Five pink ladies, p.1
Five Pink Ladies, page 1
FIVE PINK LADIES
A SHERLOCK HOLMES AND LUCY JAMES STORY
THE SHERLOCK HOLMES AND LUCY JAMES MYSTERIES
The Last Moriarty
The Wilhelm Conspiracy
Remember, Remember
The Crown Jewel Mystery
The Jubilee Problem
Death at the Diogenes Club
The Return of the Ripper
Die Again, Mr. Holmes
Watson on the Orient Express
Kidnapped at the Tower
Five Pink Ladies
THE SHERLOCK AND LUCY SHORT STORIES
Flynn’s Christmas
The Clown on the High Wire
The Cobra in the Monkey Cage
A Fancy-Dress Death
The Sons of Helios
The Vanishing Medium
Christmas at Baskerville Hall
The series page at Amazon:
https://amzn.to/367XJKl
FIVE PINK LADIES
A SHERLOCK HOLMES AND LUCY JAMES STORY
BY ANNA ELLIOTT AND CHARLES VELEY
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2020 by Charles Veley and Anna Elliott. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
Sherlock and Lucy series website: http://sherlockandlucy.com
eBook formatting by FormattingExperts.com
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: FLYNN
CHAPTER 2: LUCY
CHAPTER 3: BECKY
CHAPTER 4: WATSON
CHAPTER 5: BECKY
CHAPTER 6: LUCY
CHAPTER 7: WATSON
CHAPTER 8: LUCY
CHAPTER 9: LUCY
CHAPTER 10: FLYNN
CHAPTER 11: LUCY
CHAPTER 12: BECKY
CHAPTER 13: LUCY
CHAPTER 14: FLYNN
A NOTE TO READERS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
With special thanks to Angela Norton, J.D., M.B.A.
CHAPTER 1: FLYNN
Flynn wasn’t working for Mr. Holmes that Tuesday, so at lunchtime he went strolling along the tall wooden fence outside the Persian’s studio in Chelsea. Flynn knew the Persian’s full name—Amir Tremazian—but Flynn had only seen it on one of the man’s paintings and wasn’t sure how to pronounce it, so he just thought of him as the Persian, or sometimes Amir. He stopped at the high gate, which was locked. He crouched beside the fence slat the Persian used as a signal, and jiggled it. Today it was loose. That meant the Persian was expecting him.
Flynn reached up with both hands, warily gripping the top of the fence. He was a thin and wiry boy, one of Mr. Holmes’s Irregulars, and could have hauled himself up and scrambled over without stopping to think about it. But knowing this fence, he went over it slowly and carefully, to avoid splinters. The faded brown paint had cracked and peeled, and parts of the wood were rotting. The Persian hadn’t fixed it, because he was too busy painting his pictures. He hadn’t made any repairs at all, that Flynn knew of, since moving into what once had been a carriage house. The Persian spent nearly every daylight hour there with his brushes and canvases, until sundown, when he went home to his wife. Around the studio were respectable houses, lived in by respectable people, but the studio was more or less out of sight of the street and set back from the back yards of its neighbours. The Persian was in there six days a week, not even going out for lunch.
That was where Flynn fit in, running out to fetch the food.
But only on Tuesdays.
On Mondays, the Persian worked in one of museums, when it was closed to the public. He said that he loved seeing the portraits in the museum but hated the work, which involved cleaning dirt from the canvases and repairing frames. Still, he needed the money. He gave himself a hot lunch the next day as a special reward. Some Tuesdays there wasn’t any hot lunch, because the museum hadn’t paid him, and the Persian nailed the fence slat tight, signaling Flynn not to come in. But today the fence slat was loose. So, Flynn expected to share a good meal and get a few coins extra for fetching it.
