The Sherlock and Jack Chronicles Read online

  Table of Contents

  A JAR OF THURSDAY

  CHAPTER 1: A Job Interview

  CHAPTER 2: The Restless Detective

  CHAPTER 3: The Gentleman’s Retreat

  CHAPTER 4: A Bee In A Bonnet

  CHAPTER 5: The Tools Of The Trade

  CHAPTER 6: A Close Shave

  CHAPTER 7: The Pricking Of My Thumbs

  CHAPTER 8: A Case Of Identity

  CHAPTER 9: The Lion’s Den

  CHAPTER 10: On Tenterhooks

  CHAPTER 11: A Midnight Mission

  CHAPTER 12: Questions And Quackery

  CHAPTER 13: A Steady Hand

  CHAPTER 14: Action Stations

  CHAPTER 15: Around The Table

  CHAPTER 16: A Very Busy Man

  CHAPTER 17: La Fée Verte

  CHAPTER 18: Ingenious, Ingenious

  CHAPTER 19: Endings And Beginnings

  SOMETHING BLUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  EPILOGUE

  A PHOENIX RISES

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  EPILOGUE: April 1894

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Books by Liz Hedgecock

  Copyright

  A JAR OF THURSDAY

  CHAPTER 1: A Job Interview

  I checked the address on the letter once more and looked at the townhouse looming over me. Upper Wimpole Street was very grand. Perhaps too grand for the likes of me. I took a deep breath, straightened my tie, and reached for the ring in the lion’s mouth.

  The door opened noiselessly, as if it didn’t want anyone to know. Behind it was a tall, thin man in a jacket and striped trousers. ‘Mr Hargreaves, I presume?’

  I bobbed my head, uncertain whether I should bow or not. ‘That’s right, sir.’ The man’s eyes rested on me till I wriggled. ‘I’m here about the advertisement for an assistant?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The door’s jaw opened wider. ‘Do come in.’

  The hall was beautifully furnished, but gave me no clues to the house’s occupants. I took off my bowler hat and held it in both hands to keep from fidgeting.

  The parlour was as anonymous as the hall. ‘Please take a seat.’ The man indicated a wing-back chair. ‘Now, there are some formalities to complete. Your name is John Hargreaves, commonly called Jack?’

  I swallowed. ‘That is correct, sir.’

  ‘You are an orphan?’

  ‘I am.’ What sort of job required an orphan to undertake it? Then again, I was not in a position to be choosy.

  The man scanned my face until my skin pricked. ‘You appear younger than your letter suggested.’

  ‘I am of age,’ I said, perhaps a little defensively. It was the truth, though.

  ‘You have never been in prison, and are not known to the police?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Sharp blue eyes bored into me. ‘Most satisfactory,’ said the man, after a pause. ‘Now, are you fit and well? Can you run, and jump?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘Are you able to swim?’

  I gulped. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘You will need to learn…’ The man frowned and sat back while I wondered what he would ask me next. It was the strangest job interview I had ever had. ‘And you can start straight away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man’s face cleared. ‘Excellent. Congratulations.’ He stuck out his hand and I shook it, thoroughly bewildered. ‘Welcome to the household. My name is Mr Snell, by the way.’

  I paused mid-shake. ‘I … I thought you were Mr Molloy. The person advertising for an assistant.’

  Something like a smile twitched at the corner of Mr Snell’s mouth. ‘Good heavens, no. I am merely a factotum. We will go and meet Mr Molloy now.’ He rose and brushed his knees. ‘Come, Mr Hargreaves.’

  ‘But aren’t you going to ask me about my previous work?’ I blurted, thinking of the sheaf of testimonials in my coat pocket.

  Mr Snell raised an eyebrow. ‘It will not be necessary.’

  We descended a flight of stairs at the back of the house. The crimson carpet was so thick that our steps were noiseless, but I couldn’t see what lay at the bottom. Mr Snell must have sensed my footsteps faltering. ‘I am aware that this is somewhat unorthodox,’ he called back. ‘Mr Molloy has his own way of doing things, to which you will grow accustomed.’

