The Mystery of the Scarlet Rose

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 A LONDON CHRISTMAS

  Chapter 2 A SUDDEN STORM

  Chapter 3 A SOUL IN TURMOIL

  Chapter 4 THREE CHILDREN AT SCOTLAND YARD

  Chapter 5 A TRIP TO TWICKENHAM

  Chapter 6 AT THE SIGN OF THE OLD BRIGANTINE

  Chapter 7 THE THREE BEGGARS

  Chapter 8 A GREAT DETECTIVE

  Chapter 9 FLEET STREET SCOOPS

  Chapter 10 A SUDDEN CHANGE

  Chapter 11 A LONG, TROUBLED DREAM

  Chapter 12 LIKE A TIGER IN A CAGE

  Chapter 13 A TRIP TO LIVERPOOL

  Chapter 14 PAPER LABYRINTH

  Chapter 15 A TANGLED TALE

  Chapter 16 THREE GENTLEMEN, OR PERHAPS NOT

  Chapter 17 HUNTING THE BLACK FRIAR

  Chapter 18 DAWN ON THE THAMES

  Chapter 19 THE SHADOW OF VENGEANCE

  Chapter 20 CHRISTMAS WITH FRIENDS

  Chapter 1

  A LONDON CHRISTMAS

  When I think back to that distant afternoon in December 1870, a clear image comes to mind: the slow dance of tiny snowflakes outside the window of Papa’s study. It was my first London snowfall. Papa had gone to Glasgow for one of his business trips. With his typical generosity, he had agreed to let me do my schoolwork in his small, cozy study with book-lined walls.

  Not far from me, a lively fire crackled in a small white marble fireplace. Horatio Nelson, our butler, walked toward the door he had left ajar and gestured to the window with a slight nod of his head. “Look, Miss Irene,” he said.

  As soon as I turned, the sight of all that whiteness surprised me, making my heart beat fast. “Snow! Snow!” I cried, without even thinking about it. I must have sounded like a little girl (or perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of the little girl who still lived inside me then).

  Shortly thereafter, my mother arrived, having heard my outburst. Mr. Nelson stepped aside with a bow. I saw my mother look toward the window, her face lit up by a simple smile. She, too, after all, had the heart of a little girl.

  “Oh, Irene . . . isn’t it absolutely beautiful?” she asked.

  “As lovely as a fairy tale,” I answered.

  My mother glanced at the books and papers cluttering Papa’s desk and said, “I’ll let you study, my dear. Until later.”

  I smiled, thinking that her good mood had a hidden meaning. After an autumn of sighs, long faces, and melancholy news from Paris (our home, which we’d had to flee suddenly due to the war with Prussia), perhaps London had finally won her over.

  The elegance of the city buildings, the proper manners of good Londoners, and the stylish craftsmanship of the items sold in the luxury emporium — with which my mother had furnished our Aldford Street apartment — had, day after day, found their way into her heart. And when we heard from Papa’s friends that many other women of Parisian society had also moved to the British capital to escape the dangers of the war, my mother’s change was complete.

  She no longer felt alone. Nor did I.

  The Christmas atmosphere was enough to help us feel at home in this foreign city. And so those days that I spent with my mother were happy ones, as seldom had happened before.

  This doesn’t mean that I kept no secrets from her. On the contrary.

  Even that afternoon, for example, I had not really been studying as she’d thought. Instead, I had just finished writing a page in the diary I’d begun several months before. A secret diary . . . a beautiful volume covered in Moroccan leather in which I disclosed many of the words that help me recall my childhood memories now. But I don’t need to consult its now-yellowed pages to remember what I wrote that particular afternoon.

  I wrote about my two dear friends, Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin. The latter was traveling with his father and the Aronofsky Circus. His last postcard was dated from a month before and had been sent from Antwerp. When it arrived, Mr. Nelson secretly passed it to me and I read it in my room, my stomach fluttering with excitement.

  Remembering that last letter, I sighed and kept my eyes glued to the delicate dance of snowflakes outside the window.

  Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, had become a frequent visitor since I’d moved to the capital of Britain. I knew I was a lucky girl now that I lived in London — and not just because my father was able to get us away from the violence of the Franco-Prussian War. But I was also lucky because even before fame had brushed my friend, I realized what a privilege it was to spend time with Sherlock Holmes and witness his lively, volatile genius.

  However, there were times I missed Lupin, with his charming simplicity and his boldness. I missed his ability to make even the most dangerous adventure seem harmless but then describe it in such an exaggerated way that I had a hard time recognizing it, despite having been involved myself. I missed Lupin’s jokes, his confidence, his bold daredevil actions, and that feeling of invincibility he seemed to have in the face of the world around us, which reassured me before all danger.

  Mostly, I missed the alchemy that was created when the three of us — Sherlock, Lupin, and I — were together.

  That was the power of our youth and our friendship.

  Yes, I was lucky to have such dear friends. And lucky to have had so many adventures with them. It was hard to believe that just last summer, we’d been carrying out our first investigation. After we’d come across a dead body washed ashore on the beach in Saint-Malo, the three of us had vowed to discover the man’s identity and the cause of his death. Indeed, we did discover those facts . . . and then some.

  Just a few short months after, I visited London with Papa. It was then that Sherlock, Lupin, and I began a different investigation, this one into the murder of Alfred Santi, assistant to the great opera maestro, Guiseppe Barzini. This investigation had hit a rather personal note since Lupin’s father, Théophraste, was accused of the murder. When the famous opera singer, Ophelia Merridew, went missing, our trio had set out to find her. And we’d been successful.

  I sighed, wondering what adventure we might encounter next.

  When I finally tore my eyes away from the window, I hurried to check the clock in the corner of the office. It was Wednesday, a few minutes before three. And that day of the week, as well as on Fridays, my afternoons were spent the same way — at four o’clock on the dot, I would go down to the street, where Mr. Nelson waited with a carriage to take me to the Shackleton Coffee House on Carnaby Street.

  That was one of the little secrets I shared with our butler. My parents believed I was going to my lesson with Miss Langtry, my new voice teacher. The truth, however, was that I went there an hour later, after spending some time with Sherlock in the Shackleton Coffee House, a café that was little suited for a young girl from a good family. But because Mr. Nelson was responsible for scheduling and paying Miss Langtry, it was not difficult to tell that small lie and gain that short, secret moment in the company of my fascinating friend, the young Sherlock Holmes.

  That day, however, the unexpected snowfall convinced me to change my routine. I hurried to put Papa’s desk back in order and ran to my bedroom to put on my heaviest boots. Then I bundled up, announcing my plans to Mr. Nelson and my mother as I was already heading out the door.

  “I’m going to walk to Miss Langtry today! I want to enjoy the city in the snow! Could you send the usual carriage to fetch me at six, Mr. Nelson?” I asked.

  While my mother’s and Mr. Nelson
’s voices echoed from the front hall behind me, I plunged outside into the cold air and the swirls of snow that had slipped between the buildings, carriages, and bundled-up passersby.

  I intended to go meet Sherlock, of course, but I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I wanted to enjoy the city in the snow. So I crossed Aldford Street and turned onto South Adley Street, heading toward Piccadilly. It wasn’t the shortest route, but as I came out to the large, bustling street that led to the heart of London, I found all that I had hoped to find.

  First of all, the majestic trees of Green Park were now covered in snow, and their branches intertwined like silver lattices. I found myself thinking about something that had struck me years before, when I was a child — the incredible wizardry that snow can create. It can transform even the most forgettable corner of a city into a magical place, enchanted and mysterious.

  I gazed at the lights beaming inside the grand hotels and the glowing shop windows and the comings and goings of ladies dressed in fur, their valets huffing and puffing under bags and suitcases. In that moment, I felt that special, feverish merriment that can only come when walking down a city street in the days before Christmas.

