The Three Locks

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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

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 presented themselves to us that fateful month. So complex were these gruesome mysteries, and so tragic the outcomes, that it took the genius, bravery and resourcefulness of Sherlock Holmes to solve them, and a certain transparency of my own to tell of them now. My hesitation in doing so earlier will become apparent, perhaps only at the very last.

Our rooms faced east on Baker Street, and on that day I had closed the heavy curtains against the morning sun, leaving the windows behind them cracked open and myself sitting in half light, too hot even to read. Despite my claim that I had become inured to the heat during my army years in India and Afghanistan, I suffered mightily.

I contemplated asking Mrs Hudson for an iced lemonade, but the poor woman was no doubt prostrate on her bed from the heat. A paper fan lay next to me, useless in this oven. My ruminations were interrupted when the postman arrived with a small rectangular package, addressed to me and postmarked Edinburgh.

I welcomed the distraction.

The package was perhaps half the size of a shoebox, and heavy. The sender was a mystery, one ‘E. Carnachan’. I unwrapped it, only to find a smaller box inside covered by another layer of brown paper wrapping, this one stained, faded and tied with string. A note had been slipped under the string.

I removed and unfolded it, my hands sticky with sweat. The handwriting was old-fashioned and feminine, shaky, perhaps with age or illness. I read:

Dr John Watson—

You do not know me, but I am Elspeth Carnachan, a name you may not recognise. Carnachan is my married name, but I was born a Watson and your father’s half-sister. Your father and I parted ways while still in our youth, and I was effectively erased from the family history before you were born. It is doubtful that he ever mentioned me to you.

Your mother, bless her kindly soul, maintained contact despite your father’s ill opinion of me. You can confirm my familial connections if you so choose by public records in Edinburgh.

I am an old woman now and consumption will soon take me. In clearing my affairs, I came upon something in my attic last week that was meant for you. It is enclosed.

When you were only eleven your mother gave it to me for safekeeping with the direction to give it to you on your twenty-first birthday. She was in perfect health when she entrusted it to me, and so I wondered why.

By a strange twist of fate, she died only two days later. Perhaps she was prescient? We shall never know.

I placed it in my attic, intending to deliver it at the designated time. But life intervened and it slipped my mind.

I will now make a shameful admission. Upon rediscovering this last month, dear nephew, I was feverish with the thought that I might have caused some disaster by my careless delay in sending it to you. To quiet my mind, I tried to open your gift, even going to the extent of having several of Edinburgh’s finest locksmiths apply their skills, to no effect.

I hope you will forgive me. I think your mother would have done so. Please receive this in her spirit – she was the soul of kindness and generosity – and not with the judgemental anger so characteristic of your father.

God bless,

Elspeth Carnachan (née Watson).

A tumult of emotions coursed through me. Anger at this woman’s carelessness, her imposition, and my own grief at the reopening of an old tragedy vied for captaincy with tender childhood memories.

My mother. The soul of kindness and generosity. Her unexplained death when I was but eleven was a wound that had never healed. It was mystery that I thought would never be solved. I wiped a rivulet of sweat from my brow.

Elspeth Carnachan, an aunt I had never known, had not only forgotten her promise to my mother, but then tried to open something meant for me. No wonder my father had forsaken this careless and duplicitous creature! I flung down the letter.

I turned my attention to the package, wrapped in aged brown paper. On it, inscribed in delicate handwriting which I recognized as my mother’s, I read: ‘For John, upon the occasion of your twenty-first birthday. I hope you will understand. In my heart always, Mother.’

I tore off the string and paper. Inside was a worn cardboard box with a faded floral label, once containing two fancy bars of soap. I raised it to my nose. A scent from my childhood – Lily of the Valley – emanated from it. It had been my mother’s favourite. I was blindsided with a sudden wave of grief, and my vision blurred. I blinked and regained my focus.

I opened the soap box and discovered within a strange silver box about the size of two decks of cards. It was ornate and complicated. Engraved on its surface in finely traced lines were Celtic dragons, and the box itself was bound up with a dozen flat metal bands of different colours: silver, gold, copper. These were braided and wrapped around it, fastened securely along the front edge in a kind of Celtic knot. The ends of these bands were tucked under the edges of a large lock of a type I had never before seen. At the keyhole of this lock were many scratches, as though a breech had been attempted numerous times.

It was a beautiful object, like something from a fairy tale. But what was within? And why had my mother left this for me?

No key was included. I tried opening it, pressing and tugging here and there in case the keyhole was a ruse. Perhaps the box was locked in some way which could be released by pressing the right spot. But the lock and the metal banding did not move.