  The bottom of the stairs revealed a long corridor. Wall-lamps cast infrequent pools of light, but I spied several doors leading off. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. ‘I’m not sure I —’

  Mr Snell put a finger to his lips. ‘Bear with me.’ He shuffled along the corridor and I followed him. What else could I do?

  The door at the end revealed a small sitting room, like a housekeeper’s room, crammed with furniture. ‘Sit, please.’ Mr Snell indicated an overstuffed sofa. ‘Mr Molloy will arrive shortly.’ He waved a hand at the easy-chair opposite. ‘That is his chair.’ He took a wing-back chair half-way between the two.

  Why would Mr Molloy choose to meet us in the basement, instead of the parlour? My uneasiness grew deeper. But Mr Snell sat calm, hands clasped on the table. ‘He’ll be here in, ah, thirty seconds.’

  I watched the hands of the ormolu clock on the mantel, and as the second hand reached the bottom I heard a sound like the opening of a huge stiff door. I cried out, and in that instant a man appeared in Mr Molloy’s chair, a small, weaselly man holding two wires. On his lap was a box covered in dials.

  ‘Afternoon,’ he said. ‘You must be the new chap. I’m Fingers Molloy.’ He let the wires fall from his hands, and beamed. ‘Pleased to meet yer.’ He extended a hand, which was small and none too clean.

  ‘Jack Hargreaves,’ I said, getting up and shaking his hand automatically. My mind was in a whirl. ‘What — what just —’

  ‘Say hello to my time machine.’ Fingers chuckled and patted the top of the box. ‘Don’t ask me to tell you how it works, I ain’t got a clue.’ He felt in his pockets, and drew out two slim black velvet boxes. ‘Here, Snell, put these in the safe for us.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ Mr Snell made to take the boxes, but Fingers Molloy snatched them away so that his hand closed on thin air.

  ‘Fancy a peek, Jack?’ he said, grinning. He opened the lid of one box and snapped it shut, but not before I had caught a glimpse of a necklace set with diamonds and emeralds. Inside the second box was another necklace less ornate in style, but set with a pearl the size of a pullet’s egg.

  ‘Are those real?’ I gasped.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Fingers put the boxes into Mr Snell’s twitching hands. ‘When you’ve locked these beauties away, Snell, take yourself for a turn in the park. I’ll see you in an hour.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Mr Snell inclined his head and glided away.

  ‘Come and sit by me, Jack Hargreaves.’ Fingers Molloy indicated Snell’s chair. ‘I bet you’ve got a lot of questions for me, eh?’

  ‘Well yes, Mr Molloy, I —’

  ‘I’ll answer your questions, if you answer one of mine first. Game?’

  I put my hands on my lap. ‘Game.’

  ‘Right.’ Fingers Molloy leaned close, and said, in a low voice, ‘Why are you pretending to be a feller?’

  My mouth dropped open.

  ‘Oh yes, I knew pretty much from the moment I landed. Men don’t yelp, nor put a hand to their chest. Watch that in future.’ Fingers nodded. ‘Otherwise, you weren’t bad. You fooled old Snell, anyway.’ He selected an apple from the fruit bowl at his elbow and took a huge bite. ‘So you’ve still got the job.’

  I decided I had nothing to lose. ‘I ran away.’

  ‘Go on.’ Fingers watched me over his apple.

  ‘I grew up in the workhouse, but as soon as I was old enough they sent me to be a maid. The servants bullied me because I was such a child, and I vowed to find a better life somehow. One of the lady’s maids walked out with a clerk, and that gave me the idea. I practised my round-hand and sums, and talked to the clerk, though I got my ears boxed for it. I studied the newspaper for situations when I was meant to be blackleading the study grate. As soon as I had enough money saved, I got the train to London on my next half-day. I bought a second-hand boy’s suit, supposedly for my brother, and cut my hair off. And I found a job as an office boy. The work was lighter, the money was better, and no one looked at me twice. Then, well, I kept going.’

  Fingers whistled. ‘You’ve done all right too, judging by your suit. Why’ve you left all that behind to come and work for me?’

  I laughed. ‘I answered your question. Now answer mine. What exactly is my job, and where did you get that jewellery?’

