Ships In The Night

Chapter 3 - Consulting Detective

        A warm, shaky breath eased out of Elise's nose as she sat in the carriage rattling down the road. She was not aware of what might have happened or was currently happening on the ship after she was questioned by the police. She couldn't be sure if she was aware of anything at all. But she had heard that the police had found all the children while getting to the ship and that they were safe. They had come prepared to take them all back, with carriages and blankets and an entire fleet of constables and inspectors (and whoever came along, she didn't pay them much mind); and it was all thanks to Holmes as he had explained to her while wiping his bleeding nose back on the ship.

        He had also explained what exactly he meant by 'Consulting Detective', the occupation he made up and took great pride in, which Elise would think fair as the man was indeed excellent at what he did. He solved cases that were too difficult for Scotland Yard to crack, acting as a consultant to the entire force, hence the title.

        She had things to explain on her side as well and had promptly done so just minutes prior: how she'd come to find herself there, how she had helped the kids escape and all, along with the bit about her missing belongings. They had found them— her bag, necklace and watch, and returned them to her, all of which she gathered in her lap where she sat. The only missing object now was her handkerchief.

        She had listened to Holmes go on about the whole case from the very beginning, the 'why' part he had omitted earlier. As he mentioned, Lynch, her kidnapper held a grudge against Holmes and Wiggins, the kid he had beaten up, for helping his arrest sometime in the past. After getting out of jail, he began working for an organisation that ran a child trafficking ring across the Arctic. Kidnapping Wiggins and Elise, however, was a more personal task to him.

        He'd seen her talking to Holmes in the café a couple of weeks back and 'assumed things', as the detective put it, thus bringing her into the picture: to use her as a hostage to torment Holmes or whatever. In the end, however, it all went down like a lead balloon for him. She assumed Holmes also explained all this to the police as they only asked few questions before sending her on her way home.

        She pulled the blanket they provided closer to her body as the dawning atmosphere presented itself in the form of smog on the streets and the chilly glass panes on which she rested her head. Somewhere along the way, her neck fell tired of carrying her head and propped it on the glass beside her. A side of her body was completely stuck to the wall of the carriage. The mere act of snuggling in the blanket felt like pushing a boulder up a hill. Her hands had gone half-limp; her legs, completely. The sky was slowly turning lighter, streaks of red cut through it from the invisible horizon.

        At times like this, she wished she lived in a more open, nature-friendly place; somewhere she could see the sunrise and sunset from. Her luck, the city sprawled as far as the eye could see, taller and taller brick blocks being built each day, obscuring the most dazzling things one could encounter on a daily. The sight she'd happily watched from her window in her juvenile years had now become a rarity that could only be seen by climbing as far above as the tallest building in the area went. It didn't help that she lived on the ground floor.

        The carriage dropped her off at the front gate and the officer that kept her company on the journey peeked his head out the carriage door to utter courteous take-cares and farewells. All she could do was nod before they went on their way, leaving her to go inside. She made sure she properly locked the door. A newfound paranoia was exactly what she needed on top of the natural fears that came from being a young, unmarried woman and living alone in the heart of the city.

        She did not remember what happened before she dropped herself into her bed. Maybe nothing, it didn't matter. She fell asleep instantaneously engulfed in bliss while being wrapped in her sheets, an effect that she would later conclude was caused by the still lingering after-effects of whatever was injected into her arm at the beginning of the whole fiasco that had yet to wear out.