The Dark Lady Read online

  “I’m here!” said my friend, looking at me and then up at the young man in the window. He lifted a hand. “Everything’s all right! Get back to your reading. We’re going for a ride.”

  I guessed from the way Sherlock spoke to him that the young man at the window was Sherlock’s older brother.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your girlfriend?” the older boy asked.

  “Another time, maybe! See you later!” Sherlock said, hurrying to get away. He gave me a pleading look and pointed to the street that led down to the harbor. Then he immediately changed his mind. “Actually, let’s go this way!”

  I let him walk his usual three steps ahead of me. As soon as we’d gone around a corner and were out of sight of his brother, I stopped dead in the middle of the street. “Nice to see you, Sherlock!” I said, pretending to be annoyed.

  He put his hands up in the air as if I were threatening him with a gun. “I’m sorry!” he cried. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I didn’t want you to meet, um . . .”

  “Your brother?” I offered.

  “Yes! We just don’t get along,” Sherlock stammered. “He’s . . .”

  “He’s handsome,” I said with a grin.

  Sherlock suddenly put his hands down. “He’s what?!”

  “I said he’s handsome. How old is he? Twenty?” I asked.

  “Twenty-one,” Sherlock grumbled.

  “And what does he do?” I asked.

  “Nothing! He does absolutely nothing!” he exclaimed, turning red. “He’s the laziest, least ambitious person I’ve ever met! He’s totally incapable of doing anything helpful!”

  “He’s the opposite of you, then,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Sherlock asked.

  “If lazy, unambitious people make you this angry, then it means you’re different,” I said. “You’re probably a very practical person.”

  “Well, I suppose,” Sherlock said. “Certainly more than he is.”

  He began walking again with his inimitable stride, assuming that I was following him. But I didn’t move an inch, remaining in the shade of the wall next to me. It took a long time before he realized that he was walking by himself.

  He suddenly stopped and turned with a surprised expression on his face. He lifted his eyebrows and asked me, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m giving you your first lesson in practicality, my dear Sherlock,” I said. “When we see each other, I’d like you to say ‘hello.’” I didn’t really expect him to smile pleasantly or anything big. I just wanted a simple greeting.

  He snorted. “I see!” he said. “And what else would you like?”

  “Well, you could also smile pleasantly,” I said, teasing him.

  Sherlock walked back to me. His cheeks were flushed, but I didn’t know if it was because he was laughing, because he was angry, or because he was embarrassed. “What is this nonsense!?”

  He was angry. I spoke calmly and quietly in my sweetest voice. “It’s called manners, Sherlock. You and I had agreed to meet, hadn’t we? Well, here I am. I had to stay in my room all night and didn’t get any dinner. I wish I could get something to eat, but we seem to be walking away from the town.” I smiled. “Would you like to tell me where we’re going or should I just follow you in silence?”

  There were a lot of questions for Sherlock to ponder. He opened his mouth, not knowing where to begin. It was obvious that he wasn’t used to being spoken to like this.

  “You can apologize now,” I said. “And then you can take me to get something to eat.”

  * * *

  At the shop, I was given so much bread, herring, and mustard that I got the impression they’d never seen a silver coin before. Outside the shop, I pulled off a piece of bread, dipped it in the mustard, and ate it so quickly my throat burned for the rest of the day.

  After, we walked along the same stretch of beach we’d followed the day before. This time we traveled along a dirt track that snaked its way under a lush, green canopy. “Where are we going?” I asked, even though I’d already figured out the answer.

  “Ashcroft Manor,” Sherlock said. “Lupin should already be there.”

  It took us almost half an hour to reach the dilapidated, old house. The last part of the journey was the most difficult. The path bypassed the house and plunged into a distant forest. We had to cross a field overgrown with sun-scorched grass and thorns.

  As Sherlock had predicted, Lupin was already there. He just sat with his back to us, staring out to sea. “Hello!” he exclaimed, without turning around.