  CHAPTER 2: The Restless Detective

  I gritted my teeth as Holmes scraped a parti
cularly grating discord on his violin, and avoided an exclamation with difficulty. While the noise is an integral part of Holmes’s thought process, that makes it no easier to bear.

  ‘Watson, I am sorry.’ Holmes had lowered the violin and was regarding me with an expression akin to sympathy. ‘I am disturbing you.’

  ‘No, not at all. Please carry on.’ I braced myself.

  He chuckled. ‘Watson, your endurance and your politeness know no bounds. I have assaulted your ears enough for one afternoon.’ He laid the violin down.

  ‘Another case will be along shortly,’ I said, to try and cheer him up a bit. In truth, I was relieved his boredom found an outlet in cacophony, rather than cocaine.

  Holmes closed the violin case with a snap. ‘That is not the problem!’ He flung himself back onto the settee. ‘I have more than enough to keep me occupied.’

  ‘Then why the obvious malaise?’ I retorted.

  ‘Nothing is worth my time!’ Holmes chewed at a fingernail. ‘It is all hands in tills and cats up trees — well, not quite so bad, but nothing that a reasonably intelligent policeman could not handle. I am being distracted!’

  ‘By Lestrade? Surely not!’ I closed my paper. ‘He values your time too much to abuse it. And he pays for it handsomely.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Holmes swung his legs down and I watched him pace with the regularity of a metronome. ‘No, I should have said that we are being distracted. I have a distinct sense of things being moved into place — a nudge here, an adjustment there, ready for something unprecedented. And yet nothing is tangible.’ He paused, and glanced at the calendar.

  ‘I can guess who you are thinking of!’ I exclaimed. ‘Fingers Molloy!’

  Holmes smiled wanly. ‘Indeed. He is due to reappear a week today, if my calculations are correct, in the corridor outside the Jewel House, and we shall be waiting for him with a crowd of the Yard’s finest.’ He began to pace again. ‘But ask yourself this, Watson; where has he been in the meantime?’

  ‘Well —’

  ‘There! You don’t know, I don’t know, Lestrade doesn’t know. How can a man who commits a series of high-profile robberies just disappear?’

  ‘Holmes, he has a time machine! He could be kicking his heels in 1832!’

  ‘The machine has a five-year span,’ snapped Holmes.

  ‘Yes, but he could keep going backwards!’

  Holmes smacked his forehead. ‘Yes, Watson! Or, of course, forwards…’ He gasped. ‘What horrors await us in the future?’

  ‘He’s an opportunistic thief, nothing more.’

  ‘Watson, how many petty criminals of your acquaintance have the use of a time machine?’ Holmes paused, and cut in as soon as I opened my mouth. ‘Exactly. Fingers Molloy is more than the cheery rogue he makes out to be. I thought he was a fool to let me catch him with the time machine, but now I wonder…’

  ‘What, Holmes?’

  ‘I wonder if it was a warning to stay clear. And I also wonder…’

  I waited.

  ‘I have had this feeling of the stage being set before, and not long ago. It was when we were engaged in the case of the Valley of Fear. I trust you have not forgotten it.’

  I had not. The case was too recent, too painful to have faded. ‘You mean —’

  ‘Yes.’ Holmes took a deep breath. ‘I suspect that Fingers Molloy is in league with Professor Moriarty.’

  ***

  ‘This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr Holmes,’ the desk sergeant remarked mildly.

  ‘Lestrade’s in his office?’ Without waiting for a response, Holmes strode down the corridor, and I followed in his wake. He rapped on the door, listened for a second, and entered.

  Inspector Lestrade looked up from the papers scattered over his desk. ‘Good afternoon.’ His tone was polite, but less than welcoming.

  ‘You got my wire, Lestrade?’

  ‘I did.’ Lestrade waved the flimsy paper like a flag of surrender. ‘I have someone in the files at present. He won’t find much, though.’

  Holmes sat in the chair facing Lestrade. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly that. Professor James Moriarty is an eminent professor of mathematics, and Fingers Molloy is a common criminal of little note.’ Lestrade squared off the nearest pile of paper. ‘I have arranged for a constable to escort you to the file room. If you don’t mind, I have plenty to be getting on with.’