A second wave of sadness swept over me. Many miles had passed under my feet since my mother’s tragic and puzzling drowning. Suicide? Accident? But she had been a stable and formidable woman, and a good swimmer. Painful ruminations tormented me in my youth, but medical school, my war experiences and my exciting life with Holmes had eventually rendered my childhood grief a pale and distant thing. I had successfully pushed the mystery of my mother’s death from my mind.

Until today.

Here, in my hands, was a word from beyond the grave. Once again, I fingered the metal bands.

‘Leave it,’ came a sharp voice behind me.

I turned to see that Sherlock Holmes had soundlessly entered the room. He was pale and drenched with sweat, his dark hair damp and awry.

‘Put it down, I say!’ he cried.

CHAPTER 2

Thwarted

‘What?’ I asked. ‘Why should I leave it?’

‘Why are you sitting in the dark? The sun is past our windows now!’ said Holmes. He peeled off his frock coat and crossed to the window, throwing aside the heavy curtains. He opened the window wider to let in a draft. ‘Ah, air!’ he said. ‘A breeze at last!’

‘Holmes? Why should I leave it?’

‘Do you know who sent it?’

‘Yes. An aunt.’

He turned to face me, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

‘You don’t have an aunt. As I recollect, you had no one when you returned to London after the war.’

‘Well, I didn’t know I had this one.’

He tossed his waistcoat onto a chair. ‘Then you do not know the sender. It could be anyone.’

He approached me and glanced down at the silver box, undoing his tie. His face was shiny with sweat. ‘Ah, it is a bonny little thing. Careful, Watson.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged, moving back to the window. Throwing his tie onto the table, he unbuttoned his collar and began splashing water from a carafe onto the front of his shirt. The back was already drenched in perspiration.

‘There’s a letter which explains—’ I began.

‘You do not know the person who sent this. Instinct tells me you should leave it.’

I shook my head. ‘What on earth are you worried about, Holmes?’

He ignored the question, then rolled up his shirtsleeves, pulled back the sheer lace curtains and opened the window even wider, standing now quite exposed, his shirt soaked and clinging to his bony frame.

I felt a faint breeze move languidly into the room. Holmes untucked his shirt and was now preposterously flapping its soggy front in the stifling air to cool himself.

‘Holmes!’

If our sheer curtains were not in place, the elderly couple who lived straight across Baker Street had a direct view into our lodgings, and I’d caught them more than once peering over at us with birding glasses. His state of undress would surely provoke remark.

He ignored me, but of course Holmes cared as much for propriety as I did for knitting.

‘Holmes! If you think for one moment that either of us might be a target, aren’t you inviting danger standing in the window like that?’

‘Hmm,’ said he, nevertheless stepping back and closing the curtains. ‘For a moment, I thought you might be concerned about the neighbours.’ He flashed a quick smile at me. ‘I am sorry, dear friend. I am being perhaps too careful.’ He dropped down into a chair facing me. ‘By Jove, this heat! I have just put my eleventh case to rest this year. A couple masquerading as Japanese royalty who were actually importing adulterated opium into – Watson, I said put that box down!’

‘Holmes, this is my business.’

‘Come, Watson, you have no business. Oh, sorry, don’t take offence. It is one of the things I most treasure about you; you are almost an entirely blank page. Which means you are then free to accompany me on my cases.’

I was nettled to hear that my availability seemed to be my greatest asset. ‘What do you think is so dangerous?’ I asked, waving the box at him. ‘Have you set off some munitions expert recently?’

‘It is unlikely to be a bomb at that size, Watson. But please put it down! Locks can be rigged, you know, and even fatal.’

‘Balderdash.’

‘Spring-loaded, poison-tipped darts. Blades that pierce the eye when you look inside. Oh, yes, Watson!’

I set it down, reluctantly. ‘Are you receiving death threats, Holmes?’

He said nothing.

‘Are you?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Nothing specific. But in my line of work it is wise to take care.’ Holmes sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Watson. It was not my intention to leave you out of my recent cases. Some of them require – they happen so quickly – I must stay nimble-footed.’

Hot with anger, I stood. I had recently declined to join friends for an excursion to Bath, but in a fit of pique changed my mind that instant. ‘In any case, let me not be your anchor. I’m leaving in an hour for a holiday.’

Holmes was the picture of dismay. ‘For how long? Where? Why on earth?’

‘I have had enough of this heat. A friend invited me to Bath. Several of us are going. Cards, a great deal of swimming, dining. Nothing that you would enjoy.’

