Between you and me, p.1
The Crown Jewel Mystery (A Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery Book 4), page 1
THE CROWN JEWEL MYSTERY
The prequel to
The Sherlock Holmes / Lucy James Mystery series
A young American actress arrives in London hoping to learn her identity, just as Sherlock Holmes is closing in on a master criminal. Their worlds collide, and not even Holmes could have foreseen the impact!
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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
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
Kidnapped at the Tower
Five Pink Ladies
The Solitary Witness
The Body in the Bookseller’s
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THE CROWN JEWEL MYSTERY
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 2017 by Anna Elliott and Charles Veley. 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.
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Cover design by Todd A. Johnson
Table of Contents
OTHER TITLES BY ANNA ELLIOTT AND CHARLES VELEY
1. FROM THE NOTES OF JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.
2. FROM THE DIARY OF LUCY JAMES
3. LUCY
4. LUCY
5. WATSON
6. LUCY
7. LUCY
8. WATSON
9. LUCY
10. LUCY
11. LUCY
12. WATSON
13. LUCY
14. WATSON
15. LUCY
16. LUCY
17. WATSON
18. LUCY
19. WATSON
HISTORICAL NOTE
A NOTE TO READERS
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
1. FROM THE NOTES OF JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.
Sherlock Holmes stood motionless beside me, watching intently as Mrs. Palfrey struggled with the lock to her son’s bedroom door. Holmes was plainly impatient, but he said nothing, for none of us wished to add to the poor woman’s obvious distress. Her plump hands shook, and she was weeping.
Finally, the lock clicked, the knob turned, and the door swung open to reveal a barren, cramped space containing two narrow beds and little else by way of furnishings. Neither bed appeared to have been slept in.
I caught a faintly acrid scent on the cold air coming from the single open window and saw a pair of faded yellow curtains fluttering in the morning breeze. The time was just after nine o’clock, and the date was Monday, October 28, 1895. Holmes and I had left Baker Street in haste before daybreak to meet Inspector Gregson and his men. At the inspector’s telephoned summons, we had foregone breakfast to make the two-mile journey to Mrs. Palfrey’s rooming house, a stolid brick four-story structure on Great Ormond Street.
Now, what we had come to investigate was immediately apparent. On the floor between the two beds, huddled against the wall beneath the window, lay the crumpled remains of Simon Palfrey. He was still fully dressed.
Holmes took three swift strides and stood beside the body, but he did not examine it. Rather, he appeared to be watching the street outside, although he stayed behind the curtains and well away from the window.
Mrs. Palfrey waited in the doorway, plainly unwilling to advance further.
Gregson, florid-faced and Nordic in appearance, addressed her in a kindly tone. “Please tell us what happened, Mrs. Palfrey.”
She had not yet caught her breath from climbing the stairs and was still trying to control her sorrow, dabbing at her reddened eyes with a small handkerchief. Finally she spoke. “It were six o’clock, and he would have been late for work. I knocked at the door. He’d locked it. So I let myself in with my own key and there he was—”
“Have you moved him?”
“I touched his forehead. It was cold. I locked the door and telephoned the police straightaway.”
“Were you in the habit of waking your son on workdays?”
“Sadly, yes. For the past few months.”
“Why?”
“He had taken to keeping late hours. And drinking.”
“Where?”
“Mostly at the Swan. It’s only a few blocks from here so he can manage to walk home safely even after a … late evening. He has pills he takes to clear his head, and he is generally all right in the morning—though that comes all too soon, I’m afraid, what with the hours he’s been keeping.”
“Pills?”
“He showed them to me. Said they’d done him a power of good.”
Holmes had been standing back from the window, but looking out of it quite frequently from time to time. Now he knelt beside the dead man. I noticed that Simon Palfrey was dark haired and bearded with a neatly trimmed goatee.
Holmes pulled a small pasteboard box from the man’s waistcoat pocket and held it up.
“Oh, that’s them,” said Mrs. Palfrey. “Coca lozenges. His nerve tonic, he called it.”
Holmes opened the box and sniffed the contents. “We will have these analyzed,” he said, tucking them into his jacket pocket.
“Do they smell funny?”
“They smell perfectly ordinary. But we must eliminate the possibility that they contained the poison that appears to have killed him. Did he take one last night?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say one way or the other. I was waiting up for him, like always, and he just looked in on me and said goodnight, and then he went upstairs. And that’s the last—”
She broke off and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes once again.
“If I may, Mrs. Palfrey,” Gregson said. “Just one more question. When you telephoned the Yard, you gave the desk sergeant the name of the establishment where your son was employed. Would you kindly verify that for us now?”