Flynn liked having lunch with the Persian, and not just for the food and the money. The Persian was an educated man, you could tell, but he didn’t make Flynn feel small or unimportant or lacking in things like table manners. Flynn could eat properly when he needed to, but he was more comfortable just digging in with his fingers. So was the Persian. Whether it was bread, or chestnuts, or sweet potatoes, or maybe a bit of lamb or beef, but not pork, the Persian just unwrapped it from the pushcart vendor’s paper, cut off a share for Flynn, and they went at it, happily eating and not caring one bit what they looked like.
Sometimes Flynn even brought some lunch for the Persian without being asked or paid. Usually just a few dinner rolls, when Mrs. Hudson had some left over and they weren’t too stale. The previous Tuesday he had brought rolls with him and found the slat nailed securely shut. Flynn had clambered over anyway, walked up the stone pathway to the little door on that side, and knocked. He waited. The autumn wind cut right through his threadbare woollen jacket. Finally, he heard the Persian’s voice. Impatient. Annoyed.
“Yes?”
“It’s me. Flynn. I’ve got rolls,” he said.
“Not today, my friend,” came the reply, in a kinder tone. “Another time.”
My friend. And the Persian sounded as if he meant it.
The Persian’s wife had come to London from Persia. Flynn didn’t know the name of the city. But once, when the Persian had sent him to their tenement apartment to fetch a picture book he had been studying, he had seen her. A beautiful lady named Anahita, with a sweet face, dark eyebrows, and olive skin like the Persian’s. The Persian wanted to look good for his wife, Flynn knew, because he shaved his thick dark beard twice a day. He shaved just before he did some kind of prayer, chanting out loud and kneeling on a small rug he kept rolled up for the purpose.
Now on the grass inside the fence, Flynn could see the little studio, big enough for a carriage and maybe a horse, with its smaller door shut facing him. On the other side, where the carriage would have gone in, were the bigger doors. That side now had a lot of glass windows, the one improvement the Persian had made. The Persian painted with that side always to his back, so the light on his canvas would stay the way he wanted it.
Flynn knocked at the little door. The Persian opened it, showing a wide grin and gleaming white teeth, wiping his hands on a turpentine rag. He had strong arms and a tall, muscular build, not like some other artists, who smoke and drank and smelled dirty, and who always looked sick. The Persian kept his studio neat and tidy, his paints and tools and brushes each in an appointed spot.
“Come in, Flynn my lad,” he said, standing aside for Flynn to enter. “You feeling strong now? I hope you are strong like the ox, my boy. You will need your strength.”
Flynn looked enquiringly. “Oh yes?”
“Today you are to go far, far away and bring a glorious surprise for my dear wife.” He gestured towards an empty wicker laundry basket on the floor beside him. “You are to take this basket to Victoria Market and fill it with the makings of a wonderful dinner. It must be truly wonderful, the like of which she has not seen since she came to London. Also, it must be great surprise. You are not to tell until you bring it to her. You remember where we live, yes?”
Flynn nodded.
“Now, here is a five-pound note. Buy meat, fish, cheese, pudding, fruit, bread, all to be very best quality. Can you do this?”
“Never spent five pounds before.”
“But you have been to market. You have walked along stalls. You have seen. You have wished. You have dreamed.”
Flynn nodded.
“As have I. As has she.”
“Five pounds is a lot.”
“There will be some left over. You will bring that back and I will pay you for your afternoon’s work. This is an enormous day for me, young Flynn my lad. An enormous great day, my friend.”
“You sold a painting,” Flynn said.
At the Persian’s sharp look, Flynn continued, “You had four canvases stacked over there in the corner last time I was here. Now there are three.”
“You are an observing young fellow. However, those three canvases are new and untouched. Ready for my next commission. Which I hope to receive soon.”
“So, you sold all four that I saw?”
The Persian nodded.
“Five pounds for four paintings?”
The Persian held up a cautionary finger. “I do not work so cheaply, Flynn my lad. This note was only a preliminary deposit, from the messenger who took them to his master for approval. Upon his master’s approval he will return with—”
And the Persian named a sum that made Flynn gasp.
