Lillian Holmes and the Leaping Man
Read Lillian Holmes and the Leaping Man Online
Authors: Ciar Cullen
“Smart, funny, exciting…Ms. Cullen provides endearing characters, a unique premise, and a very satisfying resolution.
I not only couldn’t put it down, but I’ll recommend it to my friends.”
—
New York Times
Bestselling Author Susan Squires
“Sherlock Holmes would be proud to have such a relation.
The Leaping Man
will take its place in the annals of romantic vampire lore.”
—Melanie Jackson, Bestselling Author of the Chloe Boston Mysteries
THE LEAPING MAN
It was not relief Lillian found. Through the fine mist that diffused the lights on the empty street below she peered. There beneath her, at first unaware of her detection, a man had dropped from a neighboring balcony two stories above. When he hit the ground with the grace of a feline, he turned and glanced up as if he’d felt her stare.
A chill ran through Lillian’s bones at that glance, at the sight of a man who should have broken limbs and bruises if he survived the fall at all. Still, he was most certainly a man, and a cheeky one at that. Lillian brought her arms across her chest at his intense gaze. Knowing she should shift, that she should hide her nudity from a stranger, she tried to inch back but still keep sight of him. Her feet would barely move.
In the darkness, before he slipped into the black shadows, he smiled and tipped his cap, chuckling as he disappeared.
Lillian Holmes and the Leaping Man
Ciar Cullen
www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.
LILLIAN HOLMES AND THE LEAPING MAN
Copyright © 2013 Ciar Cullen
All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.
Digital edition created by Maureen Cutajar
www.gopublished.com
ISBN 978-1-938876-52-3
For Lil Twamley, born 1890. My muse, grandmother and dearest childhood friend.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For unwavering encouragement, I owe a great debt to my husband. For constantly asking “Where’s that Holmes story?” I thank my beloved late brother, Tom. For accepting a sow’s ear and helping to patch it into some kind of usable purse, I am greatly indebted to the exceptionally talented Chris Keeslar. Anne Cain, thank you for another fantastic cover.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
In which our heroine’s first case presents itself.
Baltimore, 1899
Lillian Holmes strapped on goggles and shoved her long black hair under her leather cap. She wanted to go fast on a day that always made her feel jittery.
It wasn’t logical that she should feel much of anything, she reminded herself, for facts were facts and knowledge was always good. Except that on this day seventeen years earlier, at age seven, perhaps she hadn’t been ready for facts. At least not ones so stark and final:
Mother had died in childbirth.
Father was never coming home, perished with the
SS Gothenburg
off Australia in 1875.
She’d stopped listening that day, the room blurring and buzzing as blood pounded in her ears and pain poured out in quiet tears. Of course she’d known already that she was an orphan, but questions burgeoned as she grew older, and evidently the adults in her life felt it time to tell her the truth. August 28, 1883. Lillian remembered the date because she’d stared at the newspaper thrown on the green brocade settee as her governess told her the story. The headline spoke of France, of looming war, and of the eruption of a volcano on an exotic island named Krakatau—all far away things, like Addie’s kind voice as it faded into the background.
In the following seventeen years, Lillian never asked her governess for details. The unasked questions still lay buried like ancient treasures beneath the walls she’d built around herself. Do I have grandparents or siblings, Addie? Why was Father on a ship so far away when his wife was with child? Why am I wealthy? Did you know my mother? Do I look like her?
On this, the sixteenth anniversary of the Truth of Lillian Holmes as she’d titled the day in her journal, Lillian slung her leather satchel over her shoulder. It held her most prized possessions: her Journal of Important Observations, two novels, one in French, one letter, and the Colt revolver she’d bought for herself on her twenty-first birthday. She was prepared for adventure.
In the lingering late August heat wave, her neighbors would have their windows flung wide and might hear the engine of her steam-powered velocipede. Well, the vehicle technically belonged to her butler, Thomas, but he let Lillian ride it now and then. Thomas hated that she rode at night, but he knew that she couldn’t afford to be seen at such an unseemly pastime. No, the neighbors would talk, the talk would spread, and Lillian would be back in the clutches of the men who watched her like a hawk: her solicitor and her physician. Suddenly angry at the thought of her lack of control over her own life, Lillian determined to ride far tonight. Her neighbors would not recognize her in any case: her boy’s trousers and loose shirt would hide her form.
