The Deadwood Stage

by Mike Hogan

  “Very quiet. A warm evening, with folks about on account of the Jubilee decorations, but no incidents. I cautioned a couple of sergeants of dragoons that was in drink, and I put them in a cab to the barracks. I lent omnibus fare home to an old clergyman in reduced circumstances who’d lost his boot heel. He was fuddled by the traffic and the noise.”

  He shook his head.

  “No, no incidents, despite the crowds. It has been that way from the start of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, sirs. The lads and I put it down to loyal affection for Her Majesty and the wish not to spoil the occasion, like.”

  “Very well,” said Holmes. “Do you know the exact location at which Endaby claims he arrested Miss Caspar?”

  “Follow me, sirs, if you will.”

  PC Dyer led us at a steady constabulary pace back towards Oxford Circus and around the corner into the northern section of Regent Street, a distance of no more than sixty or seventy yards. He pointed across the road.

  “See, sirs, they are at their little games.”

  Two women in bright frocks and bonnets were on the opposite pavement. They offered tiny bouquets of flowers for sale and smiled coquettishly at passing men, even those with ladies on their arms. A woman stood under a gas light flapping her gloves in a highly suggestive fashion.

  “Infamous,” I said, smoothing my moustache.

  A policeman came up beside us.

  “This is Sherlock Holmes,” said Dyer.

  “Good evening, Constable Twyman,” said Holmes.

  Dyer nudged his companion in the ribs. “He’s a caution, ain’t he? He should be on the boards at the Empire. He asking about 42 Endaby and the pro -”

  He looked down at Churchill.

  “It’s all right, officers,” said Holmes. “You may speak freely. He is Spencer, the Ratcliff Highway penny-a-peek midget. He is sixty-eight next Tuesday fortnight.”

  The policemen examined Churchill with interest. He coloured a bright and pleasant pink in the bright gaslight from a nearby chemist’s.

  “PC Dyer says that he saw nothing of the arrest in Oxford Street,” said Holmes. “So it must have taken place here.”

  “No, sir, it did not,” said PC Twyman firmly. “I was stationed right here, on this very spot. I cautioned half a dozen of the women, sir, mostly regulars, but with one or two new faces. That Caspar woman was not arrested on my beat, Mr Holmes. I’ve already sworn to that on oath to the Metropolitan Commissioner of the London Constabulary.”

  “Well,” said Holmes as we alighted from our cab in Baker Street. “It seems Miss Caspar and Endaby dreamt up the whole affair. Are they in league? Is there a dark undercurrent that has eluded our investigations? Each is adamant that the arrest took place in a separate location patrolled by police constables who flatly deny the fact. Do not haggle over the fare, Watson. A penny a minute is fair to cab and passengers, plus sixpence, no seven pence, for Master Spencer-Churchill. He had three portions of Criterion apple pie, and he must weigh half a stone more than when we left.”

  Holmes and Churchill went upstairs to our sitting room. I excused myself to check Mrs Hudson. I found my patient sleeping gently under the watchful eye of Nurse Levine. I sent her home with instructions to report in the morning.

  Upstairs, Holmes and Churchill were engrossed in a game of chess.

  I opened the evening paper. It was full of the Caspar affair. There were drawings of the principals and of the arrest. The tone of the articles was critical of the police conduct of the case and of the police inquiry that had failed to publish its report. The letter columns were active.

  “Listen to this, Holmes. A lady styling herself ‘Indignation’ writes on the ‘Police Outrage in Regent Street’. She says that she is respectably married, and that she habitually wears sober blue or black garb. She states that when she frequents the West End shops, she is often accosted, in the middle of the day, by male pests who speak to her or follow her. The police, she says, do nothing when applied to.”

  “Check,” said Holmes.

