Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche Read online

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  For Teanna Byerts, longtime friend

  Prologue

  by Sherlock Holmes, 1889

  Those of you who are aware of my distinguished career as the world’s first Private Consulting Detective can hardly remain unaware of the sensational way in which another Holmes of similar ilk, my much younger sister, Enola, has lately burst upon the London scene. Many have found her unabashed capture of the public eye both scandalous and deplorable, and some question my own failure to control her. Therefore I welcome this opportunity to pen my own logical and dispassionate account of my dealings with Enola Eudoria Hadassah Holmes.

  To absolve myself at once of any suspicions of sentimentality, let me state that I have no childhood memories of my sister, Enola; indeed, I barely knew her until July of 1888. In 1874, when she was born, I was on the point of leaving home and living on my own to pursue my studies; indeed, I hastened my departure due to the most unpleasant household disruption consequent upon her infant arrival. I encountered her over the next few years only occasionally and only with the natural revulsion of a gentleman towards a messy and undeveloped specimen of humanity. At the time of our father’s funeral, she was four years old and still incapable of maintaining the cleanliness of her nose. I do not recall having any sensible discourse with her at that time.

  Ten years passed before the next time I saw her, in July of 1888.

  This was no normal occasion. The unexpected and unexplained disappearance of her mother—our mother—caused young Enola to summon my brother, Mycroft, and me from London. As our train pulled into our rural destination, Enola awaited us on the railway platform, resembling nothing so much as a fledgling stork. Remarkably tall for a girl of fourteen, she wore a frock that failed to cover her bony shanks, and no gloves or hat; indeed, the wind had turned her hair into a jackdaw’s nest. Mycroft and I thought her a street urchin, failing to recognize her until she spoke to us: “Mr. Holmes, and, um, Mr. Holmes?” As lacking in manners as a colt, she seemed confused by Mycroft’s questions, and indeed, by the time we arrived at Ferndell Hall, our ancestral home, I thought my sister perhaps even a bit more brainless than the typical female.

  Once on the scene, Mycroft and I concluded that our mother had not been kidnapped but, suffragist that she was, had run away. This did not greatly concern us, for Mother had served her reproductive purpose and was, at her age, both useless and incorrigible. However, as something had to be done about Enola, we considered that it was perhaps not too late to salvage her. Ignoring her nonsensical protests, we made arrangements to place her in an excellent finishing school, hoping eventually to marry her off.

  Mycroft and I returned to London feeling that we had done our duty.

  However, our sister never arrived at the school. On the journey, she contrived to vanish.

  How dare she? The ingratitude of her!

  For the ensuing days, I, Sherlock Holmes, the world’s greatest detective, devoted all my skill to tracking a silly runaway girl, presumably disguised as a boy—but I could find no trace of her. Then, much to my chagrin, Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard gave me news of her.

  She was masquerading as a widow.

  A widow! For the first time I realized I had underestimated her. She had at least a modicum of brain, for, by becoming a widow, she had quite obliterated her face, added a decade or more to her age, and discouraged anyone from approaching her.

  She was, however, in a widow’s weeds, noticeable. I traced her to London, scarcely able to believe she had the temerity to venture there—and at Scotland Yard I encountered an aristocratic lad who had been rescued from kidnappers by a girl in a widow’s guise! The boy informed me, however, that she was now dressed as a spinster with a pince-nez.

  I redoubled my efforts to find her and save her from the perils of London. Unfortunately, I had no likeness of her with which to advertise. No photograph of her had ever been taken. But I did have a most interesting and revealing booklet of ciphers our mother had given her. Having thus discovered that the two of them secretly communicated via The Pall Mall Gazette personal columns, I placed my own message pretending I was Mother and asking Enola to meet me. But somehow she saw through my ruse. Whilst I was at the British Museum waiting to pounce on her, she gained entry to my apartment and stole back the booklet! When my landlady said she appeared to be a poor huckster shivering in the autumn cold, I realized I had actually walked past her on my way out!

  Even more concerned for young Enola now, fearing that she might indeed be indigent, I concentrated my search on the slums, where one freezing winter night I met the Sister of the Streets, a mute nun enveloped in a black habit who ministered to the poor. Indeed, she fed me a biscuit. Shortly thereafter, this nun delivered a swooning lady into my arms and tersely told me the identity of the villain who had harmed her. Recognizing the “mute” nun’s voice, I realized to my utmost shock that the Sister was my sister! I tried to seize her, but she fended me off with a dagger and disappeared into the night. All the police in London failed to find her. Returning, defeated, to my flat in the morning, I found her discarded habit there! The brass, the nerve, the sheer daring of her, she had hidden in my own rooms while I was out looking for her!

  And, by the way, in order to rescue the lady, she had quite savaged a murderous villain with her dagger. Evidently my sister, Enola, could take care of herself, but drat the girl, she could not be allowed to grow up wild on the London streets. I simply had to rescue her. Yet despite my best efforts, winter dragged into spring with nary a sign of her.

