by David Marcum
“You are testing my restraint, Mr. Holmes,” Mr. Hayes said.
“Let us just be through with this,” Mrs. Hayes said. “Write the agreement.”
“What do you have in mind then?” Mr. Hayes said.
“Nothing particular onerous,” Holmes said. “Simply, ‘I, Harold Hayes, affirm before witness that I shall honor my pledge of fifty pounds to any person who affects the return of my daughter, Vidalia Hayes, promptly and without reservation’.”
“Fine, fine,” Mr. Hayes said, writing the document out upon my desk.
“Inspector Lestrade, if you would be so kind as to set your signature as witness and keep safe the document.”
“You are playing at a strange game, Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade said as he complied.
“Do you have the cash?” Holmes asked.
“We don’t walk around with that sum upon our person!” Mrs. Hayes said.
“It is held in an envelope at the National Bank, available upon reliable demand from the manager.”
“The paper made us do so before it would print the advertisement,” Mrs. Hayes said.
“Very good,” Holmes said. “Everything is satisfactory,” he called out.
After a moment of confusion, Vidalia appeared, down from my old room.
“She was here all along in this unsavory bachelor’s flat!” Mrs. Hayes sobbed. “We are ruined!”
“Actually, Madame,” I said, “I was as surprised as anyone to find Miss Vidalia at my own lodgings yesterday evening, taking tea with my wife, who has more of a sense of humor about such things than she must. She spent the evening quite secure in a private room of my house. My maid could testify to as much, as could my wife.”
“But of course neither will,” said Holmes, “for your daughter’s conduct is no longer any of your concern.”
“Dash it all, Vidalia, you are coming home at once!”
“I loved him, father,” Vidalia said. “And he loved me, more than I thought I ever deserved. He is dead now, because of some dreadful mishap, but as far as I am concerned, you forced us into it, and you killed him.”
“Be reasonable, dear,” Mrs. Hayes said. “We’ll talk about it when you are less hysterical.”
“I will not!” Vidalia said. “I have made my own arrangements for my future, and I do not believe you shall hear from me again.”
“What do you mean, dear?” Mrs. Hayes said.
“Inspector,” Holmes said. “Will you see that Miss Hayes receives her reward unhindered, please?”
“Reward?” Mr. Hayes scoffed. “What reward? The girl walked in her of her own accord.”
“And thus met the terms of your offer,” Holmes said. “Miss Hayes, I call to your attention that it is rather difficult to recall a person from a ship that is already underway, and I have noted upon this timetable some likely prospects departing within the day.” He pressed a scrap of newspaper into her hand. “Bon voyage, Miss. I regret that sorrow will be your traveling companion, but I hope a well-earned peace will await you in your new life.”
A single tear fell down her cheek. “Thank you, Mr. Holmes.”
Lestrade held the door for her and then they were gone. The elder Hayes quickly recovered and made to follow but with a spritely dash I filled the doorway.
“Get out of the way,” Mr. Hayes said.
“Won’t you have some tea before you go?”
In response, he seized my lapels and attempted to pull me off my feet. Having learned a trick or two from observing Holmes, I slipped his grasp and he himself ended up on the floor. Graciously, I extended my hand to assist him up, but he smacked it away and clamored up the wall.
“You haven’t heard the last of this,” Mrs. Hayes said as the pair scurried out.
“We weren’t able to give her much of a head start,” I observed.
“It will be enough,” Holmes said. “Lestrade is nothing if not stalwart in upholding the law, and I dare say my own name will carry some small weight with the banker.”
“Still, was it wise to advise Miss Hayes of her escape plan right in front of her parents?”
Holmes smiled. “I quite enjoy the thought of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes turning the port of London upside down in an effort to shake out their daughter.”
“She will not be there?”
“Indeed, what I passed to her was in fact the schedule of trains that will take her north where she can be on a French ferry before her parents are the wiser. From there, I suggested that North America or Scandinavia were both places relatively friendly to independent women.”
“Do you think she’ll manage the trick?”
“I expect the memory of her beloved Ronald will carry her through the next few trials.”
I regret to say that despite Peter Grande’s best efforts at condemning the man who came up with the scheme of moving people around in laundry bags, Lord Mickleton escaped the inquiry mostly unscathed. In protesting his innocence, he disavowed his interest in Aldridge’s business, and the eccentric launderer was so grateful he offered his services to us gratis in perpetuity. As I suspected, Mrs. Hudson had soon told Mrs. Eddels, who made it clear upon her next visit that she had seen far too much of Holmes’s dirty laundry for him to ever consider giving his business elsewhere. Nonetheless, it was some small satisfaction to me whenever I saw one of Aldridge’s wagons trundle by. As for Vidalia Hayes, I never heard another word about her. However, I did notice that Holmes’s case notes for the matter moved from his cabinet to his lumber room a few weeks later, which I took to mean he considered the Bogus Laundry Affair settled.
“He is a big, powerful chap, clean-shaven, and very swarthy - something like Aldridge, who helped us in the bogus laundry affair.