  “A self-confessed male pest replies: ‘There are hundreds of girls, who, without being vicious, will enter into conversation’. The blackguard continues, ‘There is nothing that tens, hundreds or thousands of girls more desire than to be addressed by unknown men in the streets.’ Infamous hound; I should take a dog whip to him.”

  “Checkmate,” said Holmes. “I know one invaluable specific that will keep all male pests away from a virtuous woman wherever she may roam.”

  I flicked down a corner of my paper.

  “And what is that, pray tell?”

  “She must wear a Salvation Army bonnet. Spencer-Churchill, do not pout; it is a game. You must learn to lose gracefully if you are to thrive at Harrow School. Pass me down the Bradshaw.”

  “You are going somewhere?” I asked.

  “One of us must go North, Watson, and at the moment you are discommoded by your injury. I am convinced that the answer to everything lies in Stockton, County Durham.”

  “Is that necessary, Holmes?” I asked. “Lestrade was certain that he had proof of Miss Caspar’s insalubrious life in her hometown, or that he soon would have. Why not wait to see his proofs?”

  Holmes flicked through the pages of the railway guide.

  “Because his detectives will ask all the wrong people the right questions, and vice versa. They will be tight as clams by the time I get there, you know Northern folk, but an effort must be made.”

  He gave us a sly smile.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me how I knew who the police constables were?”

  I returned to my newspaper. “You tell him, Churchill.”

  “By their collar numbers,” said Churchill. “Their names and numbers were in the morning paper a week or more ago.”

  The door slammed. I closed my newspaper and found Holmes gone and Churchill grinning at me from the dining table.

  “Chess, Doctor?”

  The Distraught Sweet Lady

  I entered the sitting room the next morning and found the breakfast table laid for one. Bessie entered with a steaming coffee pot and a covered dish on a tray.

  “Mr Holmes?”

  “Gone, sir. Left in a cab to catch an early train. There’s a note for you on the mantel.”

  “Thank you, Bessie.”

  She placed the dish on the table and took the cover off.

  “Bacon and eggs!”

  She poured me a cup of coffee; the aroma was delicious.

  “Bessie, my dear girl, you have surpassed yourself. How did you learn the coffee-making art? I hope that Mrs Hudson had no hand in this. She needs her rest.”

  “No, Doctor. Master Churchill got it out of a book.”

  Churchill came in smiling shyly.

  “Well done, sir,” I cried. “But what about your own breakfast?”

  He sat.

  “I found it a simple plan to eat the first batch while the second fried, sir. It’s what we do in our dormitory at my school in Brighton.”

  “They allow you to cook?”

  “No, Doctor. But it is one of those traditional activities to which a blind eye is turned.”

  “And a blind nose,” I said.

  “The technique of roasting and grinding the coffee beans is explained in that great thick book in the kitchen. It took two goes to get it pat. It smells right, sir, how is the taste?”

  “Superb. What a pity Holmes is not here. Pass me down that note on the mantel.”

  I skimmed through the note and handed it to Churchill.

  “We have some work to do this morning,” I said. “That is, if you are available. You might want to spend some time at with your family at home. Are you sure that your mother suffered no ill-effects from her exposure to the arsenical curtains?”

 
Churchill looked up and smiled.

  “She is very well, Doctor. My parents are busy preparing for the receptions, dinners and balls to celebrate the Queen’s jubilee. And my father is fully occupied denouncing Mr Gladstone and Home Rule for Ireland. I believe that they are satisfied not having me under their feet for a few days.”

  “Good,” I said draining my third cup of excellent coffee. “Get us a cab, my boy. Arrange a hire by the hour: five bob for two hours is the rate in Town. Show the cabman the two addresses in Mr Holmes’s note so there is no confusion. I will look in on my patient and join you outside in five minutes.”

  Our first call was to a small confectionary shop at Margaret Court, not far from Oxford Circus. The name above the shop was that of our first witness, Madame F Audet.

  I led the way inside. I took off my hat, an action that instantly enraged a thickset teenage boy behind the counter. He pulled a heavy leather cosh from under the counter and smacked it into his hand.