“He is—was—a clerk at the Capital and Counties Bank on Oxford Street. It’s a mile away. It takes him about twenty minutes to walk it. I came to wake him at six so that he would get there on time this morning.”
Capital and Counties was the bank where Holmes kept his accounts. It was also somehow connected with Gregson’s call to us and with Holmes’s sense of urgency as we hurried here this morning. Holmes and the Yard no doubt had a reason for taking a particular interest in the bank, but as yet Holmes had not shared that reason with me. It was one of his most annoying habits, keeping his plans secret until the last possible moment.
Gregson continued. “And I believe you told the desk constable that your other son is also employed at Capital and Counties?”
“Yes. Jeremy is a guard there.”
“At this moment?”
“He works nights. He gets off at seven. Jeremy generally takes the Turkish bath after his shift. For his health.”
“And he shares—beg pardon, shared—the room with Simon.”
“It’s quieter on the top floor so they both can sleep undisturbed. And we need the better rooms for the paying lodgers.” At that moment there came the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“That’ll be Jeremy now,” said Mrs. Palfrey.
She was proven correct as a short, ruddy-faced. clean-shaven man of about thirty years pushed past the constable and entered the room. His face and hands were flushed, likely from the effects of the Turkish bath, though his breathing was normal. His features bore a striking resemblance to those of the dead man, with the same dark hair, wide forehead, and high cheekbones. Had he not been clean shaven, the resemblance would have been even more striking.
Mrs. Palfrey broke the news just as the new arrival caught sight of his brother’s body. His eyes widened in shock, and his limbs seemed to lose their strength. He sat down heavily at the foot of one of the two beds and buried his face in his hands.
After giving Jeremy a few moments to recover, Gregson made the introductions. He did not name either Holmes or myself, referring to us as two gentlemen who sometimes render assistance to Scotland Yard.
Jeremy appeared not to notice us, nor to care about our presence. He sat head downcast, nodding and rocking slowly from side to side. Finally he spoke.
He said he was givin’ up them pills.”
“Where did he get them?” Gregson asked.
“Some gal he was sweet on. She—they would go out drinking after work. Not that he could afford it. I kept tellin’ him she was no good and that the life of a boozer was no good and that people at the bank were startin’ to talk. He wouldn’t listen.”
Holmes asked, “How long had this been going on?”
“Couple months. Six weeks, maybe.”
“Yet you thought he was going to reform?”
“I kept telling him he ought to try the Turkish baths after work instead of goin’ to the pub. Do something constructive for your health, I tells him, not something destructive. I thought I’d finally got through to him, because two Saturdays ago we were both off from work and he took me up on it. Afterwards he said the visit to the baths had done him a world of good. He said he could scarcely believe how much good it had done him. But then he went straight back to his old ways. Drinkin’ and wastin’ his time with that woman. That’s what we had the row about yesterday. I knew what he was up to because he’d stopped makin’ up his bed again. I’d come home, and it would be all rumpled and smellin’ like a gin mill.”
Holmes nodded. Then he said, “Might I ask you a favor, Mr. Palfrey. Would you please turn out your pockets?”
Though appearing momentarily surprised, the man complied without hesitation. Holmes went through the items, naming each in succession as he lifted it up. “A wallet with a few bills and a card identifying you as an employee of the Capital and Counties Bank. A pocket handkerchief, slightly damp. A small key ring with four keys. This one is to your front door, is it not? And this is to your room—the room you share here? And the third, this smaller one?”
“Oh, that is to my locker at the bath. And the other is to my locker at the bank, where I keep my uniform.”
Holmes turned to Gregson. “We must leave here at once,” he said. “There is not a moment to lose.”
2. FROM THE DIARY OF LUCY JAMES
“So what do you think?”
I turned to study the young man beside me. John D. Rockefeller Jr.—Johnny, as he was known to his friends—was in his early twenties and handsome, with dark hair and a clean-shaven, sensitive face.
He was impeccably dressed in a dark suit, tan overcoat, and shining black top hat, with a white silk scarf around his neck to ward off London’s damp autumn chill.
I raised an eyebrow. “I think that was the least romantic proposal in the entire history of marriage.”
Johnny’s mouth curved in a quick grin. “In my defense, it is the tenth time I’ve asked you.”
“Exactly. Surely a tenth proposal ought to be marked by something more momentous than a what do you think? Fireworks or hot-air balloons at the very least. Now, focus.”
I looked up at the tall, stone-built building before us, my heart quickening.
Johnny gave me a martyred look. “You know, most people arriving in London for the first time want to see Buckingham Palace … the Tower … London Bridge. Not a dreary branch of the Capital and Counties Bank.”
