The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird (books for 8th graders .TXT) 📗

I volunteered, ‘Mr Holmes is trying to help you, young man.’

Vitale blinked, thinking quickly. ‘I asked Dillie for my ring back. She refused.’

‘A ring you gave to her? What kind of ring?’

‘My mother’s ring: a small sapphire with two diamonds. A family heirloom. Please tell me what has happened.’

‘I see. You proposed marriage, then? She accepted you?’

The young man nodded.

‘But then you saw that Miss Wyndham’s engagement to Freddie Eden-Summers was announced in the papers,’ said Holmes.

Vitale stiffened. ‘Eden-Summers is a damned fool. That foppish idiot could never make her happy! And she had already …’ His eyes glazed over, and he blinked rapidly.

‘She had accepted you?’ Holmes murmured.

Leo Vitale nodded, back in control.

‘But last night, when Miss Wyndham refused to give you back the ring, you lost your temper. Shouts were heard. What happened after your argument?’

‘I left. I walked the streets for a while,’ said Vitale.

‘You did not go up to her room?’

‘No.’

‘Not to retrieve your mother’s ring?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I was more upset about the … about her … not the ring.’

‘Even so, why did you not go up and see her?’ persisted Holmes.

‘Have you met Dillie?’

‘Yes, I see. Did you encounter anyone while walking in the streets? Anyone who might remember you?’

The young man leaped to his feet. ‘Tell me what has happened. Why are the police involved? Is Dillie all right?’

Holmes was silent. Vitale looked from one of us to the other.

‘She is dead, isn’t she? Dillie Wyndham. Is she dead?’

Holmes nodded.

Vitale inhaled sharply as though someone had punched him in the stomach, but only a flicker of emotion reached his face. There was much of Sherlock Holmes in this boy.

Just then I heard a noise in the hallway. ‘Police!’ we heard a gruff voice bellow nearby. This was followed by a furious knocking on a nearby door.

Holmes glanced at the window. ‘The fire escape. Now!’ he barked.

The young man hesitated.

‘We are trying to help you,’ said Holmes. ‘Act quickly!’

‘I’ll go first,’ said Leo Vitale, opening the window and stepping through it onto something. ‘There is a trick to it. You must be careful.’

We followed the young man and clambered out of the window and onto a rickety iron construction. I wondered what had occasioned Vitale to exit this way before.

The spidery, long-limbed student and the always spry Holmes had no trouble navigating the rickety ladders heading to the ground, despite a railing that had come loose and two missing steps. I struggled but managed to follow.

We found ourselves in an alley behind St Cedd’s court, safe but only for the moment. The oppressive heat seemed to settle into the grime and rubbish around us and be reflected back from it.

‘I am going to the laboratory,’ said Vitale.

‘They will soon look for you there,’ said Holmes. ‘Is there no other place we can take refuge?’

Vitale shook his head. ‘If I am to be arrested, I must secure my papers, first. Do what you like, but that is where I am going.’

After a quick and frantic run through Cambridge’s back alleys, we arrived, drenched in perspiration, at a back door of the Cavendish Laboratory. Once inside, we raced down a cool hallway and into the large room where we had first encountered Vitale. The windows of this laboratory were now strangely blacked out with thick fabric. Vitale threw a switch and electric light flooded the room.

Holmes looked around. ‘No way out. I don’t like it. Is there another egress, Vitale?’

The boy did not answer but focused on his business. He opened a desk drawer, reached deeply in it to the back and removed a stack of papers. He hesitated, looking around the room, evidently for a place to hide them.

‘There.’ Holmes pointed to a ventilator grate high on a wall near the sink.

Vitale nodded, clambered onto the stone counter nearby and stuffed them inside the vent, where they could not be seen.

As he did so, I noticed that in addition to the covered windows, something else had changed in the laboratory since our last visit. Rows of glass tubes shaped like long, thin sausages now crisscrossed along the walls, all dangling by wires and making long patterns of what looked like random, gigantic ant trails.

‘Aha’ said Holmes regarding this same display. ‘This is interesting.’

‘Pah!’ said Vitale. ‘This is Cosimo’s work. My senior lab partner has lost the story!’

What, I wondered, did that mean?

Satisfied that he had secured his research notes, Vitale leaped nimbly down from the counter and approached us.

‘And now, Mr Holmes,’ he said. ‘I … I will wait no longer. Tell me all, sir. What happened to Dillie? Please. How did she die?’ He swallowed, his face hardened, and he placed a hand on the stone counter, bracing himself for the news.

‘Watson attended the post-mortem. Explain, Doctor.’

I could only presume that he wanted to observe the boy’s reactions. ‘Her body was found trapped underwater in the Jesus Lock,’ I said. ‘Her hair was entangled in the mechanism.’

‘Dillie drowned?’

‘Officially, yes. But there was a concussion and it is likely that she was unconscious when she entered the water. Then she was sucked under.’

Vitale’s eyes glistened though he remained stiff. I could see he was holding back. Was it possible that this young man had more feeling for the dead girl than her wealthy fiancé did?

‘Other signs revealed that Miss Wyndham fought someone before entering the water,’ I said.

‘That does not surprise me. Dillie was … quick to anger,’ said he, sadly. ‘I worried about her. It took little to provoke her.’

‘Indeed,’ said Holmes. He prowled the laboratory, glancing up at the glass tubing. ‘Interesting. These will light up, in sequence.’ He pulled at the blackout curtains but they had been nailed in place. He looked about for an exit. ‘Ah, a cupboard. Mr Vitale, if the police come I suggest you – we all – hide for the moment. He returned to face Vitale.

‘I will not hide. I am innocent.’

‘It looks bad for you, Mr Vitale. You would be wise to buy