“You are right to be astonished, young Flynn. I will be able to find a new home.”
“You’ll move away?”
“Not my studio. It has brought me great fortune and the light is good, so I shall continue to work here. But my wife and I will be able to live in more favourable circumstances. Now, you must get along, young Flynn. Fill the basket at the market and take it to my wife, and be certain to allow her enough time to prepare our wonderful supper of celebration. Please tell her that I s hall be home at my usual hour.”
The church clock was striking four o’clock when Flynn returned. As he approached the tall fence with the loose board, he was thinking of the Persian’s wife. Her weary eyes had lit up as she opened the door of their upstairs tenement and saw Flynn with his full basket, piled high with treasures.
But Flynn was wondering how much to tell the Persian. On the one hand, the man would want to know that his wife had received the makings of the bountiful feast as intended. On the other hand, the happiness in her eyes had quickly faded to doubt, and then mistrust.
“What has he done?” she asked.
“All I know, ma’am, is what he told me. Sold four paintings, and more payment will be coming. Better times are ahead.”
But she had still seemed skeptical and even a little afraid. Flynn hesitated at the fence, wondering if he ought to be truthful about Anahita’s reaction.
Then he smelled the turpentine smoke.
He scrambled over the fence. Flames were sprouting from the rooftop and from the wooden walls. The little door was open, and the entire interior appeared to be ablaze.
Flynn ran into the studio, looking for the Persian amid the smoke and flames. An empty easel stood at the centre of the workspace. Behind the easel, a figure lay slumped on the floor.
The Persian.
Neck twisted aside, eyes shut, mouth open, gasping for breath.
Flynn got his hands under the Persian’s armpits and pulled. The man was too heavy for Flynn. He barely budged. The flames were coming closer. Flynn could feel the radiant heat on his forehead and eyebrows. The larger door, the one that had once admitted the horse and carriage, was wide open. Plenty of air to feed the growing fire.
Flynn crouched, dug in his heels, lifted and pulled again. Nothing.
Then he saw the back of the Persian’s head. The man’s thick black hair was shiny, wet with blood.
Someone hit him from behind, Flynn thought.
Then he realised that the Persian was lying on his prayer rug. So he’d been kneeling. Praying. Probably chanting aloud, the way he did, giving thanks, not even hearing his attacker. Probably just been paid the huge sum of his dreams. Probably the attacker took it and left the Persian to burn.
Flynn felt a moment’s rage, a fever within that matched the heat throbbing against his cheeks. He rolled up the edge of the rug closest to him, grabbed the corners, squatted down and hauled backward.
The rug moved, grudgingly. Flynn kept at it, scrabbling like a beetle until momentum overcame friction. After what seemed an eternity, the rug and the Persian were sliding along behind him as he scuttled towards the open doorway.
He dragged the Persian, still on the rug, to the alleyway between the houses, where horses and carriages had once come and gone. He ran to the corner to flag down a cab. He had change from the five pounds left from the market. He waved the remaining pound note to make the cabman stop, something he never would have done in most of the other London neighbourhoods that he frequented.
The cabman helped him lift the rug and shift the unconscious Persian into the front of the hansom.
“St. Thomas’s hospital,” Flynn said. The cabman nodded as though he had been expecting that. St. Thomas’s was only a few blocks away. They arrived within minutes, found a stretcher stacked alongside the entrance, and soon had the Persian laid out. When they were through the big entry doorway, staggering under the man’s weight, they saw a gurney cart against a wall. They had just manoeuvred the Persian onto the cart when a nurse came out from behind a reception desk.
Her expression was as stiff and forbidding as her starched white hat and uniform.
“I’m not sure we can take this man,” she said. “Does he live nearby?”
“His office is in the neighbourhood. And he’s a patient of Dr. Watson’s,” Flynn said. “Dr. John Watson. The famous Dr. Watson.”
