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  Despite the circumstances of the meeting, Watson was privately amused to see how Lestrade (safely behind Bradstreet’s shoulder) grimaced like a monkey at this reminder of complicated Celtic lineages. He was reminded (again) that no Royal House could hope to impress the intricate knotwork of kith and kin from the tribes of Britain.

  “But modern medicine is capable of dealing with... some of the webbing, is it not?” Lestrade wondered. “Not like in the past.”

  Watson winced. “That very much depends on the case. The webbing can be surgically split between the digits to allow freedom of movement. There are some disadvantages to this; the scar tissue builds up and becomes awkward. The webbing will try to return. Superfluous digits can be surgically removed, but best that be done when the patient is as young as possible.” Smoking had calmed the doctor somewhat. He looked less like the burnt-to-the-bone young man they had met in the hallway. They knew Watson was at least nine or ten years’ Lestrade’s junior, but here he looked much younger than that; like a new student struck down by influenza.

  Watson tossed his spent Bradley’s[27] into a pillar of sand and reached for a new victim in the same motion. He paused only to light on a tiny gas-jet perched over the mantle (which was for show and a pacing man’s elbow more than practicality). After a moment he exhaled fresh smoke through his nose.

  “Part of the problem with research is finding all pre-existing sources. Since our earliest days, polysyndactylys were sent to the famous courts of Europe. It was a mark of status to have a fully equipped Court, complete with not just the oddities such as dwarfs and merged twins, but folk such as albinos and the extra-fingered were a subject of study by the most learned minds of the time. Scientists congregated not just to Royalty because they were funding all the discoveries; they were going to Court because that was where all the proper studies took place.” For a moment, a very strange expression flittered over his face, as if some unique thought had occurred, and he discreetly buried it.

  “I’ve been working peculiar research,” Watson looked chagrined at his admission. “There have been a few...” He hesitated, not knowing what to say. “Criminals that took Holmes’ attention in the matter of... unethical medicine.”

  Bradstreet’s nearly-black eyes were square with tension. “Ye needn’t try so hard to spare my feelings, Watson.” He rumbled. “I tell you again. It’s something I thought of a long time ago, and I thought of it daily, it’s just that... well, there was never any proof.” He leaned sideways to better reach into his coat-pocket, and pulled out his notebook. “I drafted this up on the way over,” he leafed through the book and pushed the open pages over to the standing doctor. “There might be some more names; these are who I remember off the top of my head.”

  “Hmn.” Watson’s brown eyes skittered down the list; twice they saw his brows go up. “May I make a copy of this?”

  “With my blessings.” Bradstreet answered.

  Watson limped over to a vacant chair, pulling his own notebook out of his jacket.

  “I say, doctor, what happened to you?” Lestrade wondered. “You weren’t walking like that last night.”

  “I planted my kneecap into the street right after you left.” Watson explained. “I won’t blame you if you can’t believe this, but a rabbit took off running out of an alleyway with the most wretched scream, a terrier-mongrel at its heels, and I was shocked enough to lose my balance. The cry of a wounded rabbit is maddening to hear.”[28]

  “I’ll bet that was someone’s planned supper,” Lestrade commented. “This time of year, people try to get what they can in the way of a decent meal.”

  Watson’s hand slowed over his transcribing. “Yes...” he murmured. “I can believe that.” Holmes had written the winter months had been ideal for body-snatching; weather, low traffic and financial need being all on the side of the ghoulish brokers. He chose to be silent.

  “We await your information,” Lestrade cleared his throat; he and Bradstreet traded a concerned look. “I assure you, we’re not fond of the idea of exposing this... matter... in a way that would punish the innocent.”

  “Innocent?” Watson muttered; his eyes had slid inward, watching something in another dimension. “I’m not convinced there are innocent parties in this. Not directly. But they have innocent friends and family.” He controlled himself with an effort. “Bradstreet, I have a rather unusual request to make of you.”

  “Name it.” Bradstreet grunted.

