Chapter 9 – Double-Layered Silk

I will spare my readers the details of the garbled death threats Ned Ashley threw at all four of us as I stitched up the cut in Lestrade's neck, as so much of it would have to be censored as to leave little actual content. Miss Larch seemed highly unconcerned by the whole process, but when Serena Nelson and two of her bridesmaids came running up to investigate the source of our shouts, she ordered him to "be quiet, or you'll offend the ladies," compounding the threat with a twist of his now-handcuffed arms.

Finishing the stitches, I examined the bruise on Lestrade's head from his unexpected tussle and the source of the unconsciousness he'd succumbed to as I stitched up his throat. "This isn't serious; he'll be fine as long as he takes it easy for a few weeks and doesn't pull out the stitches. Hand me those smelling salts in my bag, will you, Holmes?"

"I know you!" Ida Constable had recovered from her fall but so far had said little of interest apart from several swear words I wasn't even entirely sure how to define. "You're that bird-ish woman who's always stirring things up around Maria's place. What are you doing here?"

"I should like to know the same thing," Sherlock Holmes remarked as he passed me the smelling salts. "Your presence and its consequences are most welcome, but how did you know where we were?"

Miss Larch shrugged. Ned Ashley unsuccessfully tried to take advantage of the movement and wrench away. "I knew where the dresses had gone, and that you'd probably be here today, as you checked everywhere else last night. I'll own up to a great deal of interest about your behaviour in a crisis, and when a man with a gun comes barrelling down the stairs, well, I generally assume he's up to no good."

"You were perfectly right. This man, if I am not mistaken, is the murderer of Edward Ashley, and very possibly of his footman as well."

"I didn't kill my father," cried Ned Ashley. "Zachariah Cargan did it! I only looked!"

"And that makes you so much less culpable, I'm sure," retorted Miss Larch scornfully. "So your father fell down dead just because you stood around looking so hard?"

"I didn't kill Reynolds!"

"You might want to put down the gun that he was shot with first," Holmes said dryly. "Also the same gun that killed Zachariah Cargan early yesterday morning."

"Now, Mr. Holmes, that's not a fair statement to make," Miss Larch told him. "He can't put the gun down. I already took it away."

"And where is it now?" demanded Lestrade, who had recovered enough in the interim to at least attempt to take charge.

"Rusticating in a bouquet of pansies downstairs. Miss Nelson, you might want to have someone remove it before your wedding tomorrow."

Miss Nelson was on the more frantic side of preoccupied, as one of her bridesmaids was in hysterics. I handed our hostess the smelling salts. "Do you have a room where we can secure these two until we can call the Yard for reinforcements? No, Lestrade, don't move. If those stitches come out you're in trouble."

The obliging bride-to-be showed us to one of the bare cellars, where Holmes secured the two criminals and locked the door. I was forced to practically sit on Lestrade to prevent him from trying to help. And let me just take this opportunity to assure everyone involved that Mr. Alder and Miss Nelson received a very expensive present on their wedding day from Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.

My friend, only slightly the worse for wear for his exertions, examined the wedding gown on the bed. "Miss Larch, if you will obligingly use your seamstress skills, we shall soon see exactly what is hidden in that dress."

"Of course, Mr. Holmes." Miss Larch retrieved a small seam-ripper from a sewing basket on a nearby bureau. "But if I may, it's already quite obvious what it contains. In fact, there's some on Dr. Watson's sleeve right now."

Holmes blinked. "Yellow powder?"

Miss Larch sighed. "Smell it. I think you'll find this gown smells the same."

My companion sniffed obligingly. "The scent's the same, but I don't recognize—"

"Of course you don't, oh most masculine-minded of detectives." Miss Larch's eyebrows spoke volumes as she raised them to the sky. "Never did much fine cooking, did you? Now, your landlady might recognize the smell of saffron."

