Becoming Holmes by Shane Peacock

Author:Shane Peacock [Peacock, Shane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-77049-291-2
Publisher: Tundra
Published: 2012-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

When Sherlock tells his master what he intends to do that night, the old man looks worried. It takes him a moment before he responds.

“Well, if you go through with this, we must disguise you again. You cannot pursue Mr. Crew while being followed by you-know-who.”

The boy smiles. He and Sigerson Bell are thinking in tandem again.

“I am guessing you should be a thug!” cries the old man.

“You are guessing correctly.”

An hour later, an hour of great fun for the two friends, they have Sherlock dressed as though he were a member of the Trafalgar Square Irregulars. Choosing expertly from Bell’s stock of clothing, they soon have him dressed in rags. He wears a tattered old navy pea jacket, an oily soft cap pulled down tightly over his face, and is long-haired, soot-stained, and even smelling of fish, since Sherlock believes his search must begin in the East End in Whitechapel and move from there down toward the river, the Tower of London, and the docks. That is where the greatest number of criminals make their grimy residences. It is also near where Grimsby’s body was pulled from the Thames.

They wait until darkness comes. This doesn’t please Bell – he knows that criminals come out at night. But he also knows that this is exactly when the boy must do his work, when his search will be most productive.

In order to get Sherlock out of the house undetected, they once again perform the little feat they employed to twice spring him from the shop this past week. Together, they become the hugely Fat Man one last time, with the emaciating Bell inside Sherlock’s massive trousers, clutching his chest. Anyone casing the apothecary shop from the outside would assume that this big man is now a regular pedestrian on Denmark Street. But this time Holmes is upset when they are glued together. He can tell that his mentor has lost weight even in the last few days and, when they are moving, he can feel his bony chest heaving as he coughs inside the costume. Bell’s days are numbered to a very few. The boy is so distraught that he wants to turn around. But he knows the old man would not like that. They go out the secret entrance in the back and hail a hansom cab on Crown Street. They send it down to Trafalgar Square and east on Fleet Street, up the hill and past the magnificent Cathedral. When they stop near London Bridge, only the boy gets out, looking for all intents and purposes like a street thug. The cab turns around and heads back to Denmark Street, while Sherlock makes his way up to Whitechapel Road and into those warren-like streets and alleys to its south, where all of London knows that danger lurks.

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