  “There might be another form of proof that would help with this.” Watson’s voice went soft and quiet. “I... you’ll think me mad for this question, I’m sure. But is there anything you possess that would contain your sister’s fingerprints or even her handprints?”

  Bradstreet leaned backwards in his chair, rubbing his mustaches in thought. “There... there may be.” He said at last. “I would have to look for myself to see... that would take a bit of time, you understand.”

  “Yes...” Watson nodded. “I understand.” He looked down and rubbed his shoulder absently, completely without thought. The unknowing mention of his wound embarrassed the policemen for reasons they did not understand, as if they had spied him in a private moment. “It would be most important to find any proofs.”

  “The evil that men do lives after them;

  the good is oft interred with their bones”

  -Shakespeare

  Bow Street:

  Bradstreet fumbled with the key to his door. The Bow Street District wasn’t the worst place to live in London, but he didn’t like his sick wife and young children inside without him. Poor Hazel was still moving slowly after her long illness and the little ones were frightened at the sight of their strong mother weak and pale. He stopped as soon as he was inside, trying to shake the weather off his clothes on the mat and not on the floor itself.

  “Hello, Papa.” Alice hurried to help him with his coat; Elena a breadth after. The girls had sobered and grown up a bit faster than Roger would have liked. But... in a way it was better than what his sons were doing.

  Garrett dealt with the sorrow in the house by throwing himself into his books, and Brian, always nervous, was trying to eat them out of the house. Bradstreet had stopped buying sweets as soon as he realised his son’s habits, but too little too late.

  “Hello, my girls.” Roger bent to kiss them on the tops of their heads. “How are things? Is your mother up?”

  “She’s reading.” Elena said helpfully. “We have her under the blankets by the fire, and lots of red tea.”

  “Good for you.” Bradstreet approved. He shook the cold out of his wind-stiffened hands. “Where are your brothers?”

  “Upstairs. I think they’re trying to finish that model boat.” Alice did not sound hopeful. She carried little faith in brothers on principle. “Papa,” she tugged on his sleeve. “Brother Jerome stopped by today.” Her large eyes mirrored her sister’s. “He sat and talked with Mama a long time.”

  Jerome was of a different church but a kind man, honestly humble and simple. Bradstreet couldn’t imagine the little man causing any sort of strife in an already shadowed house. “What is the matter, sweetheart?”

  “He asked if there was anything we would like to donate to charity.” Alice dug her toe into the floor. Her voice was still and small. “She said he could take the cradle.”

  Bradstreet swallowed hard. His eyes threatened to fill up for a moment and his gaze slipped over his daughters’ smooth heads. “I’m glad of it,” he said roughly. “Somewhere, there’s some little’uns sleeping warm tonight, eh?” He smiled through a brick wall of hurt and patted them both on their narrow shoulders. They both took after their mother in looks... thank God. “Ladies, is there any chance of a cup of tea whilst I see to your mum?”

  The girls looked at each other, horrified at a slip. A moment later they were scurrying down the hallway to the kitchen. Bradstree
t took the moment to wipe his eyes and square his shoulders.

  Paddington Street:

  Lestrade had gone through a great deal of trouble to check out every book he could find that was pertinent to the nightmare at hand. He told himself he might as well. The weather was execrable. He was to all purposes, trapped in his rooms unless someone gave him an excuse to go outside - he rather hoped that would not happen.

  He lit the small oil lamp at his desk for extra illumination and rubbed at his eyes. His evening had been simple enough: go through Watson’s book in the search for any clue as to the ways of a certain Jonas Q. Parker. That endeavour lasted as long as Lestrade’s gut could hold up in the face of page after page after page after page of printed images that consisted of 1) some sort of medical celebrity, 2) some sort of dead thing to pose with.