"Saffron?" Lestrade's tone was only one short of what he might have used to describe pickled herring-flavoured tea. "You mean people are willing to commit three murders and attempt two more, infiltrate a bridal company, break into goodness knows how many houses, and effectively tear each other to bits just to get a hold of saffron?"

Miss Larch opened a tiny slit in the hem of the gown and removed a small yellow spur, like one might find on the inside of a crocus. "Just because it isn't shiny and covered with gems doesn't mean it isn't valuable. This stuff is actually the stigmas of saffron crocuses. You need an incredibly amount of land just to get enough flowers to grow an ounce of it." She glanced over the gown. "Judging from the weight, I expect this dress probably contains five or six pounds. No one expects a wedding gown to be light-weight. They could have hidden whatever they wanted. If you include the train there might even be ten pounds in here."

"She's right, Lestrade," Holmes informed him. "Saffron is worth its weight in gold, and the price has gone up recently. Our friends downstairs were playing for high stakes."

"Given enough time, I believe I can extract it all without harming the dress too much," Miss Larch said cheerfully. "Not by tomorrow, though. I suppose Miss Nelson will just have to wear an incredibly valuable wedding dress. Then I'll take it apart, re-sew it, and give it back to her."

"So Miss Constable was the person Ned Ashley met at Lilac Maria's," I mused.

"I am inclined to think now," Holmes replied, "that his plot must have been with Cargan, and laid for much longer than that evening, or he would not have concocted the plan so far as to steal Captain Blackwood's pistols to use. As said gentleman never used those particular guns he could have gone quite a long time without realizing they were missing. If I am not mistaken, Ned Ashley knew Cargan through his father's India connections. The man is an expert in spices, which is probably how he arranged the saffron to be smuggled through the wedding gown."

"How do you know, then, that it was he, and not Cargan, who killed Edward Ashley and the footman?"

Holmes glanced at the wet gun on the bed, which Miss Larch had fished out of the pansies on the way back up the stairs. "Now that Cargan is dead we may never know who killed the footman. But since Edward Ashley was strangled…unless a man is very weak or his assailant very strong, it is difficult to achieved death by strangulation without even a sound if the target is conscious, as the lit candle on Ashley's bed shows he was. It is far more likely to have been the man's son who murdered him, as only his children knew he suffered from asthma and would find it hard to breathe if seriously shocked. Besides, why would Cargan wish to throw suspicion on Captain Blackwood, when he does not know the man?"

I shuddered. "I didn't like Ned Ashley, but I had no idea he was such a monster as that."

"It must've been him who shot Cargan too," Miss Larch remarked thoughtfully. "I bet Cargan was trying to blackmail him out of his share of the saffron money by threatening to tell the Yard he killed his father. Ashley probably panicked, not being used to crime and all, and shot him. I guess it was the lilac on Dr. Watson's shoe that let you know Ida had broken into the shop?"

"That it was." Holmes fiddled with a bit of saffron. "If Cargan and Ashley met regularly to plot in Lilac Maria's, they would need a secure room. I would guess they bought Miss Constable's silence with an offer to cut her in on the dress. But being used to the ways of criminals, she inferred they had no intention of giving her any money, and so went after the saffron herself."

"Saffron," muttered Lestrade. "I still can't believe they were willing to risk their lives for saffron."

"Some would think it odd, no doubt," Holmes agreed, eyes shadowed. He glanced at me. "But I expect they would find it just as odd that some people are willing to risk their lives for a friend."

"Well, hypothetically, I should think the friend in question would do the same for them," Miss Larch called from the sewing basket, where she was searching for thread to mend the small cut she had made in the dress. "What do you think, Mr. Holmes?"

"I think," said Sherlock Holmes, his eyes meeting mine, "that you are entirely correct."

Author's Note: I don't think England had switched to the metric system at this point, but if I'm wrong inform me so. Pounds and ounces are what I'm most familiar with, so I used them. I based my estimate of the cost of saffron off today's prices, as it cost as much if not more back then. High-quality saffron sells for about $17.95 an ounce, so ten pounds would be worth approximately eleven thousand dollars.