  “Out! Or you’ll feel the weight of this life preserver across your skull.”

  Churchill slipped past me into the shop.

  “A quarter of jelly snakes, please.”

  The boy stood, blinking at us.

  “And,” said Churchill, “a penn’orth of sherbet.”

  The boy replaced the club under the counter.

  “Lemon or orange?”

  “Lemon, please.”

  He weighed out the sweets.

  “I’m sorry, gents, it’s just we’ve been plagued with newspaper reporters this last week or more on account of Madame being a witness in a public case. She’s all over nerves. What with you not being from around here, and the gentleman taking off his hat like he was planning to stay the night, my suspicions was aroused. I’ll not let anyone near her, that I won’t. I said the same to the two jacks from Scotland Yard yesterday. You’ll forgive me, I hope. That’ll be tuppence farthing.”

  I passed him a thruppenny bit and took my change.

  “He’s not a reporter or a detective,” said Churchill nodding to the open door behind the counter. “He’s a doctor.”

  “Oh,” said the boy lifting a section of the counter-top. ‘’Go on through. Madame is in the bedroom on the left. She’s in a right state.”

  Churchill gave me a strong push. “I’ll wait for you here, Doctor, sir.”

  I came back into the shop some twenty minutes later. Churchill and the shop boy were in deep conversation at the counter. I gathered that the subject was the Wild West Show at the new Olympia ground.

  “Do you have Turkish delight?” I asked the boy.

  “We do, Doctor.”

  “Put me up a pound, no, two separate pounds, would you?”

  We stepped back into our cab and set off for South Kensington.

  “Jelly snake, Doctor?” Churchill offered.

  “Thank you. You know, I could be struck off the medical register for what I just did. I prescribed an opiate. Her regular practitioner will be livid.”

  “We gave no names, Doctor. They’ll think that you were an enterprising gutter newspaperman posing as a doctor. My father says that there are no depths to which the breed will not stoop.”

  I wondered whether young Churchill was learning fly ways from us, or we from him.

  “And I wasted my time. She is a perfectly unreliable witness, sobbing, crying out to the saints and getting names, dates, and streets hopelessly mixed up. She seems to support Constable Endaby’s location, but I would hesitate, if I were his barrister, to put her before a jury. A competent prosecutor will goad her into hysterics. I say, this jelly snake is delicious.”

  The Oriental Major

  Our second destination was a small but pleasant Georgian townhouse in the shadow of St. Luke’s church, just off the Fulham Road. I mounted the three whitewashed steps and grasped the brass, dolphin-shaped doorknocker; the door opened silently before I had a chance to knock.

  A slim, brown-skinned, black-haired girl dressed in an Oriental robe and flowery headdress held the door open and stood aside to invite us in. I took off my hat (not without some small trepidation) and entered, followed by Churchill. The partitions had been removed and we found ourselves not in a hall, but in a large sitting room that stretched to the back of the house. It was well lit by casement windows at the front and two sets of French windows that gave out on to a garden. A steep curved staircase stood in the far-left corner.

  The room was curiously furnished. A red-and-gold Oriental carpet covered the floor, and upon it were thrown, apparently at random, bright-hued rugs and druggets. A noble tiger skin lay before the fireplace.

  Plump sofas or backless divans, upholstered in gold silk and covered in cushions, faced each other in two groups, one in front of the fireplace, and the other facing the garden view.

  Silver-filigreed oil lamps hung from the ceiling and from wall brackets. The wall on our left was covered with weapons: curved swords and scimitars, jewelled daggers, and long muskets with stocks carved into fantastic shapes.

  The only homely, English feature of the room was a large gold-framed painting above the crackling log fire in the fireplace. It showed a group of naked, white-skinned boys bathing from a skiff in what looked to be the estuary of a wide river.

