THE THREE LOCKS A SHERLOCK HOLMES ADVENTURE Bonnie MacBird Copyright COLLINS CRIME CLUB An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021 Copyright © Bonnie MacBird 2021 All rights reserved Bonnie MacBird asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021 Cover images © Bonnie MacBird (figures); Shutterstock.com (all other images) A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. This book is a new and original work of fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, and other fictional characters that were first introduced to the world in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all of which are now in the public domain. The characters are used by the author solely for the purpose of story-telling and not as trademarks. This book is independently authored and published, and is not sponsored or endorsed by, or associated in any way with, Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. or any other party claiming trademark rights in any of the characters in the Sherlock Holmes canon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008380830 Ebook Edition © March 2021 ISBN: 9780008380854 Version: 2021-01-06 Dedication For Miranda Andrews Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Prologue PART ONE – THE BOX 1 The Box 2 Thwarted 3 You Left Me Hanging 4 New Skills 5 Madame Borelli PART TWO – ENTANGLEMENT 6 Fingering the Threat 7 The Deacon 8 A Close Escape 9 Misdirection 10 A Lady’s Desire PART THREE – THE DOLL 11 The Floating Doll 12 The Wyndhams 13 Polly 14 Atalanta 15 Bloom Where You Are Planted 16 An Uneasy Alliance PART FOUR – STRANGE MAGIC 17 Smell the Roses 18 Buttons Unbuttoned 19 Those Men! Those Women! 20 The Mind Reader 21 The Tables Turned 22 Danger in the Doldrums PART FIVE – THE TUMBLERS 23 The Story Collector 24 Two for One 25 The Cauldron of Death 26 The How and the Why 27 Vanished PART SIX – THE SETUP 28 The Spinning House 29 The Lady in the Lock 30 Freddie Eden-Summers 31 Leo Vitale 32 Lucifer’s Lights PART SEVEN – ILLUSIONS 33 A Palpable Hit 34 Just a Bodkin 35 The Pawnshop 36 A Holy Place 37 The Sinner PART EIGHT – THE UNLOCKING 38 Rescue 39 Gaol 40 Church and State 41 A Spot of Trouble 42 The Prestige 43 221B Acknowledgements Keep Reading … About the Author Also by Bonnie MacBird About the Publisher Prologue When a mysterious woman going by the name of ‘Lydia’ offered me a cache of unpublished tales written by Dr John H. Watson some years ago, I was astonished to discover previously unknown adventures he had shared with the master detective – and his most admirable and unusual friend – Mr Sherlock Holmes. It soon became apparent that there was a reason within each of these newly discovered tales for Watson not to have made them public at the time he released the others. By ‘the others’, of course I mean those which were brought to light by Arthur Conan Doyle. Dr Doyle’s precise role in these, be it literary agent or in some way promoter, remains buried in the sands of time. Without giving the story away in advance, I can conjecture that both Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes may have had cause to delay release of the tale which follows – or in Holmes’s case, to disapprove entirely of its publication. I hope the reader – and Dr Watson and Mr Holmes, wherever they dwell at present, either in heaven or as motes of stardust – will forgive me for deciding to put forward this story now, one which has been locked away for more than a hundred and thirty years. —Bonnie MacBird London, December 2020 PART ONE THE BOX ‘By the pricking of my thumbs Something wicked this way comes. Open, Locks, Whoever knocks.’ —William Shakespeare, Macbeth CHAPTER 1 The Box It was late September of 1887, and an unusually hot Indian Summer. For two weeks London had suffocated with furnace-like temperatures, keeping me indoors for days. The blinding heat on Baker Street rose from the pavement in shimmering waves, the stench of refuse and horse droppings adding to the misery. Only the hordes of raucous city-dwellers, whom I knew were flocking to the seaside with their dripping ice creams and shouting children, prevented me from fleeing to Brighton or Cornwall with them. My name is Dr John Watson, and at age thirty-five I was six years into sharing both rooms and many adventures with my friend, the remarkable consulting detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes. But sadly, Holmes seemed to have forsaken my company of late. I had seen little of him for three weeks. I longed for a distraction from the misery of this weather. Not only had he not invited me on his recent escapades, but he had dismissed my questions with a petulant wave of his hand. When Holmes did not wish to reveal something, no cajoling, guesswork or sleuthing could prise it free. He likewise kept his personal history, which I always suspected to be tinged with the dramatic, locked away as securely as any treasure stored in a bank vault. But even I have a few secrets of my own. Locks, after all, are in place for a reason – whether privacy, security … or safety. It happened that a locked and deadly secret played a key role in each of the two cases – and a puzzle of my own – which