  I found myself surrounded by voices, laughter, and the aroma of roasted chestnuts and sugar loaves, and happily let myself be swept up in the rushing stream of people. I enjoyed every single moment of that walk in the snow, captivated by the bright colors, the decorations, and the mistletoe branches in the shop windows. It all looked like a giant kaleidoscope.

  Almost without realizing it, I reached Piccadilly Circus, where — between the crowds of people and the traffic of carriages and wagons — it was nearly impossible to move. I turned onto the first road that led north and walked quickly for a quarter of an hour. I let the smell of roasting sausages and the cries of shopkeepers guide me through a neighborhood much simpler and more working-class than the one I’d just left. I arrived at Carnaby Street and wove my way between market stalls and the bustling crowd of people.

  I finally walked through the doorway of the Shackleton Coffee House and, despite being twenty minutes early, found Sherlock already sunk into his favorite armchair. Seeing him filled me with the usual intense thrill, which felt like a slight tightening in my stomach.

  But there was a black cloud that seemed to swirl around Sherlock’s eternally disheveled hair. I sensed an air of unrest and gloom, which immediately put me on alert.

  Indeed, I knew Sherlock Holmes too well not to recognize that something must have happened.

  Chapter 2

  A SUDDEN STORM

  My intuition had hit the bull’s-eye: Sherlock’s greeting came in the form of a grunt.

  “Good day to you, Holmes,” I teased. “I’m glad to see that the sparkling Christmas atmosphere has made you cheerful.”

  Sherlock threw me one of his intense looks. His hard, gray eyes twinkled for a moment, and then he covered them with his hand, rubbing his face. In the middle of his forehead, which up to that point had been smooth and relaxed, two wrinkles formed, and his long, sharp nose twitched with annoyance.

  “At the moment, my mind is an endless desert of boredom,” he said. “And I am sorry to inform you that what you call the ‘Christmas atmosphere’ simply does not exist.”

  “Really?” I said as I sat down in an armchair across the table from Sherlock. “And yet it appears that I just saw a few thousand merry Londoners walking the streets, ready to contradict your odd theory . . . ”

  Sherlock responded with a sneer. “I do not understand why people are so merry!” he said, crossing his legs in an irritated fashion. Then he extended his long, knobby fingers one by one as he listed everything that seemed incomprehensible to him. “Streets blocked by foolish people, smiles engraved on their faces, greedy shopkeepers eager to sell useless rubbish, and a pathetic race to eat greasy food . . . is that your idea of a ‘sparkling’ atmosphere?” grumbled my friend.

  “I think you should send a formal petition to abolish Christmas to Her Majesty Queen Victoria,” I said. “Then you’ll have taken care of the problem.”

  Sherlock grasped his cup of hot cocoa, took a sip, and grunted again. Then he smiled, and I did the same.

  By then, I knew those moments of dark humor very well. And Sherlock knew that I was certainly not going to be crushed by the grip of his anger. What he would never admit, however, not even under torture, was that my presence helped calm him. And that he’d wanted to meet me at least as much as I’d wanted to meet him.

  “The truth,” he admitted, after ordering a cup of hot cocoa for me, “is that I am now decidedly less irritated than I was just half an hour ago, Irene.”

  “I’ve always had a certain influence on you,” I kidded, putting my gloves on the small table. But the truth is, I liked to imagine that what I’d just said was really so. “And if I might ask,” I continued, “to what do we owe this lucky improvement in your mood?”

  “It’s because of the good old Times!” Sherlock answered, grabbing a copy of the paper that was lying on the windowsill next to him.

  I felt a stab of disappointment, which I ignored.

  “Oh. It seems there would be reading material that might serve your mood better than the Times,” I answered, surprised.

  “And you are right,” admitted Sherlock, flipping through the pages. “But this page of classified ads in Monday’s Times contains an interesting . . . peculiarity.”

  “If you’re referring to that blurb about the little Indian monkeys trained to steal wallets out of the pockets of well-meaning people, well . . . Mr. Nelson already spoke to me about that at length. Even he was struck by it,” I said.