‘Bath! Cards, you say? Dear fellow, I have had to lock your chequebook away for the third time! Your gambling debts will sink you. And as for fine dining, you really might reconsider.’ He said no more but eyed my middle.

That confirmed it. ‘I’m off to pack. Unlock your desk and have my chequebook out, or I shall break open the damned drawer.’ Normally I am a patient man, but perhaps it was the heat.

I was off within the hour, chequebook in hand and the mysterious box tucked safely in an inner pocket of my linen jacket. I would see to finding a locksmith in Bath, far away from prying eyes.

As the train steamed westward that evening, I slid open the window in my first-class carriage and felt the evening air rush in as a cooling breeze. I was relieved to be departing London, and to be honest, Sherlock Holmes.

An image of his thin face when I left, drawn and, dare I say, a bit sad, floated into my brain. Let him miss me, I thought crossly.

It was not one of my finer moments, and one I came to regret.

CHAPTER 3

You Left Me Hanging

Ten days later, even though lowering clouds darkened London with the promise of a summer storm, my mood was light as I returned in a cab from Paddington Station towards Baker Street. My extended holiday in Bath had been restorative. Given Holmes’s disputatious and dismissive mood of late, it was a welcome break to spend time with James Montgomery, a fellow soldier whom I had known in India, and two other comrades, whose ready laughter and playful demeanours had lifted my spirits.

Despite Holmes’s ill-placed concern, I had won a fair amount of money at cards. And while the best locksmith in Bath could do nothing with the mysterious box, I was sure a London expert would soon have it open. And so I had allowed myself to enjoy the baths every day and partook of wonderful cuisine: roast beef, oysters, champagne.

A dense tropical heat blanketed Baker Street. My medical colleagues who still believed in the miasmic transfer of disease were likely to be frantic at this weather.

As my cab pulled up to 221, I glanced up at our windows. The curtains were closed against the morning light, which was muted through a canopy of summer storm clouds. But the windows, too, were closed. That was odd.

Just as I descended from the carriage, the sky broke open and a torrent of rain dumped down as though some mischievous god had upended an enormous bucket on Baker Street.

‘Mrs Hudson!’ I exclaimed, greeting our landlady as she glided into the vestibule. But instead of her usual warm response, she took my drenched hat and coat wordlessly, her face cloudier than the sky outside.

While I may ‘see but not observe’, as my friend so often remarked, it would be difficult for any man to miss her distinct aura of reproach.

‘Dreadful weather!’ I put on my best smile. ‘But it is supposed to break the heat. Good to be home. How are you, Mrs Hudson?’

‘Just go on up, Doctor. It has been a challenging two weeks.’

‘Ten days, Mrs Hudson!’

‘Well, it seems a month. Go see to him.’ She disappeared downstairs. This was hardly the welcome I had expected.

I passed the sitting-room on the first floor landing, but the door was shut. Upstairs in my room, I set down my luggage and took out the small silver box from my mother. It gleamed in the morning light from my window, its tantalizing mystery intact. I locked the beautiful object in my drawer thinking I would find the right locksmith tomorrow.

I was not ready for what I found downstairs.

The first thing my eyes were drawn to was the floor, awash in clutter – inches deep with scattered papers, stained napkins, dirty ashtrays, pipe dottles, plates of dried food and random oddities. A box of snake-skins sat next to a carafe of something that looked like dried blood. Flies swarmed around it.

Mrs Hudson had clearly withdrawn her usual services, no doubt in one of her rare fits of pique.

And the room was as hot as a tea kettle on full boil. Yet a fire burned in the grate! Why? A gust of wind just then shot down the chimney and a spray of sparks escaped and landed on a pile of papers. One ignited, and I ran to it, just in time to toss the smouldering paper into the fireplace before it set the room afire. I drew the fire screen across it.

A near disaster! But that gust down the flue meant a breeze, so I next rushed to the windows and opened two of them against the stifling heat. The violent summer storm continued to pour down rain. But why was the room closed up like this?

And where was Holmes?

I turned to look and that is when I discovered him: hanging silently in a corner of the room. His body dangled from a rope and was suspended four feet off the floor. He was encased from the knees up in a straitjacket! One foot was bare, the other slippered. The bare foot wriggled.

He was alive, at least.

CHAPTER 4

New Skills

I stared at him for a long moment.

He frowned in concentration and began moving silently under the canvas of the restraint. It was a rather elaborate contraption, tightly bound, with leather straps and buckles, fastened with padlocks. The toes of his bare foot wriggled in concert with his efforts.