  “Lupin,” Sherlock said. He jumped down off the bank and onto one of the boulders on the beach. He stood there for a moment, wondering if he should help me down or just let me take care of myself, as if I were a boy. You know, one of them — not some little girl with pale, scratched legs who insisted on polite smiles and good manners. He chose the middle ground. He stepped off the boulder but stayed close, just in case I needed him. I just jumped down onto the sand without thinking.

  “Irene,” Lupin said, this time turning around.

  When I saw his face, I screamed. Lupin had a bloody scar right across his forehead and he was grinning horribly with ugly, crooked teeth. He looked at Sherlock, turned his palms up questioningly, and asked, “What do you think?”

  Sherlock’s expression first showed fear, then bewilderment, then laughter. I realized it might be better to stop screaming. I then noticed that there was a strange-looking leather case by Lupin’s feet. And that my new friend didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain from his injury.

  “So?” Lupin said, first looking at Sherlock and then at me. “How does it look?”

  “It’s fabulous!” answered Sherlock. “It looks real!”

  He started touching the scar, but Lupin jumped back. “Hey! You can’t touch it!”

  Sherlock crossed his arms. “Fine,” he said.

  I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Lupin pretended to fall down, laughed again, and then showed me the same maniacal grin that I’d seen before. “The teeth are amazing, aren’t they?”

  Lupin put a finger in his mouth, moved his lips up, and, with a dull plop, false teeth dropped out. “Voilà!” he said. “I fooled you, didn’t I?!”

  Lupin and Sherlock sat cross-legged on the sand next to the leather case. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” I said, slowly regaining my composure.

  “Have I told you what my father does?” Lupin said. “He’s an acrobat, a tightrope walker, and a circus performer. And this is his bag of tricks.”

  I approached cautiously, almost suspiciously. In the case were masks, wigs, weird false teeth, noses, hairpieces, brushes, and cans of glue. There was also an arsenal of fake mustaches, beards, face powder, and lipsticks. “And can we use them?” I asked, fascinated. I dropped my bag of bread, mustard, and herring, not caring that they fell onto the sand.

  “Absolutely not!” Lupin said with a grin. He grabbed a wig out of the case. “Who’ll go first?”

  We spent the whole day dressing up and pretending we were heroes and heroines, reciting the few lines from plays we had committed to memory.

  Sherlock was a natural. His face changed completely with a few brush strokes and a mustache, and his voice transformed just as easily. He could play the role of King Lear, Henry V, or a Sicilian soldier.

  Lupin was the most elegant in the way he moved, which somehow made him perfect for playing crazy characters. He looked so enthusiastic and dramatic. With a wig and white makeup around his eyes, he could even look like a monkey. With a bandana tied around his perfectly round head, he became a pirate. With a beard, he became a castaway. With a little clay powder and hair cream, he transformed into a desert prince.

  As for me, I was so happy playing with the makeup, wigs, and fake jewels that I began to sing as if I was performing in some Italian
opera. Sherlock and Lupin were acting out a death scene, with Lupin lying on the sand and Sherlock about to deliver the fatal blow with a wooden sword. But when I started singing, they suddenly stopped. I noticed they were listening, but I finished the aria I was singing anyway. When I finished, the only sound on the beach was the lapping of the waves.

  “Do it again,” said Sherlock in a low voice.

  “Yes,” said Lupin. “Please do it again! Sing!”

  I blushed as much as I ever had in my life. I took off the wig and stammered, “But — but I don’t . . .”

  “Do it again,” repeated Sherlock, leaning on his wooden sword. He looked at me with an almost burning intensity.

  I tried to come up with some excuse. “I don’t know what to sing.”

  “You’ve got a beautiful voice,” said Lupin. Sherlock didn’t take his eyes off me.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt exposed as the sound of the waves grew intolerably loud. “Boys, stop it!” I cried. “You’re embarrassing me!”

