Death in the Air

“You may come in, sir.”

Despite the strangeness of this entrance and the rancid smell that is filling the room, Sherlock is pleased. Bell has been averaging perhaps two visitors a week lately, and what they pay him for his poisons has been barely enough to feed them. Perhaps the boy can make a sale. He would sell something to the devil today, if he had to, to help the old man.

The nose, hair billowing out each nostril, looks one way, then another, and finally enters, leading a very thin man with a very small cranium and receding forehead inside. He glances furtively around, and then motions to three others, who follow. They look remarkably alike, all dressed in wet, smelly clothes, black from head to foot, matted hair clinging to their skulls. Sherlock immediately recognizes the dress and attitude of four toshers, who find their living in the sewers and always work in groups so they won’t get lost. They search the subterranean arteries of London for prizes, wary of being spotted through the gratings on the streets by pedestrians in the upper world, and of rats, who live in gangs in the underworld, their poisonous bites fatal. A Londoner has to be vigilant indeed to ever see a tosher. Once or twice, Sherlock thought he glimpsed their shadows through a sewer hole, but toshers always darken their lanterns when they near the light.

“Fortune shone upon me today, young man,” says the one with the prominent proboscis. “And when we comes up, we is here on this street, and we sees your shop. Have you leeches, sire? Or arsenic?”

“We have both, sir.”

“Well, sire, I promised me wife that if I ever found a treasure like this here half-crown, that I would buy her some arsenic, so as to make her cheeks pink.” He looks around the room for thieves and then holds out his hand to reveal a silver coin nestled deep in his filthy hand, while the others lean forward to look. “And I also says to meself, I says, Lazarus, get yourself some leeches, sir, and suck the bad blood from your veins.”

“He’s been feelin’ poorly,” another tosher squeaks, to remind Sherlock.

“I recall.”

“What would you be chargin’ for a pinch of arsenic and a bottle of leeches?”

Sigerson Bell doesn’t believe in using leeches to suck “bad blood” from the veins of the ill. It is a medieval practice that does more harm than good. But the apothecary does have a bottle of those slimy little devils, swimming in green liquid back in the lab. He only uses them for experimentation. Women, mostly well-to-do ladies, do indeed take poisonous arsenic, sometimes too much of it, to give an alluring glow to their cheeks. But Bell frowns on that too. This is not a sale the old man would make.

“Two shillings,” says Sherlock.

Lazarus hands over the half-crown. The boy opens the strongbox behind the counter. There are eight coppers inside. He returns six to the tosher. Moments later, the men slip smiling from the shop with a bottle of leeches and a pinch of arsenic in hand, sliding through the doorway like wafer-thin creatures of the underworld. Sherlock watches them through the window. They look suspiciously up and down the street, pull off a sewer grating, and vanish.

Not long after, as the boy lies awkwardly in the shop window, sweeping the cobwebs away, he turns toward the street and cries out.

A huge face is staring back at him, inches away through the glass. It has black eyes and black eyebrows. Lord Redhorns.

“A message for Mr. Bell,” he shouts through the thick window. “Four days. Tell him, that boy. Four days!” Redhorns stomps off down the street, the crowds parting in front of him like the Red Sea did for Moses.

By mid-afternoon, Sherlock has both the front room and the chemical laboratory cleaned up like never before. But he is restless. He can hardly wait for the apothecary to return, and not just because he has polished the half- crown and set it on the examining table for Bell to see, but because he desperately wants to be free to do something about the Mercure case. What, he isn’t sure.

He keeps hearing Redhorns’ threat.

Four days.

This business about The Swallow’s upbringing is tantalizing. But in the end, is it helpful? It just doesn’t make sense to him that the young acrobat is involved in the murder. If he is, why didn’t he let me fall from the trapeze perch? And what could the Brixton Gang possibly have to do with all of this?

Pacing and frustrated, he carefully plucks some books from the precarious stacks and tries to read. Usually these are his moments of greatest joy: with a Charles Dickens novel, a new tract by Darwin, a Richard Francis Burton tale of a far-off land, or the latest Mrs. Henry Wood sensation in his hands. A favorite lately has been Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help, which puts forth a new belief that Englishmen of any class can achieve nearly anything: it simply takes imagination and especially, hard work. Sherlock loves drifting off into other worlds to feed his mind with information.

But he can’t concentrate today.

He makes tea and picks up the Telegraph again. He’d only glanced at it in the morning. His eyes fall on “DOINGS AT THE PALACE,” on the entertainment pages. This is a short column by a society sort containing a series of single lines about ongoing attractions, upcoming sensations, and statistics. He learns that a balloonist will attempt a leap in something called a parachute over the archery grounds on Wednesday next, that the wonder named Professor Inferno will set himself on fire in an “incendiary” return engagement in the central transept, the four-hundred-year-old Californian sequoia tree in the tropical area needs seventeen imperial gallons of water a day … and that the writer has heard whispers that money is missing from the Palace vault.

What?

He reads that last line again, the final note in the column, presented sparely, as if the writer has a good source, but no confirmation. As if the authorities are being tight-lipped about it. It is almost as if something doesn’t make sense to them, as if the money went missing and, somehow, wasn’t noticed. Sherlock has the feeling that there won’t be any publicity about this, at least until details become clearer.

But it is evident to him that some time this week the Crystal Palace was robbed.

The bell rings on the shop door again. Sherlock gets to his feet and makes his way into the front room. The possibility of another sale picks up his pace.

Irene Doyle is standing at the counter, her eyes cast down, pretending to be not the least bit interested in his arrival. She isn’t dressed like a working-class girl today. She veritably shines in a red silk dress patterned with roses and matching bonnet and shawl. Her blonde hair seems to sparkle and a wonderful scent fills the room. But she looks almost ashamed to be here and Sherlock’s heart goes out to her.

“Irene,” he says.

She looks up at him hopefully.

He checks himself and his emotions, stiffening his body almost to attention. She notices.

“I’m not here to see you,” she says quickly in a hard voice.

“I would be honored if you were.”

“Malefactor told me you were living here.”

“Something I never mentioned to him,” replies Sherlock, looking away.

“He has means to find out.”

“He is a rat who feeds off others.”

Irene pauses before beginning again.

“He has told me more about himself, you know. He has had a difficult time. His father was a simple dustman in Ireland, picking up rubbish off the Dublin streets. He worked day and night, and made a respectable sum of money, invested in the railroad and increased his wealth dramatically, and moved to northern England. But …”

“I do not care what befell him,” Sherlock says, cutting her off. “You may have feelings for his sob story, but tragedies befall many of us. I have no interest in him. He is a rat.” He chews off the last word.

Irene pauses again and closes her eyes, perhaps so she doesn’t have to look at him.

“Very well. You have no interest in most people, it seems to me, other than those whom you can put in jail in order to make you feel better about yourself.”

“I seek justice.”