  ‘Inspector Lestrade, do you recall an evening six months ago when I arrived at the Yard and entrusted you with an object?’

  Lestrade grinned. ‘St Edward’s Crown? Of course! That sort of thing doesn’t happen too often. You said you’d tell me how you came by it one day.’

  ‘And the day has come.’ Holmes gripped the desk. ‘I took it from Fingers Molloy, who was in the act of stealing it from the Jewel House.’

  ‘Oh yes, the business with the calling card. What was it again? “Fingers Molloy, Burglar at Large. No Job too Small.”’ Lestrade began to chuckle, then caught sight of Holmes’s face and stopped. ‘You have to admit, it was amusing.’

  ‘He has a time machine.’ Holmes’s voice was low, and he forced the words out as if they caused him pain.

  ‘A what?’ Lestrade’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you mean a travel clock?’

  ‘No, I do not,’ sighed Holmes. ‘I mean that he can travel backwards and forwards in time. One minute he’s there, the next —’ Holmes snapped his fingers.

  Lestrade laughed again. ‘You can’t expect me to believe that.’

  ‘We saw him,’ I said. ‘He disappeared before our very eyes.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Lestrade pushed his chair back. ‘It must have been some sort of illusion. Burglars can’t steal themselves away. I’ll take you to the file room myself.’

  The route to the file room lay through a maze of corridors and passageways. ‘Here we are!’ Lestrade sang, opening the door. ‘Now, Huggins, do you have those files I requested?’

  A pale, slim young man stepped forward. ‘I do, sir.’ He held out two buff-coloured folders.

  The Inspector took them and glanced inside. ‘As I thought. Now, Holmes, you may satisfy your curiosity.’ He put the files into Holmes’s hands. ‘Give them back to Huggins when you’ve finished, won’t you.’ He left, whistling.

  Holmes opened the first folder, labelled ‘Albert “Fingers” Molloy’, and extracted a few sheets of paper. ‘Hm. Born in London 1840 to a watchmaker and laundrywoman, one of eleven children. Warnings for disorderly conduct as a youth, sentenced to three months in 1861 for acting as lookout in a failed burglary. Six months for pilfering in 1882. Arrested for house-breaking in 1885 but released on production of an alibi.’ He paused. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘And Moriarty?’

  Holmes opened the second folder and held up a single sheet. ‘Professor James Moriarty. Accused of various crimes by Sherlock Holmes, on minimal or no evidence. No police contact, saving that he gave a statement to police when his house was burgled in 1885.’ His eyes glittered over the top of the paper at me. ‘This case remains unsolved.’

  CHAPTER 3: The Gentleman’s Retreat

  Fingers swallowed his mouthful of apple, and regarded me with his beady eyes. ‘You want the truth, Jack?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He took another bite, and considered. ‘All right. Those necklaces, I stole ’em. I’m a professional thief.’

  I tried to keep a poker face under his gaze. ‘And my job is..?’

  ‘What did the advertisement say?’

  I fished the scrap of newsprint from my pocket. ‘“Capable young man with office experience required as personal assistant to businessman. Duties light but variable. Salary generous. Apply in writing, PO Box 225.” Don’t you remember it?’ I tried to pass the paper to Fingers but he waved it away.

  ‘Snell wrote it. I leave the book-learning to him - and to you, now.’

  I studied the carpet while I formulated my question. ‘And what else will I be doing?’

  ‘You’re the new Snell. He’s getting a bit long in the tooth for these capers, so I’ve taken him off active duties.’ Fingers lowered his voice. ‘Don’t let on I’ve told you, but I’ve rescued him a few times now on the job. Can’t have ’im seeing out his days in Newgate.’

  I gasped. ‘You and Mr Snell went stealing together?’ I found it hard to imagine formal Mr Snell as a thief.

  ‘Ha! He taught me everything I know!’ Fingers let out a throaty chuckle at my shocked face. ‘Anyway, this chatter won’t fill the pot. Get your things sent for, and I’ll take you on a visit.’