The nurse still looked doubtful.
Flynn pressed his last remaining coins into the nurse’s hand. “The doctor will come here as soon as I telephone him. I know he will. If I can use your telephone.”
CHAPTER 2: LUCY
“And you don’t know of anyone who might have wished your husband harm, Mrs. Tremazian?” I asked.
The woman seated opposite from me shook her head. “No. Amir never talked to me about the details of his work. He would tell me when a painting was going well, and he would bring the money to me if he sold a piece, but otherwise—”
She pressed her lips together and shut her eyes, plainly fighting tears.
Even pale and drawn with worry, Anahita Tremazian was a beautiful woman. Her black hair was caught back in a braid that reached nearly to her waist. Her face was a smooth oval, with strongly marked dark brows and huge, very thickly lashed dark eyes.
“I’m sorry.” The words were inadequate, but I touched her hand. “I promise that we’ll do our absolute best to find out whoever did this to your husband.”
“And Dr. Watson will take very, very good care of him,” Becky said.
She had come along with me to visit Mrs. Tremazian because for one thing, Flynn had told me that Anahita was nervous of strangers, and I’d thought that Becky’s presence might put her more at ease. And for another thing, this was Flynn’s case, and I didn’t imagine for a single moment that any force on earth could prevent my small sister-in-law from taking part in it.
The best I could hope for was to keep her with me to mitigate the danger.
“You don’t have to worry, Mr. Tremazian will get better again with Dr. Watson looking after him, you’ll see,” Becky said.
I had seen Watson’s grave look when he’d spoken of the man whom Flynn had brought to St. Thomas’s, and wasn’t nearly as sure as Becky. But I couldn’t take away the hope that brimmed in Anahita’s eyes as she made an effort to smile.
“Thank you.” She spoke with an accent, but her English was very good. She lifted the tea pot that sat on the table between us. “Would you like more tea? Or something to eat?”
“No. But thank you, it was lovely,” I told her. She had insisted on brewing us cups of very sweet mint tea on our arrival, but I didn’t want to strain her resources any more than I could possibly help.
The hamper of food that Flynn had brought her was stowed away in the small corner of the room that served as a kitchen. But Anahita was far too thin, her cheekbones too clearly defined, her wrists fragile-looking. That food might have to last her for quite some time, if it didn’t spoil in the summer heat.
The upper level tenement room felt stiflingly hot. A sluggish breeze barely stirred the curtains that hung at the room’s single small window, and flies buzzed around the cupboard where Anahita must keep the rest of her food.
There was hardly any furniture, apart from the table and the chairs we sat on. Not that much would have fit. The room was cramped, with a low ceiling and uneven wooden floorboards. But the space was all scrupulously clean, the floor swept, the few sticks of furniture polished. The cloth on the table was cheap, threadbare cotton, but it had been embroidered with a bright pattern of flowers, and someone—it must have been Mr. Tremazian—had painted a design of flowers on the wall, going up and around the door and window frames.
Amir and Anahita had clearly done their best to turn this grim place into a home.
“When is your baby going to come?” Becky asked.
Anahita looked slightly scandalised by the question. I had already noticed that she was in the late stages of expecting a child but hadn’t wanted to speak of it until Anahita herself brought it up. Becky, though, read books on anatomy for bedtime stories and categorically refused to even pretend that babies were delivered down chimneys by the stork.
“In about a month’s time.” Anahita rested her hand on her middle. “We were so happy, Amir and I. Although he was worried about money. About earning enough to support us—” she stopped, fighting back more tears. “If that is why he got involved in whatever business has brought him harm—”
“We’ll find out,” Becky said positively. “Won’t we, Lucy? We’ll find out everything and make sure that whoever hurt him goes to jail for it.”
Anahita smiled again. “You are, I think, an unusual child,” she told Becky. “Or are all English girls as assured as you are?”
