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

The waning sun slanted in through the sheer linen curtains, lighting up the room with a yellow glow. It was nearly seven, but the Indian summer hours were still long. The room, abandoned and stripped of possessions by her angry father and jealous sister, appeared just as it had that morning. It felt like a lifetime ago. The family had made quick work of removing all traces of Miss Odelia Wyndham.

The furniture and few remaining items were in disarray. Holmes began what he had hoped to do earlier, which was a detailed inspection of the empty closet, the empty drawers, the windowsill and the floor.

He turned to look at me where I was seated on the blue velvet sofa in front of the window. ‘Up, Watson,’ he directed. ‘I need to look underneath.’ Together, we pushed it aside.

There, back against the wall, something glinted in gold. Holmes seized it and examined it with his lens, then handed both to me. It was a simple gold ring, in the shape of an arrow, looped in on itself. ‘It’s a Woodman ring,’ he said. ‘Freddie’s – the one he mentioned. I am surprised she left it when she fled.’

‘Perhaps she didn’t flee but was abducted from this room?’ I offered. ‘You did say earlier that something did not feel right here. Could there be something in plain sight, something we have missed?’

‘I do not think she was abducted from here, Watson. Even the Cambridge police – or at the very least, her father – would have noticed obvious signs of a fight or a disturbance. I wager Wyndham found nothing telling. I believe she packed up her most treasured possessions and fled from this room of her own accord. Nevertheless, we do not have the whole story.’

Holmes stood in front of the window, scanning the room. He drew back the sheer linen curtains only a sliver and stared down into the street. ‘It does not look like anyone could have climbed out this way. Not without a ladder or a convenient tree.’ He let the curtains fall back across the window, and the evening sun glowed through them. Holmes moved to the centre of the room and turned slowly in place. ‘But there is something here. I can feel it.’

‘Wyndham must have been in a hurry. Everything has been disturbed,’ I said.

‘Or angry, yes.’ He paused, then his face lit up. ‘Everything except this.’

He pointed to an innocuous painting, an unimpressive seascape on the wall opposite the sofa, hanging next to the door. In contrast to the disarray of the rest of the room, it hung straight and undisturbed.

Holmes took down the painting and examined the back. ‘Watson, we are in luck!’ he cried.

He removed an envelope that was fastened to the frame. Eagerly he opened it. ‘Pawnshop receipts!’ he said, flipping through them. ‘Her father was right! But she managed to keep it a secret from him, even after death. Watson, Dillie had been pawning off her mother’s – or someone’s – jewellery.’ He paused and looked up. ‘Saving, no doubt, for this moment.’

‘To do what?’

‘To buy her freedom. I would be willing to wager that Miss Wyndham pawned her two engagement rings just before she was killed. Or perhaps was on her way to do so. And this would explain why she accepted rings from both Eden-Summers and Leo Vitale.’

‘Then she did not intend to marry either.’

‘I would theorize not.’

‘Could there have been a third person with whom she planned to leave? Like Madame Borelli and her scientist fellow?’

One of the low stools we had sat on near the door to put Dillie at her ease had been upended. Holmes turned it upright and sat down, the receipts in his hand. He closed his eyes. ‘I need to think.’

The room was nearly dark. I found a gaslit sconce and lit it, and the room was immediately bathed in a warm light.

‘What pawnshop?’ I asked.

‘Piotr Flan. Here is the address.’ He handed me the receipts. As I moved towards the light to look at them, the door flew open and to our surprise in burst Freddie Eden-Summers. He took us both in and frowned in confusion.

‘What are you two doing here?’

‘My question for you, Mr Eden-Summers,’ said Holmes, on his feet.

‘This was Dillie’s private room,’ said Eden-Summers.

‘Yes, but no longer. Have you come to retrieve something? A ring perhaps?’ said Holmes.

The boy stammered, backed up. ‘Well, I thought perhaps …’

I held up the golden circle ring and stepped forward. ‘This one, by chance?’

Freddie Eden-Summers squinted at the ring from across the room. ‘Oh, that one. I gave her that a month ago. My Woodman ring. I was hoping for the engagement ring. But give it to me—’

The young man stepped towards me into the glow of the lamplight near me on the wall. The next moment has been frozen in my memory, with the movements slowed, bathed in greenish-golden light, as though underwater.

The soft gaslight illuminated Eden-Summers’ pale, handsome face, and I noticed the blond peach fuzz which covered his cheeks and the straw colour of his eyelashes. The ring in my hand gleamed.

To one side, Sherlock Holmes had his eyes pinned on Eden-Summers. That is the last thing that I remember, for at that moment there was the splinter of glass and the slight huff of tearing fabric, and I felt a searing white-hot blade pass into my right thigh.

I heard a cry of agony which must have been my own.

And then I was on the floor with Eden-Summers leaning over me. He was staring at my thigh.

‘The little minx!’ he exclaimed.

What was he talking about? The pain in my leg was excruciating. I groaned and tried to sit up to see what had happened.

Holmes elbowed the boy aside and peered down at me.

‘Watson, be still. You have been shot! Eden-Summers, go for a doctor!’

I craned my neck to see the boy at the window, staring down at the courtyard. ‘Better yet, I’ll get a cab and take you