  Then my attention was all seized by the inexplicable disappearance of my dear friend Dr. Watson. For a week I neither ate nor slept, nor did my brother, Mycroft, but we could not find a sign of him. Indeed, it was not we who saved him, but our sister! A message in the newspapers led us straight to poor Watson where he was being held captive in a lunatic asylum, and the message was signed E. H.—Enola Holmes.

  Quite humbled, I had no idea how she accomplished this feat.

  Nor did I have any idea where in London she lived or how she sustained herself day to day. But, gentle reader, please recall the swooning lady she had once delivered into my arms. Shortly after Watson’s return, that same lady fell victim to a forced-marriage scheme, and I was retained to save her. This involved a surreptitious nighttime visit to the mansion where I had reason to think she was being held captive. All dressed in black, with my face darkened, I stole into the back garden—and seemingly stepped off a precipice! Hitting the bottom of what turned out to be quite a deep trench, I badly hurt my ankle.

  And my pride. One does not expect to encounter a “sunk fence” in the heart of the city, yet there I was caught in one, unable to even attempt to climb out. Already my ankle had swollen so greatly that, seated on comfortless rocks, I had to take my penknife and cut my bootlaces in order to get the boot off. Struggling to do so in utter d
arkness, I swore under my breath.

  A girlishly distinctive voice above my head teased, “Shame on you.”

  I am sure my jaw dropped. So great was my shock that it quite strangled me for a moment before I was able to gasp, “Enola?”

  Yes, it was she, tossing down brandy and bandages to me, then swarming up a seemingly impossible tree with a rope, of all things, between her teeth. Securing it, she came thumping down like an oversized monkey on the far side of the trench in which I remained entrapped. I expected her to give me the rope so I could get out, but no, she started to go gallivanting off by herself to free the imprisoned lady, and I might be languishing in that pit to this day if it were not that the lord of the manor came out with a shotgun and fired upon us! In the duress of the next few moments I found Enola helping me out of the trench, up and over the fence, and away, my injured foot so useless that I must needs cling to her shoulder to limp along. I am sure my brother, Mycroft, will never forgive or understand why, when we reached safety, I felt obliged to let her go, but gratitude and my sense of honour compelled me. We shook hands, my sister and I, and then like a wild moorland pony she shied away, her mane of hair flying, and ran for freedom. I was relieved to note that she wore a skirt, not trousers.

  Only two days later, she entrusted me with the care of the unfortunate lady after she saved her from forced marriage. Thereafter, I saw no more of my sister, except that quite by accident the next month I encountered her in the home of Florence Nightingale. Enola wore glasses, a mannish hat, inky gloves, and a dark, narrow dress to disguise herself as a scholar, but to my long-awaited credit, I recognized her at once. She fled. I chased her clear up to the top of the house, but she escaped through a window, down a mighty oak tree, and away like a hare.

  Simultaneously angry and admiring, I went about the business Miss Nightingale had engaged me for: finding a missing woman named Tupper. I made my inquiries, then the next night I got myself up like a poor rickety old greybeard and went scrounging around a certain grandiose house as if searching the gutters for farthings. Much amazed was I when a plainly dressed but obviously aristocratic lady crossed the road in front of me, strode up the walk, and smartly rapped the brass knocker. It was Enola! Unable to stop her before she entered that dangerous place, I made shift to watch her through the windows; indeed, such was my concern for her safety that I climbed the side of the house when she was escorted upstairs. As I clung to vines, my face pressed against the glass to see within, she looked straight at me and winked! I was so taken aback, I nearly lost my grip and fell. Thereafter, as was becoming deplorably customary, she outwitted me. As the front door burst open and I was busy engaging the villain in jujitsu, Enola disappeared out the back way along with, of course, the Tupper woman, whom she conveyed to safety at the Nightingale house.

  The next day, from shouted conversation through an ear trumpet, I pieced together that the pitiful, deaf, and ancient Mrs. Tupper had been Enola’s landlady, and with some mental excitement I deduced that Enola might visit her at the Nightingale residence. Thereafter I lurked in wait for her, along with a companion named Reginald. Dozens of people entered the Nightingale home daily, and on the lookout for my plain-faced sister, I paid no attention whatsoever to quite a lovely lady in an elaborate cerulean gown of three fabrics—but Reginald, my sister’s longtime pet collie, whined and pulled at the leash! I let him go bounding to her, and could scarcely believe it when the “lady” greeted the dog with laughter and tears, most unceremoniously sitting on the ground to hug him! When she saw me looking down at her, she smiled up into my face and willingly took my hand to arise. She sensed, I think, that I no longer “looked down” on her in any other sense of the phrase.

  Thus were we reunited. Not without complications; she gave me the slip again that selfsame day. But we remained in communication, and only a few days later I contrived to get her, in her most ladylike incognito, into the same cab as our brother, Mycroft. After spending an evening with his astonishing sister, helping her locate a missing duchess in the labyrinth of London’s dockyards, Mycroft came to much the same conclusions I had already reached:

  Enola did not need protection.

  Enola did not need to go to finishing school.