  They both saw I was serious. Sherlock shrugged, then helped Lupin to his feet. The three of us went back to acting and trying out the makeup, but it wasn’t the same as before.

  Eventually, we shared a snack of bread and herring. Lupin produced an odd little knife with a razor-sharp blade from his pocket. With it, he sliced the bread, telling us that a friend of his father had made the knife. He never went anywhere without it. He said his father’s friend was now the rich owner of the famous Opinel knife company.

  Once the sun began to light up the horizon, we started back home, walking barefoot along the beach. The gulls scurried away in front of us, as the waves broke beside us, now long and regular.

  “Have you ever taken singing lessons?” Lupin eventually asked.

  “My parents sent me to them for a while,” I admitted as I gazed out to sea. “But I didn’t think that those senile, old singing teachers were right for me.”

  I’d known how to sing since I was little, but preferred to keep it to myself. I liked singing, but it was hard to perform in front of other people. My mother had forced me to take singing lessons, which I’d hated. With their fluted handkerchiefs, black jackets, and flabby fingers on the piano, all those posturing teachers would do is repeat for hours, “Do! Re! Mi! Now an octave higher!” She was trying to make me sing in a way that felt completely unnatural.

  “I’ve never heard anybody sing like that!” said Lupin.

  “Oh, please!” I said.

  “It’s true!” Lupin said. “You tell her, too, William!”

  Like always, Sherlock was walking a few steps ahead of us. He lifted a hand and said, “I can hear that you lack discipline,” he said in a neutral tone.

  “What do you mean I lack discipline?” I snapped. He looked back at me over his shoulder.

  “If you weren’t undisciplined, why would you hate something useful like singing lessons?”

  “I hate them because they’re boring!” I said.

  “Exactly,” Sherlock said. “You’re undisciplined, like I said.”

  “Look who’s talking!” I snapped.

  Sherlock finally stopped walking. “What a temper you have! We compliment you on your voice and you tell us to stop. And if we say you’re singing sounds undisciplined because you don’t take lessons, you get offended.”

  Lupin laughed. I didn’t. While Sherlock talked, I’d noticed something was lying on the beach just beyond some rocks. It looked like a bundle that the sea had washed up onto the beach, but it made me feel cold inside.

  A squawking seagull made me jump, and I realized I hadn’t heard a single word Lupin and Sherlock had been saying. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. I grabbed Sherlock’s arm and pointed to the strange object on the shore. “What’s that?”

  They both turned. “My word,” mumbled Sherlock, suddenly stiffening.

  “Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Lupin.

  We started running down the beach toward it. When we reached the thing, we saw that it was a man.

  Chapter 6

  THE BEACH TERROR

  We stopped a few feet from the body, just behind the rocks. The man had long hair and was lying face-down in the sand. He almost looked asleep. He was wearing a jacket, a long-sleeved shirt with cuff links, velvet pants, and one shoe. Everything was soaking wet and covered with sand.

  “You stay here,” Sherlock told us. He bounded over the rocks in a single leap.

  “Be careful,” I said, but Lupin shushed me.

  Sherlock took a few cautious steps toward the man. He looked closely at him, walking around him, before he spoke. “He’s dead.”

  I felt my cheeks go pale. “Dead?”

  “Dead,” Sherlock repeated.

  Lupin began to climb over the rocks. “Wait!” I said, and stopped him. We looked at each other. I didn’t want to the left alone, but I had even less desire to get any closer to a dead body than I already was. Lupin’s eyes, however, were sparkling with curiosity.

  “I’m coming with you,” I said finally, somehow able to find some courage. We climbed over the rocks to Sherlock.

  The boy who would one day become the greatest detective of all time was kneeling beside the body. He was examining by repeatedly poking it with a piece of driftwood.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lupin.

  “Trying to figure out who he is,” Sherlock said. “Or, rather, who he was.”