Inspector G. Lestrade - “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”
Inspector Lestrade and the Molesey Mystery
by M.A. Wilson and Richard Dean Starr
Chapter I
1881 or Ten Years Before the Present Time
“The evidence is nigh,” said Inspector Felix Windsow, evenly. “When it is at hand, we shall come inside. Of that I can assure you.”
Windsow stood close to the gate with his hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his coat. Sundridge stood opposite him, his face just a short distance from Windsow’s. The two men were separated from one another by nothing more than the gate’s thick, cast-iron bars. That, and a sense of mutual hatred that was nearly palpable in the frosty morning air.
Barrett, with his partner Walsh, stood some distance back from Windsow and watched the two men with fascination. It was, he reflected, like witnessing two lions facing off across a pond on some distant African plain.
“It is no use, Inspector Windsow,” said Sundridge. “You were permitted to come onto the property when there appeared to be some possible reason to search the grounds. The only way you shall cross this gate now is if I invite you, and that I shall never do. In point of fact, sir, the groundskeepers are still cleaning up the muck your people left behind!”
“I shan’t require your permission if I have evidence of your participation in the murder of Dr. Nowak,” replied Windsow. “One scrap of it, sir, is all that I shall need.”
Although Barrett could not see the face of his superior, he knew that the grizzled old Inspector was glaring as only he could. The man’s eyes, Barrett knew, could be as cold and as sharp as an ice spear hanging from a country eave.
“If you insist on wasting your valuable time,” Sundridge said, the mockery in his voice clear, “then I wish you good hunting... sir.”
Barrett was astonished by the man’s cheek. It was bold of Sundridge to challenge an officer of the law, especially one so respected as Windsow was known to be. Still, Sundridge was a man designed by nature to overpower his opponents through implication of force, if not outright power.
> The former barrister was six-feet-two inches tall at least, his head fully-crowned by hair that was still dark despite his threescore years. He had whet his teeth upon court litigation and listening hard to the workings of the guilty and the innocent. Yet, with Pounds Sterling having been the primary measure of his worth at the end of the day, it was the opinion of Windsow - and one shared by Barrett, as it happened - that Sundridge had long ago ceased to see ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’, only ‘successful’ and ‘failed.’
Instead of responding to Sundridge thusly, as Barrett expected him to, Windsow suddenly spun upon his heel. His gray-blue eyes had now clearly warmed from ice to frost, and finally, to their ordinary, milky calm.
Windsow nodded toward Barrett and jerked his hands from his coat pockets. “Barrett! Walsh!” cried he. “Call up the cab!”
Without a further word he walked back to his officers. His gait was loose-kneed and calm, with none of the angry stamping and snorting he had heretofore displayed for Sundridge.
A bluff, to be sure, but one that clearly had had the desired effect upon the retired barrister.
This was proven out by the Sundridge’s final, arrogant words as Barrett and Walsh began to follow Windsow into the dark, curtained interior of the private cab.
“The peasants say that policemen are dirty!” Sundridge called out. “That you are all little more than common workmen who consider themselves better than their fellows!”
Barrett paused, his ever-present irritation at Sundridge’s manner abruptly blossoming into unexpected anger. He paused, most of the way into the cab, and turned to point one gloved finger in the direction of Sundridge.
“A gentleman should watch his tongue,” he said, “or find it bitten off... accidentally or otherwise.”
Sundridge laughed, a sound that was coarse and drenched with contempt. “Pawns you are,” he said, loudly. “Nothing but pawns for your Queen!”
“Come along now, Barrett,” said Windsow, quietly. “He shall get his in time.”
Chapter II
1886 or The Period Before the Beginning of the End
Time continued to pass for Barrett - but perhaps, most unfortunately, not for PC Walsh or for Inspector Felix Windsow.
The Inspector’s Case, known variously to the police as “Windsow’s Obsession” and to the public as “Windsow’s Folly”, remained one of those instances that haunts men’s memories for years to come. The murder of Doctor Timon Nowak remained unsolved, but not for lack of effort by those who had been involved.
Still, the barrister named Sundridge had dared to mock the Brotherhood. More important still, the police were loath to lose against such a bloated, vile specimen of humanity as Sundridge.
So Windsow continued to watch, and the Brotherhood persisted when it could, and more time passed.
The good inspector kept his gaze firmly upon Sundridge - always watching, always hoping. He pushed himself hard, for too long and for too little reward. Until one day he became ill and was forced to retire. Only later was it discovered to be cancer which bedeviled him, and which sometimes left him bound to his bed, writhing in pain.
His case-book was still in his pocket when Inspectors Lestrade and Gregson came to call and found him slumped in his kitchen chair, dead.
It was not long after that when Barrett’s partner, PC Walsh, perished unexpectedly in the line of duty, leaving behind only an angry widow.
Barrett alone remained of those who knew of Sundridge’s crime and believed in his guilt as it pertained to the murder of Dr. Nowak.
But Barrett was now a shadow of his former self. He knew this to be true, because the knowledge of his station was unavoidable. Now loosed of the police force, pensioned out and invalided, Barrett sustained himself by selling eel soup from a small wooden street cart.
