sherlock floats like a ghost past the northern transept, toward the center. It occurs to him that he is good at this sort of thing, good at stealth and deceit.

But suddenly he hears something that terrifies him, a sound much worse than a nattering bird.

There are footsteps coming. Human ones. At first they are so quiet and distant that he isn’t sure they are real, but then they echo in the cavernous glass palace and grow louder. He ducks under a wagon displaying bushels of Canadian wheat. But he is still exposed to anyone who might walk past. There are empty hempen sacks lying on the wagon, so he jumps up, seizes a couple, and hastily tucks one end of each under the bushels, making a curtain down to the floor, hiding himself from passing eyes.

He lies as still as a corpse.

The footsteps become louder. There seems to be more than one man, and at least one of them is breathing in great gulps.

Sherlock peeks out between the sacks and sees a single figure walking steadily in the center of the hall, heading north, right toward him. Where are the others? Then the boy looks down. The man has two white bull terriers on chains. They are straining against his hold, breathing loudly through their mouths, anxious to move forward. Both have torn ears, as if they’ve suffered injuries in battle. Sherlock can see their fangs as they gasp for air, saliva dripping onto the planked wooden floor. The dogs will smell him, for sure.

They come closer, and closer.

And pass by.

Sherlock breathes a sigh of relief.

But then the dogs stop. Both sniff the air and turn around, pulling their master straight toward the Canadian wheat wagon. The boy tries to draw in every scent he gives off, to arrest the beating of his heart. He clenches his hands into fists, forgetting the wounds from the cactus, and utters a little yelp before he can stop himself.

“Oi!” shouts the short, thick-set guard, his voice bouncing off the distant glass ceiling. “You lot! We ain’t found naught these last twelvemonth and you get to suspectin’ thirty-nine minutes before quittin’? … You’re sniffin’ the dead buffalo again! Mangy ’ounds! This way!” And with that he jerks them away, nearly snapping their wide necks with a violent tug, as he continues his slow march to the north end of the building.

Sherlock feels as though he might be sick to his stomach. But he controls himself, unclenches his sore hands, and tries to think carefully about what he has just heard. This man, apparently the only guard on duty, has thirty- nine minutes before he leaves. Every literate boy in London knows that it is just over sixteen hundred feet from one end of the Palace to the other. The guard has about five or six hundred feet to his destination at the far reaches of the building where Sherlock broke in. He’ll likely pause there, perhaps take a short break, then make one more