It was the beginning of dead time, as she’d come to think of the hours between midnight and three, when insanity or some innate evil drove her fellow mortals to unthinkable acts, including the recent foul murder of Baltimore’s mayor only blocks away. But Lillian didn’t fear the night. She could outrun the shadows and outwit any enemy.
So dramatic, Lillian. As if you actually have an enemy.
Still, she thought it would be good fun to have a nemesis, like Uncle had the evil Professor Moriarity. While her closest friend—nay, her only friend—Bess, might think that forces of an otherworldly nature worked evil upon the good citizens of Baltimore, Lillian cared only about facts.
“Give me data!”
Uncle Sherlock’s mantra pulled her to reason whenever Bess tried to lure her to fanciful musings. And whenever the Melancholies came calling—and they usually did so late at night—she’d immerse herself in the fading memories of her single year in London with Uncle.
A nemesis would come in right handy to prove her brilliance. The closest she had was a loathsome greedy solicitor who seemed to delight in her troubles.
Troubles.
No, she was overcoming her troubles, she’d assured Dr. Schneider, and would continue to improve. It was a passing thing, these sad spells, and a fast ride was good medicine.
“He is not my real uncle; he is not real at all,” Lillian said aloud to no one, a practiced phrase she’d sworn to repeat whenever her fantasy took hold. Dr. Schneider had taken great pains to explain, more than once, that if Lillian could not rid herself of this “most extraordinary delusion,” he would recommend further treatment. Lillian shuddered at the thought of what that treatment might entail—a stay at Spring Grove for lunacy, a drill through the skull?
“I was never in London. He is not my real uncle,” she repeated.
Her solicitor, Francis Pemberton, had made it quite clear that two things hung on her ability to be a normal lady of society: her fortune and her freedom. She cared much more about the latter, knowing that the odious man would like nothing more than to see her rot in an asylum. How he would claim her fortune for himself she wasn’t sure, but that he would attempt to rob her one day she was certain.
No, she vowed. He would not win. At least she could pretend to be a normal lady.
Bess would help. She
must
help
.
Bess had helped so often, offering excuses to acquaintances when Lillian’s Melancholies gripped her tightly, escorting Lillian to essential events for a lady to attend, although she hadn’t the least bit of interest in them. Bess was two years younger than Lillian, at 22, but she schooled her in all manner of topics Lillian cared not about: frocks and hats, gloves and dancing, fans and flirting.
Lillian walked the velocipede across the street. As she did, she gazed down toward the harbor at Federal Hill, which seemed to guard the good citizens of Baltimore from any outside evil, as it had done when the Country was born. With each step she rehearsed Uncle’s words—
Words penned by Mister Conan Doyle, she quickly corrected herself.
No act goes without leaving a trace, no criminal is brilliant enough to evade scientific inquiry, and no task is too arduous for one who puts aside emotion for reason.
Of course, Uncle Sherlock would not approve of how frivolously she had spent her day, taking a lesson on popular songs from Bess, but no one would approve of how she meant to spend the night. She would ride, and not even Bess’s imaginary phantoms would be able to keep up.
The path Lillian chose wound down from a deserted Light Street, past shops and ships, streetlamps, some electric and some fueled with oil. The lights diminished as she ventured away from the city center to distant Druid Hill Park where paths scarred the manicured landscape like rivulets of blackening blood leading into forbidden darkness. It mattered not who lurked there, she reminded herself as she leaned forward, a push of the pedal and a flick of a switch igniting the spark to let her fly; this was her secret world where darkness promised freedom, where solitude allowed her the luxury of not standing out as a “most unusual girl.” Pemberton would not see. No one would see.
Lillian wound past the Great Lake, and as was her custom she stopped to climb the steep retaining wall and take in the solitude and the moonlight’s still reflection on the shimmering water, turned as if by alchemy into mercury. Tonight, she lingered. Lillian pulled off her goggles and angled the letter she pulled from her pants pocket to catch the light on it. Worn from too much folding and unfolding, and in truth stained from a few tears, she reread the treasure.
Dear Miss Holmes,
Thank you for your kind letter regarding my Sherlock Holmes stories. I never imagined my tales would catch the interest of readers across the Atlantic in such quick measure.
I regret to say that while my character is loosely based on an acquaintance, the name Holmes is a choice made by me, the novelist, and carries no significance. I am afraid I am unable to help you locate your ancestors.