The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird (learn to read books txt) 📕

Holmes shook his head ruefully. ‘What folly! She endangers herself needlessly.’

‘Polly seems like a resourceful young lady,’ I offered.

‘You forget, Watson, the Spinning House. Cambridge at night is not safe for young women like Polly!’

‘Ah, yes, Holmes.’

Holmes had the Bradshaw in his hands. ‘We have missed the last train again! Oh, what a shame. Watson, to bed, quickly! We must be on the earliest train to Cambridge.’

As dawn broke the following morning Holmes and I found ourselves on a train bound for Cambridge with only a few hours’ sleep. We were both attired in our linen summer suits and the day promised no break in the weather. Cambridge, I knew, would be hotter even than London.

To Holmes’s extreme frustration, our train was delayed for nearly two hours due to an accident on the tracks and it was after ten when we arrived at our destination. We headed first to Dillie’s bolt-hole, hoping to find both girls there. No one answered the door. Once again, Holmes used his kit to open the lock and was dismayed to find the room had been emptied. There was nothing left of Dillie Wyndham’s that I could see.

But who had done this?

I have never known Holmes to curse but he came close to it that day, surveying the empty room. All of Dillie’s clothes had been removed from the closet, all the personal belongings packed up and taken away, with drawers left open, two clothes hangers on the floor, and a bedside table upended.

Holmes made a careful inspection, even as his fury was evident. I knew well enough to leave him to his work and not to interrupt him with questions. It was afterwards, in a carriage en route to the Wyndhams’ that he opened up to me.

‘Watson,’ said he, ‘I am not, as you know, a great believer in hunches. I prefer data – real, tangible data. That room provided very little. And yet I have a very bad feeling.’

‘Holmes, I know you. Surely there was something – a tiny clue, perhaps not even registered consciously that has given rise to this “feeling”?’

‘You may be right, but it is presently abstruse, Watson. And yet … I cannot shake my fear for Miss Wyndham at this moment.’

We pulled up to the front of the Wyndhams’ house. At eleven in the morning, the heat was already oppressive. I could feel the sweat running down my back.

‘Now,’ said Holmes as we dismounted the cab, ‘if only we would find Dillie here, healthy, spirited—’

‘—and slightly pugilistic,’ I inserted.

‘Ha! Yes, even that. But I fear we will not.’

Five minutes later we were seated in the parlour of the Wyndham family home awaiting the appearance of Mr and Mrs Wyndham. Into the room swept the ethereal Atalanta, looking even paler than before, but with a strangely triumphant smirk on her elfin face. A bright rose dress accentuated her pallor, giving her skin an almost greenish cast.

‘Well, the gentlemen from London,’ she drawled, posing in the doorway like a Greek statue. ‘You are days late for the engagement celebration. There might be the dregs of some champagne in the kitchen. It will have gone flat by now, but shall I ring for some anyway? You look parched.’

‘Miss Atalanta,’ said Holmes, ‘I take it Miss Odelia is not here. Have you seen her?’

Atalanta smiled and shook her head.

‘Is your maid Polly about?’

‘No. She went to see her mother. Or so she said.’ There was mockery in her tone. A nasty smile darkened her features.

‘When is she due back?’

‘Who knows?’

Holmes and I exchanged a glance. He did not like that news and neither did I.

‘Where does Polly’s mother live?’

‘Ask in the kitchen. I neither know nor care.’

‘Do you know where your sister is?’

‘Now, that is the question of the hour, isn’t it?’ said the irritating young woman. ‘I neither know—’

‘—nor care. Yes, indeed, Miss Atalanta you have made yourself abundantly clear on that point,’ said Holmes. ‘But the young lady seems to have disappeared.’

‘I found her hiding place, you know,’ said Atalanta. ‘After the engagement, she began to show the signs. Her “tell”, Freddie calls it. Something the card players like to say. I knew she was about to run and kept a careful eye, and when she made her break, I followed her there.’

‘I see. Did you confront her?’

‘To what end? No, I told our father. But by the time he …’ Her face darkened. ‘Well, by the time he believed me and we went there, Dillie was gone.’

‘You went there with your father this morning, then?’

‘Why? How do you know this?’

‘It is too bad your father did not listen to you earlier,’ said Holmes.

Atalanta shrugged, but I could sense the damaged girl under her practised coolness.

‘Where do you think she is now?’ asked Holmes.

‘I told you. I simply don’t care. My father has disowned her—’

At that moment Richard Wyndham strode into the room. It was as though there was a tide of invisible energy emanating from him, like the wake of a fast-moving ship, and his daughter backed away as if frightened of its impact.

‘Atalanta, leave us!’ he commanded, and the older daughter vanished. ‘What do you want?’ he asked Holmes.

‘I am concerned about your daughter, Odelia.’

Wyndham gave Holmes a peculiar, threatening look.

Holmes waited.

‘Yes, yes. She ran off. Again. Atalanta showed me where she had been hiding. But the damned little hussy has left there and … by God, if I get ahold of her, she—’ His breath caught, and he looked up. ‘But what is this to you? And what brought you here?’

‘I will get to that. Who cleaned out her rooms there?’ asked Holmes, meeting the man’s fury with his own cold anger.

‘I and my man did. How do you know they were cleaned out? We only did so a couple of hours ago. How did you get in?’

Holmes did not answer the question. ‘May I see her things?’

‘No.’

‘Professor Wyndham, your daughter may be in danger.’

‘Of her own making, then. If Odelia returns here, she will find no refuge.