  Lestrade’s fortitude had seen a lot of death - none of it pretty. He was simply not made for the exposure of this sort of... bloodless, sanitised morbidity. After page 23, which was Parker’s life in 50 words or less, he had given up and stuffed the book in his most neglected corner. It was high time for some fairy tales. With a shot of chouchen to chase away the chill that had crawled under his skin.

  He had given up on hopes of avoiding material that delved into the realm of folk and fairy tales. The courts would laugh at him; the prosecutor would find a gold mine of comedy in his testimony if word got out... but... There just wasn’t any way of getting around it. Besides, the lure of folklore and oral memory was part of the reason why Elspeth was dead.

  Stick to the facts and you can’t go wrong. You’re not an educated man; you’re not a scholar. But if you keep it so simple that anyone can see the truth, they can’t argue with it. Roger’s sister died because of these tales.

  Lestrade’s insides gnawed to think of it. Bradstreet shouldn’t be forced into this. Not with those little boys just put into the earth. The Inspector’s rage at the injustice cut close to his own bones; this was the third time they’d had to bury their infants. Why couldn’t Bradstreet’s family forgive him enough to make their peace? Was it pride? Something worse? Three infants...

  Lestrade was also estranged from his own family, with a good deal more reason than poor Roger, but he vividly recalled the toll upon his parents when his youngest siblings, two sisters and a brother, died after larking out to catch fish in the Red Tides. His mother had never quite recovered, but she had been a small woman; he favoured her. Childbirth had been a strain on her no matter what. He tried to make himself remember them, but a part of his mind shied at the heresy even though he blamed himself for falling to superstition. His sisters and brother had been innocent. There was no shame in their memory but he tried to respect his parents’ ways by not mentioning them. The names of the dead could call them back in the mistaken belief they were needed.

  The little detective rubbed his arms against a cold seeping inside his ribs.

  Lestrade lined his writing-pencils up, sharpened and ready to go as he thought. The real tragedy was in the rest of the Bradstreets. Roger’s wife was distantly related to him (tenth cousins), so the split had reflected upon her as well. Their remaining four children were growing up separate of grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.

  All because they put him to a task he could not bear. Roger was a big man inside and out; two of Lestrade put together, gentle and generous and willing to walk the extra mile in the freezing rain if that was what it took - or struggle through another yard of paperwork at the office even though he needed a dictionary for half the words he had to write. Perhaps his parents had never thought of him as fallible. If that was the case, then the lesson had come hard to them all.

  The Inspector lit a cigarette and held it away from the first book. Clergymen were usually a mixed bag for reliability; oft-times their reports were coloured to what they were taught they should think or feel. His own experience had taught him to look for their ‘telling phrases’, such as ‘the locals say’ or ‘reported belief’ that would transfer knowledge without giving the impression the priest actually enjoyed the tales.

  Case in point, the Rev. James Wallace of 1693 writing of the Orkneys.

  The man’s approach was as mechanical as a Thoreau pencil:

  “Sometime about this country are seen those Men which are called “Finmen”; In the year 1682 one was seen some time sailing, sometime rowing up and down in his little Boat at the south end of the isle of Eda, most of the people of the Isle flocked to see him, and when they adventured to put out a boat with men to see if they could apprehend him, he presently sped away most swiftly: and in the year 1684, another was seen from Westra, and for a time after they got a few or no fishees: for they have this Remark here, that these “Finmen” drive away the fishes from the place to which they come.”

  Lestrade was finally seeing a pattern after half a night’s reading. He prided himself in being a sensible workman, owning no use for fanciful acts of imagination or embellishment. The Shetlands might have some of the more colourful examples of selkies, but the tales started in the Orkneys. Looking at geography, it suggested the beginnings of this human condition was from the Nordic people blended with the bronze-skinned Laplanders. Some of the descriptions of the seal-folk were just fancy descriptions of sealskin-clad travellers, paddling their coracles across water too choppy for any heavier craft.

