‘Holmes!’ I shouted again, peering into the room. I started after him.
‘Careful!’ Janvier cried. ‘There could be a second bomb!’
But I was already halfway across the room. Nearer the site of the explosion white dust filled the air.
I paused, now enveloped in a miasma of white and having lost view of the footprints, which vanished below me into the floating cloud. I squinted and bent down, trying to locate them. After some moments, I finally found them and proceeded slowly forward into the impenetrable whiteness.
A ghostly apparition, covered from head to foot in plaster, emerged from the fog. It was Holmes. In his hand he held something wrapped in a handkerchief. I heaved a sigh of relief.
‘All is well, Watson,’ said he.
‘Thank God. Did you find anything?’ I asked.
He nodded as Janvier came up behind me. The Frenchman fanned the air and coughed. ‘Outside, gentlemen, please!’
We made our way out of the building, and across a courtyard I could see a crowd of people gathering and pointing. I heard whistles and shouts and the clanging bells of the French police growing nearer.
‘Tell me what you found, Mr Holmes?’ urged Janvier.
‘Whoever did this has made his escape,’ said the detective. ‘However the explosion is a large one at the back of that room near the sinks. Dynamite. A second stick had been lit but I found it and managed to stop it before it ignited.’ He held up the offending item, and then placed it in his pocket.
‘You are mad, Holmes,’ said I. ‘You could have been blown to pieces.’
He smiled and shrugged.
I looked back at the swirling dust. ‘We should check for injured people!’
‘I did. There was no one.’
Janvier placed a hand on my arm. ‘No one was there. As I said, our work was transferred yesterday to a larger building. And everyone is eating their lunch.’
‘But you are different, Dr Janvier. Do you not occasionally work during lunch?’ asked Holmes.
‘True. Perhaps it is the American influence.’
‘But to the point. The timing of this – might you have been the direct target?’ asked Holmes.
Janvier paused. He and Holmes stared at each other intently for a moment. I had the impression that both were sifting the information and perhaps coming to some kind of joint conclusion.
‘Not likely,’ said Janvier. ‘The mistaken laboratory. The timing of the detonation.’
‘I concur. A message. Not intended to kill,’ agreed Holmes. ‘But dangerous nonetheless.’ He withdrew the stick of dynamite from his pocket, using his handkerchief to do so. It was a few inches long, wrapped in brown paper with a label. The fuse was blackened. ‘Made by Nobel, in Scotland. The best for the task that can be found anywhere. You are very lucky, even so.’
It was exactly like the dynamite that Isla McLaren had so casually displayed at 221B.
‘Holmes! That is the same—’
‘I know,’ said Holmes. He turned to Janvier. ‘The letters threatened you to stop or your work would “go up in smoke” I believe you said.’
The scientist looked down at the ground ‘But they will have to kill me first.’
‘Do not tempt fate, Docteur. I suggest you post a guard at all times.’
A police commissionaire rushed up to us, bristling with urgency. His blond hair was clipped short, and he was bronzed so deeply from the Mediterranean sun that he appeared almost metallic. Holmes and Janvier answered a few quick questions in French, and after a few minutes the man retreated and headed back to the site of the explosion. His accent was indecipherable and I had understood nothing.
‘Might you translate, for my colleague?’ said Holmes.
Janvier laughed, with a tinge of bitterness. ‘He attempted to apologize to me. When the letters first arrived, the director of the lab showed them to the police. They dismissed the threats as I did, but for a different reason. They thought I was simply trying to draw attention to myself!’
Holmes snorted. Janvier continued. ‘Idiots. But it alerted someone in the Chamber of Deputies, and their response was to send that horrible … et voici … here he is now. Excuse me for a moment.’ He moved quickly away to speak to two worried assistants.
A dark figure slowly approached us from the other side of the courtyard, emerging from behind the building which had suffered the blast. He was silhouetted against the bright sunlight and at first I could not make out who it was. The swagger, however, was striking.
‘Sherlock Holmes!’ exclaimed the familiar, French-accented voice. He passed out of the bright light, and into view. It was the disreputable Jean Vidocq himself.
In contrast to our dishevelled and whitened state, the tall, handsome Frenchman was the picture of elegance. He strode forward with a smile, impeccable as always in a well-tailored frock coat and jaunty cravat.
The man was a rakish charmer, to whom women seemed drawn as by a magnetic force. He was insufferable. In fact, I still felt the occasional pain in my back directly due to our contretemps at the Louvre last year. The man had knocked me down a flight of steps.
‘You!’ I said.
Vidocq responded with a cocky grin. But as he approached, Sherlock Holmes surprised me in the extreme. He rushed to embrace this rogue.
‘Jean Vidocq! Bienvenue! I am so happy to see you here!’ he gushed, clasping the Frenchman to his bosom, kissing him on both cheeks in the French manner of greeting.
Vidocq, equally surprised, recoiled and backed away in disgust, frantically brushing at the white plaster dust, which Holmes with his embrace had deposited on his pristine frock coat. Holmes hid a quick smile.
‘Mon Dieu! What the hell is the matter with you, Holmes? Is it the cocaine?’ exclaimed Vidocq.
‘Ah, non, non!’ said Holmes. ‘C’est trop de soleil!’
Too much sun? Holmes was inventive today. Janvier looked on in confusion.
‘Ah, so sorry,’ said Holmes, apparently recovering. ‘It is the shock also. Vidocq, my old friend!’
Turning from Holmes with a look of doubt, Vidocq focused on his fellow Frenchman. ‘Dr Janvier? Ça va?’ he asked. What followed was a rapid exchange in French, of which I only understood that he was ascertaining that the famous scientist was unharmed. Satisfied, he turned to us.
‘Well, Monsieur Holmes, what an interesting coincidence. And Doctor Wilson, I believe it is.’
‘You know my name, Monsieur Verdun!’ said I.
Vidocq was taken aback. ‘Ah, yes, Dr Watson, forgive me. It slipped my mind. How very strange to find you both here at this precise moment. Where were you exactly when the bomb went off?’
Holmes smiled. With a grand gesture he indicated our plaster-covered selves. In fact, we were so whitened by the dust as to look like madcap bakers in a comedy turn at the Gaieties.
Vidocq eyed us with derision. ‘A little close for comfort, n’est-ce pas? But again, why are you here, in the laboratoire? It is lunchtime.’
‘Indeed. One might ask the same of you, Vidocq,’ said Holmes brushing the white powder and bits of plaster from his own coat.
‘Police business.’
‘Excellent timing! Or are you simply prescient?’ asked Holmes.
‘Dr Janvier has received death threats. I have been sent by the government