  Nor did Enola need to be married off. Indeed, heaven help any man who might be so unwary as to wed her.

  The next day, Enola’s fifteenth birthday, the three of us had tea and cake together at my flat. From a letter recently received, we now knew why our mother had run away: her days were numbered, she had spent them in freedom from society’s dictates, and she was now deceased. Enola shed a few tears, but her smiles were manifold; her mother was gone, but she had her brothers now. Mycroft had made peace with her, and I had grown to care for her. All was well.

  Or so I reflected to my satisfaction, quite blindly failing to foresee that she might go sticking her considerable nose into one of my cases …

  Chapter the First

  After my reconciliation with my brothers in the summer of 1889, I spent August quite happily with Reginald Collie, visiting Ferndell, my childhood home in the country. Moreover, after returning to London and my very safe albeit somewhat Spartan room at the Professional Women’s Club, I purchased a delightful new dress, apricot foulard with slightly puffed shoulders and a narrow gored skirt, which disguised me as no one but my slender self! At last, and most fortuitously, the “hourglass figure” was going out of style—just when I no longer required bosom enhancers and hip transformers to conceal myself from Sherlock and Mycroft! Eagerly I looked forward to seeing them again as the authentic Enola Holmes.

  But days became a week, then a fortnight; August became September, yet I did not hear from them.

  My spirits sank. Once more I found myself too much alone, as seems to be my fate; my very name, Enola, when spelt backwards, reads “alone.” I wanted to purchase a hat to go with the apricot foulard, but even contemplation of that pleasing errand failed to rouse me from inertia. So, one sunny afternoon when I could have been making the rounds of the shops, instead I was moping in the club parlour when a maid brought me a note on a brass salver. “The gentleman said he’ll wait for your reply, miss.”

  Males, you see, gentle reader, were not allowed past the door of the Professional Women’s Club.

  No gentlemen ever called for me; therefore the note had to be from one of my brothers, almost certainly from Sherlock, as Mycroft could hardly ever be induced to stray from his orbit among his Pall Mall lodgings, his Whitehall government office, and the Diogenes Club. So my heart quite leapt as I reached for the note, written upon a sheet of stationer’s paper, and unfolded it to read. But first I looked at the signature.

  Bother. It was just Dr. Watson. He wrote:

  Dear Miss Enola,

  Your brother Sherlock would deplore my applying to you in this fashion, I am sure, but both as his friend and as his medical advisor I feel compelled to notify you of his alarming condition. Perhaps you are unaware that he is prone to fits of melancholia. And undoubtedly he will castigate me for my interference. Just the same, I must beg you to come with me to see him, in hopes that your presence might influence him for the better. I await your response.

  Your humble servant,

  John Watson, M.D.

  My heart recommenced its gymnastics. Sherlock, in an alarming condition? Whatever did Watson mean?

  I must needs go see at once.

  Bolting to my feet, I instructed the maid, “Tell the gentleman I will be with him directly,” and ran for my room to put on my newest boots—I had been wearing delicate silk slippers fit only for indoors; they would have been shredded on the street—and find a matching, decent pair of gloves, and tidy my impossible hair before topping it with a hat, and snatch up a parasol. A fashionable lady must never be without a parasol, or a fan, or at least a handkerchief, something pretty to carry, and the gentle reader will doubtless have noticed by now that I had become fond of appearing to be a fashionable young woman of society.

  So m
uch so, indeed, that I had a fancy to change my dress, but I overruled it. Rather than leave Dr. Watson waiting on the sunny pavement any longer than was necessary, I assured myself that the taffeta-and-dotted-Swiss frock I wore was quite smart enough.

  When I hurried out of the front door of the Professional Women’s Club, the good doctor was waiting with a hansom cab, into which he helped me with some conventional words of greeting before seating himself at my side and bidding the cabbie to convey us to Baker Street.

  Of course I then had to make the usual inquiries: were Dr. Watson and his wife quite well? I liked Dr. Watson a great deal, and hoped he could hear my affection in the warmth of my voice. Were I not so fond of him, I would have rudely skipped these preliminaries, for I quite wanted to know more about what was wrong with my brother.

  “And Sherlock? Something causes you to feel alarmed about him, Doctor?”

  The good doctor sighed, his honest brown eyes troubled. “For the past ten days, Holmes has exerted his amazing powers nonstop on a case concerning secret papers purloined from the Admirality, the Princess Alice shipping disaster, and a rare species of Malaysian spider. Working around the clock without pause, he has strained his extraordinary constitution to its breaking point, and now that he has resolved the matter, he has plunged into the deepest depression. At the triumphal hour when our nation’s leaders praise him in the halls of Parliament, he will not leave his lodgings nor eat, and it took all of my persuasive powers earlier today to get him out of bed.” Dr. Watson, who had been speaking to the floor of our cab, now raised his steadfast gaze, making no attempt to conceal his distress. “I exhorted him to shave and get dressed as a rudimentary step in exerting himself towards recovery, but to no avail. He refused me without uttering a word. He turned his head away and ignored me.”