Not a day went by when Barrett did not think, even just briefly, of the incomplete legacy represented by his life and by the premature deaths of the inspector and his erstwhile partner.
An incomplete legacy it was, Barrett knew. The perfect summarization of several incomplete careers and one very incomplete resolution to a murder.
Nothing pokes and prods and sometimes pricks at man like unfinished business, however. It was, Barrett thought, worse than a missing tooth.
His one comfort, if it could be called that, was his possession of Inspector Windsow’s case-book.
Bound in cloth and worn by the passage of time, it had been passed on to him by Lestrade, as it was a policeman’s unspoken right when it came to such things.
As he pushed his rickety cart back to the shop-kitchen that he rented for a few shillings a night, Barrett held the old case-book close to his breast, and continued to think of it as he so often did.
Chapter III
1891 or The Present, Without Sherlock Holmes
The sky was as gray and cold and ominous as molten iron, but Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade suspected that the Meteorological Office would have reported the autumn afternoon as being merely “cool and unsettled.”
That there were likely to be such ghastly affairs as thunderstorms and harsh westerly winds in the hours and days to come would perhaps cause them to upgrade their assessment to “cold and breezy”. But somehow, he doubted that it would.
For a moment, the horrible, shifting clouds deigned to part and a brief sliver of sun shone through. It was just enough to remind Lestrade that a bright, clear world existed beyond the realm of the umbrella and the rubber Mackintosh.
It was a place, Lestrade could not help but remind himself, that seemed a world apart from the one in which he presently found himself.
Just as quickly as it appeared, the rift in the clouds vanished - driven no doubt, by the gust of sudden wind that snatched at Lestrade’s umbrella and simultaneously drenched him with standing water from a large, nearby puddle.
“Bloody hell!” Lestrade exclaimed, hopping away from the cobblestone lake like a man whose feet had suddenly burst into flame.
Upon reflection, it seemed to Lestrade to be the perfectly appropriate end to an otherwise pointless day.
It had been months now since Lestrade had been “between jobs” after the Home Office had released him for duties. It had followed the last Trafalgar Square riot, and the reason he had been given at the time was “inefficient leadership”.
That was the political translation of the events that had transpired. However, the truth was quite a bit murkier on the whole.
As it happened, two of the PC’s under Lestrade’s direction had failed to follow his orders concerning hygiene and general behavior with the ladies of East London, and thusly found themselves invalided out of the force.
Dirty, filthy, lazy - the two officers in question had been all of those things - and perhaps, Lestrade had learned later, even worse than he had known.
Still, Lestrade had attempted to set both men upon the straight-and-narrow.
His efforts had been rewarded by his temporary removal from the police force, despite the fact that the Home Office was now publicly and internally hailing all prayers of thanks for the gift from God that had removed those rotten apples from the proverbial barrel.
In the end, the men had not gone quietly. It was, Lestrade had learned, not always quite so easy to remove the rotten apples from the barrel when they have connections with the best apples in the bunch. Sometimes, even the better apples were harmed as part of the pruning away process. Painful as it could be to good men such as Lestrade, appearances must be kept.
Until his reinstatement, he had taken on a few humdrum jobs, and he could rightfully say that the life of a private-pay detective was a less than reliable form of income.
It lacked a retirement pension, for one thing, and the odds of encountering a wealthy and grateful benefactor ready to provide him with a substantial reward that he could put into the bank at
three-percent interest were fairly slim, if not non-existent at best.
No, private investigating wasn’t to his taste. The chaos writ within it had quite rattled his confidence. Lestrade shook his head.
Perhaps Holmes (God pardon the dead) had held some of those same fears, he thought. What would he have said? Something that’d cut to the bone, to be sure.
But that was then, as has been said, and this was now.
The autumn season was now growing to a close, and on the whole, Lestrade recognized that saving face for the Brotherhood could have meant far, far worse than a reduction in wages or an extended and unpaid leave of absence.
In the end it had all worked out. Lestrade was now back on the police force and he was chomping at the bit to return to full service.
As he approached the street and the house where he lodged, however, he found himself one more thinking of Sherlock Holmes - and not for the first time. London was just... bigger and emptier without that one man.
Lestrade could no longer walk past Baker Street without seeing that singular window, cold and dark, as if the lamp that had once resided there had also lit London’s soul. Now, both were extinguished.
There had been disagreements between Holmes and Lestrade, to be sure, and sometimes even with the detective’s faithful friend, Dr. John Watson. But all three men had agreed on one thing: That crimes never solved themselves.
Call him a secular, godless fool, but that was why Lestrade and Dr. Watson had relied so much upon the late Sherlock Holmes: Because he knew, and intimately understood, that it was man who created crime, and it was man’s duty to repair the nefarious activities of his fellows.
Chapter IV
1891 or The Present, With a Case for Lestrade
As he approached his humble lodgings, Lestrade made a deliberate effort to circle around behind the house so as to enter by the back door. His intent was to put up his dripping coat and shoes and spare the front carpets. Upon entering, he was surprised to see his landlady Mrs. Collins there, waiting to greet him with a dry towel.