  Of course, Lestrade’s Channel Island blood might be forcing this perspective, but when the denizens of one island were called ‘donkeys’ and another ‘toads’ it wasn’t hard to imagine another people called ‘finmen’ or ‘seals’...[29]

  He marked the page with a clean scrap of foolscap and set the book aside for later, reaching for the next one down the stack. The latest reference, just put out that year, was from Karl Blind. The book was so new it creaked in his hands.

  “In Shetland, and elsewhere in the North, the sometimes animal-shaped creatures of this myth, but who in reality are human in a higher sense, are called Finns... Their transfiguration into seals seems to be more a kind of deception they practice -

  Aha.

  -For the males are described as most daring boatmen, with powerful sweep of the oar, who chase foreign vessels on the sea. At the same time they are held to be deeply versed in magic spells and in the healing art, as well as in soothsaying.

  Lestrade snorted to himself. Every newcomer down the road was suspected of the same thing. Still, the writer was making an effort to separate fairy tale from truth.

  “By means of a “skin” which they possess, the men and women among them are able to change themselves into seals. But on shore, after having taken off their wrappage, they are, and behave like, real human beings.

  “Anyone who gets hold of their protecting garment has the Finn in his power. Only by means of the skin can they go back to the water.

  “Many a Finn woman has got into the power of a Shetlander and borne children to him; but if a Finn woman succeeded in re-obtaining her sea-skin, or seal-skin, she escaped across the water.

  “Among the older generation in the Northern Isles persons are still sometimes heard of who boast of hailing from the Finns; and they attribute to themselves a peculiar luckiness on account of their higher descent.”

  There was something about that account that... rang... strangely. Lestrade couldn’t put his finger on it, but it likened him to being a child again, and being told a story that was edited in a way that made the whole matter fall... flat.

  He scowled and pulled more smoke into his lungs. Imagine that murder could be committed over fairy tales, but at the same time, he’d seen worse committed over even less. Was it only last month they’d had to pick up the pieces of a man who had been dismembered by a mad butcher? The excuse for that death had been the man’s choice of dress. It didn’t even help that the butcher was clearly off to Hanwell.[30] The fact was clothing had been the factor that tipped him to his action.

&nbs
p; I’m out of my depth. I know it. So is Roger and I daresay Watson too. But there was a motive for this murder, and we have our own motives for seeing it ended. Lestrade tapped ash absently; it gave his hand something to do. For whatever reason, Elspeth was murdered because of folklore. Folklore started it all. There has to be some clue we can use in ferreting out this case...

  Bow Street:

  The Princess and the Goblin sprawled under her long fingers, and on the floor, Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad rested where it had slid off her lap. Hazel Bradstreet slept deeply, but for the first time a blush of colour touched her lips. Her husband smiled to see it, but blinked askance at the third book on the floor, At The Back of the North Wind.[31] He bent over the settee and kissed her cheek. Her skin was still quite pale; her freckles transparent. She smiled to see him and reached up to hold his hand. They shared a silent look of affection.

  “How are you, dear?” Hazel asked softly.

  “Glad to be home, Coll.” He kissed her hand. “Did you rest?”

  Hazel managed to laugh, just a bit. “I hadn’t any choice. Those girls of yours are tyrants!”

  Roger laughed right back. “I wonder where they get it from.”

  “There’s no telling.” She moved aside and he circled the couch to sit at her waist. “They said they’re making bread. If it works, that’ll be our supper tonight.”

  “Perfect.” Roger held her hand inside his big ones. Hazel wasn’t a small woman; she was built along the lines of an Amazon should that fierce species choose bright plaids and wear their hair in Repentance Curls. Next to Bradstreet she was willowy.

  Her warm eyes sank into his. “Roger, is something wrong? You’re wearing your ‘work face’ again.”

  He sighed through his nose. “I’m sorry, dear. It’s just that...” He took a deep breath. “We may have a clue for Elspeth.”

  Hazel’s face paled even further for a moment, and then her delicate colour quickly flooded back. “Oh...” She said faintly. Her hand rested over her mouth. “Oh, dearest.”