  “Not the little monkeys. It’s this,” answered Sherlock, pointing to a small box in the corner of the page.

  I leaned over to read an ad entitled “Chess Problem.” It had three rows of letters and numbers, starting with, “V2 – P19 – Q2,” followed by the phrase, “Checkmate in three moves,” and ending with the signature, “The Black Friar.”

  “Sorry,” I said, leaning back in the armchair. It was typical of Sherlock to pore over the paper to find the tiniest details. He always read the small announcements and ads more carefully than the front-page news. “The game of chess is not really a strength of mine. Is it a stimulating problem?”

  “That’s exactly what’s curious,” answered my friend. “Whatever this thing is, it’s definitely not a chess problem.”

  “Excuse me, but how can you be so sure?” I asked.

  Sherlock snorted and leaned across the table. “It’s simple! It so happens that a while ago, in an attempt to survive a boring, endless summer —”

  “I hope it wasn’t the one when we met each other,” I interrupted him, teasing.

  “One much worse, I can guarantee you,” Sherlock said. He paused, and I thought perhaps he, too, was thinking back to when we saw each other for the first time on the ramparts of Saint-Malo. He’d been hopelessly lost in the pages of a book, looking for an intellectual challenge that could keep him from being crushed by the muggy weather and all the history that surrounded us.

  No, last summer had been anything other than boring, I thought, and I got ready to hear the rest of the story.

  “At that time,” he continued, “I became a fan of chess. I read a good deal and learned all the systems of chess notation that I could get my hands on, trying to repeat the great games of the masters of the past.”

  “Chess notation?” I repeated. “What exactly does that consist of? It’s Greek to me.”

  “It’s simple,” he said. “Chess notation is how you represent the position of the pieces on the chessboard at a given moment in the game by using sequences of letters, numbers, and other symbols.”

  “A type of code, in other words,” I said.

  “Precisely! And I can assure you, this thing the peculiar Black Friar published is not written in any existi
ng chess notation.”

  “Perhaps he’s just an oddball who uses his own code,” I suggested.

  “For what reason?” Sherlock replied. “What would the purpose be of getting a chess problem published in the paper that no one, except the writer, could understand?”

  “Boredom?” I suggested.

  Sherlock ignored me and continued speaking. “Not to mention there’s no way to guess at this sequence! No way to understand what the position of the pieces on the chessboard could be! I’ve been racking my brain for almost an hour without getting anywhere.”

  Almost an hour of concentrating for an obsessive mind like Sherlock’s was truly an eternity!

  I glimpsed that unmistakable twinkle in his eye that conveyed his need to share what was going on in his head with me. At my nod, Sherlock launched into an explanation of why the classified ad could not simply be a chess problem.

  I confess that I quickly gave up on following his long, complicated lecture, of which I only grasped parts, hoping that would be enough to paint a clearer picture of the situation for me.

  Algebraic notation.

  Smith method.

  Gringmuth system.

  Sherlock, interpreting my silence as a sign of agreement, pulled a small, dark notebook and a pencil from his pocket, intending to convince me beyond any doubt that his conclusion was correct.

  “I’ve no intention of taking a course in such a tedious subject, Professor Holmes!” I interrupted. “It’s enough for me to see that vein on your forehead to know it’s just as you say.”

  He stared at me, bewildered, and brought his hand to his temple, where the bluish vein in question pulsed energetically.

  Never underestimate a girl’s powers of observation, I thought, smiling. Then I added, “The only point I don’t understand is what could be so exciting about all this.”

  “It seems elementary to me,” answered Sherlock, putting the notebook and pencil back in his pocket, an astonished look on his face. “The inevitable question we must ask is this: if the Black Friar’s classified listing isn’t a chess problem, then what the devil is it? And,” he continued before I could chime in, “why hide it in the pages of the newspaper? I’m afraid these questions will keep me from sleeping tonight.”