  “Shouldn’t we turn him over?” Lupin asked.

  “Turn him over?!” I cried. “You shouldn’t even be touching him!”

  The two were now side by side. I put a hand over my mouth and began to look around uncomfortably. “Boys, I really don’t think that . . .” I muttered. But they obviously weren’t listening.

  “Expensive shirt, turned-down collar,” Sherlock observed, carefully pushing at the man’s clothes with his stick. “Those kinds of things are hard to come by around here.”

  “Yes, he’s wearing very expensive clothes,” Lupin agreed. “Look at the cuff links.”

  “Boys!” I insisted.

  “Maybe he fell off a ship,” Lupin continued.

  Sherlock shook his head. “He’s not dressed for being on board a ship. This is more like a business suit.”

  Lupin leaned over to look at the man’s face. His beard was untrimmed, but he also had rather refined features.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer. I started pacing back and forth, following a kind of crazy zigzag path across the beach. I couldn’t understand how they could be so calm. My heart was pounding in my chest, and my face and hands felt icy cold, but they seemed as relaxed as two doctors performing complex surgery in an operating room.

  “Boys, we have to call someone!” I said, my voice trembling.

  They just continued to discuss something between themselves. I sighed and stepped closer to them. “Lupin, Sherlock? What —?”

  I saw that Sherlock had searched inside the man’s jacket pocket with the driftwood and had pulled out two large stones and a soggy piece of paper. It was a note. Lupin picked it up. I put my hands over my mouth. Although the ink had run, you could still read what was written on it.

  “The sea will wash away my guilt,’” read Sherlock.

  I stepped back and looked around again. But this time I saw someone at the other end of the beach. He was wearing a blue cloak that completely hid his face and was standing in front of the trees between the beach and the trail we’d followed that afternoon. He seemed to be looking straight at us.

  Terror washed over me like a wave. I pointed at him and screamed with all my might, “Let’s go!”

  Lupin and Sherlock sprang to their feet. I wasn’t sure if they’d also seen the hooded figure, but my scream had certainly frightened them. All three of us started to run as fast as we could along the beach, and we didn’t stop until we reached the gates to t
he town.

  Once we were there, we leaned up against the stone wall, which was still warm from the late afternoon sun, and let ourselves slide down onto the ground, all of us panting.

  “What happened?” asked Lupin, when he finally managed to catch his breath.

  “There was a man,” I said. “A man wearing a blue cloak with a hood. A hooded man by the trees.”

  Sherlock closed his eyes. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I nodded, still gasping for breath. “He was looking at us. At us and the dead man.”

  “The man with no name,” said Sherlock. He opened his hand. He’d brought the note they’d found in the dead man’s pocket.

  Thoughts swirled through my mind like swarms of mad bees. What should we do? Who should we tell? Had anyone else seen us? And who was the mysterious figure who’d been spying on us?

  “We do nothing,” said Lupin, as if he’d been reading my mind. “We do nothing and say nothing. We were never at the beach. We didn’t see a body.”

  “Our footprints are all over the sand,” said Sherlock.

  “The tide’s coming in,” Lupin said. “It will cover them.”

  Sherlock nodded. “But the fact remains that someone saw us,” he said, pointing in the direction of the beach with his chin. “And they were undoubtedly close enough to see our faces.”

  “We’re not sure anyone was even there,” Lupin said, briefly glancing at me.

  “He was there!” I insisted. “I’m sure of it!”

  “You’re probably right,” Sherlock said.

  “So what do we do?” I asked. “We have to tell someone!”

  Lupin shook his head. “No. We’ll wait to see if the hooded man says something. Otherwise, we don’t do a single thing.”

  “And you think the man I saw will tell someone?” I asked.

  Sherlock stood up, casting a long shadow over us both. “Lupin’s right. If this mystery man goes to the police, within a few hours everyone in town will know about it all anyway.”