Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [94]
Having spoken, she lowered her head and resumed marching along her invisible path. She appeared startled when she encountered Holmes who, unmoving, remained directly before her. Looking up, her expression of concern was replaced by a shy smile. “Mr. Holmes,” she greeted him as if meeting him again after a lengthy absence.
“Miss Drayson.” Holmes returned the courtesy. “I can assure you: These murders are not of your doing.”
“That is wonderful news,” she said, bringing her hands together in delight. Her shy smile expanded into something more substantial. “You must tell me how you were able to determine this. Was the investigation difficult?”
Holmes cast a concerned look at me before returning his attention to the young woman. “It was not difficult at all.”
“You mustn’t be so modest Mr. Holmes,” Catherine Drayson said.
Holmes, a man seldom accused of modesty, was momentarily nonplussed by this assurance. Nevertheless he pressed on. “It is quite impossible for you to have committed any murders. You have been confined here in this asylum, under constant observation, for the last twenty-three months. I have reviewed your medical file, Miss Drayson. I have spoken to the doctors and staff charged with your treatment. They assure me you have not left the asylum grounds for almost two years.”
Catherine Drayson listened patiently to Holmes as he explained his findings. When he finished she laid her small hand on his forearm in a friendly, familiar gesture obviously intended to lessen the sting of her reply. In her musical, untroubled voice, she chided the detective. “Now really Mr. Holmes, I have no wish to be difficult but I did expect better from you. Reading a medical file to solve such ghastly crimes? And everyone says you are so very clever. If you do not wish to accept my case that is one thing, but to stint on an investigation is quite another. I am relying on you Mr. Holmes, is that not clear to you? I must know one way or another before I can decide which world I should direct my efforts towards.”
It was a rare instance indeed when Holmes cast a look of desperation my way, I will confess to being somewhat flattered as he did so now. I cleared my throat, drawing Miss Drayson’s attention to me. “Excuse me Miss Drayson, but that’s the second time you’ve mentioned different worlds. May I ask which worlds you are referring to?”
“There is this world,” Catherine Drayson said, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture towards the blue skies, the looming asylum and the lush, green woods. “Here I am a daughter to a kind man. A child whom everyone likes and pities at the same time. I fear I am a disappointment to those who know me here although they cling to a fading hope. This world is, I confess, a difficult one for me. Often it is a remarkably lonely and frustrating place. Yet it is not without its attractions.”
“I see,” I said. “And the other world?”
“In many ways the other world is much like this one,” she answered earnestly. “Yet in that world I am different. In that world I have neither friends nor family yet, somehow, I am never alone. It is as if there is another me, a part of myself which is missing in this world. When I am there I know myself to be a fearsome thing, capable of the most vicious violence, yet in that world I am untroubled by my nature. Under the red sun of that world, the only frustration I know comes from my inability to unseat my rider.”
“Rider?” I interrupted. “Like a horse?”
“Much more dangerous than a horse.” Her words bore a strange flash of bravado, very much at odds with her feminine voice. “The person I am in that world has tasted the flesh of men and gloried in the spilling of their lifeblood. My rider believes I can become great. A beast so fearsome I will carry him beyond the red sun to where all his