I ignored him.
I hadn’t even been in London a full day, but I liked what I had seen very much: the old half-timbered buildings sandwiched in amongst the more modern ones, the sleek black hansom cabs, and the streets filled with people from all walks of life—from wigged members of Parliament, hurrying to meetings in the House of Lords to organ-grinders and orange vendors and Italian acrobats performing on street corners.
I even loved the slightly yellow-tinted fog that crawled, phantom-like, along the cobbled streets and narrow lanes.
At some point, I intended to see all the sights of the great city, though my list of places I wanted to visit was somewhat different from Johnny’s: the original site of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater … the Poet’s corner in Westminster Abbey … The Lyceum Theater, where Ellen Terry was currently playing Queen Guinevere in Henry Irving’s production of King Arthur.
For the moment, though, there was absolutely nothing more important to me in the world than getting inside the Oxford Street branch of the Capital and Counties Bank.
“We need to find out who the bank manager is in there and get him to see us,” I said.
Johnny waved a dismissive hand. “That’s easily done.”
That was probably true. The Rockefeller name alone was enough to allow Johnny easy access almost anywhere he wished to go. If past experience were any guide, all he would have to do inside the bank was introduce himself, and the bank manager would start tripping over his own feet to carry out Johnny’s lightest wish.
“Thank you for coming with me,” I said.
Johnny smiled. “Anything for you, Lucy James.”
My heart tightened again. Lucy James was the name I’d had for my entire life. As I looked up at the bank, though, my nerves felt stretched, my pulse racing with the thought that I might—possibly—be about to discover where the name had come from.
We walked up the steps, Johnny introduced himself to the doorman on guard at the door, and—true to expectations—we were rapidly ushered into the inner office of the bank manager, whose name—according to the brass plaque on his door—was Mr. Albert Poole.
“Mr. Rockefeller.” Mr. Poole greeted Johnny with an outstretched hand and a beaming, if slightly anxious, smile.
He was a middle-aged man with a rotund figure, reddish-brown hair parted exactly in the middle of his forehead, and quite possibly the most perfectly trimmed toothbrush mustache I had ever seen. Silver-framed spectacles perched on the end of his nose.
“This is a great honor, a great honor, to be sure,” he went on. “I have never had the pleasure of meeting your father, though of course I know him by reputation, and you may be assured that we at the Capital and Counties Bank stand ready to assist both you and him in any way that we possibly can.”
He sat behind a large, mahogany desk that was bare of even the slightest trace of clutter. Papers were neatly stacked in labeled trays: incoming and outgoing. His sheet of blotting paper was clean and new and perfectly aligned with the desk corners. Even his pens stood ramrod straight in their holders.
“Thank you.” Johnny gave Mr. Poole a friendly smile. It was one of the nicest aspects of his character; despite his family background, he had somehow managed to grow to adulthood without becoming in any way spoiled or thinking that the world existed to do his bidding.
He dropped into one of the two leather-upholstered chairs in front of Mr. Poole’s desk. I sat down in the other.
“Actually what I require isn’t for myself, though. This is my friend, Miss Lucy James.” Johnny nodded, indicating me.
Remaining quietly in the background wasn’t exactly a strength of mine. But in this case, I kept strictly silent, letting Johnny perform the introductions.
I could see my own faint, wavering reflection in the glass that covered the bookcase behind Mr. Poole’s desk: dark brown hair beneath the brim of my flower-trimmed brown straw hat, dark-lashed green eyes, pale oval face.
I could also see a long row of filing cabinets next to the bookcase, where presumably Mr. Poole kept his records—records that might finally give me some clue as to where I got my dark hair and green eyes.
“Miss James is newly arrived in London,” Johnny went on. “She is to join the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Theater and requires a bank account to be opened here in London, where she may deposit her salary and all of that sort of thing.”
Mr. Poole’s face fell. Even the squared-off corners of his mustache seemed to droop.
“If you could just—” Johnny began.
I kicked his ankle.
“Ow!—I mean, ah!” Johnny shot me an aggrieved look, but correctly interpreted my message. “Actually, now that I come to think of it, it would be convenient for me to open an account here in London, as well,” he said. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be over here for, but it would be good to have an account I could use for writing checks or draw on for ready cash.”
Mr. Poole immediately brightened, rubbing his hands together. “Certainly, Mr. Rockefeller, certainly! I would be only too pleased. And you, as well, Miss James, of course.”
He gave me a polite nod. I couldn’t entirely blame him for not viewing my business in quite the same light as Johnny’s. An as-yet-unknown American actress was not at all the same thing as the young Rockefeller heir.