  The girl showed us to the divans at the fireplace, and wordlessly indicated that we should sit. Churchill patted some cushions into a pile and squatted on his sofa, quite at ease. I found mine too low for comfort. My leg had started to play up again.

  Churchill twisted around at a sound, and I followed his gaze. A short, grey-haired man with a thin moustache descended the staircase. He wore a crimson smoking jacket, baggy yellow pantaloons, a tasselled gold fez, and white silk slippers. He reminded me instantly of the bath attendants at the Turkish hammam in Jermyn Street. I could sense Churchill trying to catch my eye, but I kept my gaze away from him lest I should lose my composure.

  The man padded silently to where we sat, and held out his hand. I struggled off my sofa and shook it.

  “Major Edgar Massingham. You, I presume, are Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

  “I do not have that honour, sir. I am Doctor John Watson, and this is Winston Churchill. We are associates of Mr Holmes, and we are here at his bidding.”

  “I see,” said Major Massingham in a disappointed tone. He waved us back to our seats and sat primly on the divan next to Churchill. “When I read in the afternoon edition of the newspaper that Mr Holmes had condescended to act in the Caspar affair, I expected that he would wire or visit. I am, of course, the only disinterested and reliable witness to the arrest.”

  “You forget Madame Audet,” I said. “I have just come from interviewing her.”

  He laughed an unpleasant, high-pitched laugh.

  “Then you will know that she is a foreigner and devoid of even the tiny amount of common sense one would expect from a female of her type. Ah, tea.”

  The girl appeared again with a large tray on legs. She stood it on the tiger skin rug before Major Massingham.

  “There is Darjeeling,” he said. “But perhaps you would like to try a blend made up for me by a plantation at Kandy, in Ceylon. It goes well with these little rice-cakes that Ahmad makes.”

  The girl passed me a china cup of dark, aromatic tea. She was a beauty, I thought, although very young; she was not yet out of her teens. Her eyes were wide, almond shaped, and outlined in kohl, like the ladies I had glimpsed in Afghanistan during my war service there.

  The girl smiled - her face lit up - and winked.

  “Do you care for sugar, Doctor?” the Major asked. “I have the new lump sugar. It is so convenient.”

  I dropped a tiny lump of sugar into my tea and stirred it furiously. Had the girl winked at me in that astonishingly lewd fashion, or had I imagined it? The room felt warm, and I ran a finger inside my shirt co
llar.

  “That is a fine painting,” I said looking for a neutral topic. I indicated the large canvas of boys bathing.

  “Yes,” said the Major. “I picked it up in Cornwall in the spring. The artist is a gentleman who specialises in maritime and Uranian themes.”

  I stood, partly from the necessity of stretching my legs, and examined the painting more closely.

  “He has caught the wind on the water. And the light on the boys’ skin.”

  Churchill coughed and gave me a look that brought me back to the subject at hand.

  “Major,” I said, sitting down. “I am here at the request of Mr Holmes to ask you to describe what happened on the evening of Miss Caspar’s apprehension. We understand that you witnessed the arrest and that you accompanied Constable Endaby and Miss Caspar back to the police station. On arrival there you made a statement.”

  “That is correct.” Major Massingham astonished me by slipping off his silk shoes and tucking his stockinged feet under him like an Indian fakir. I again avoided Churchill’s eyes or we would have broken into peals of unforgivably impolite mirth.

  “You should know that I was for many, many years in the Indian Service. My billet was in Colombo in Ceylon. As you see, I developed a taste for the Oriental, and I live, as far as one can in this frigid and foggy city, in that style. On the evening in question, I visited Messrs Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly to restock my supply of various small items. I then made my way in a cab to the Crystal Bazaar, where I recently saw some fine peacock feathers that I knew would do well in that Chinese vase in the corner.”

  He pointed to the only corner of the room that was not weighted with Oriental bric-a-brac.

  “It was a short journey, but I do not choose to walk unless I am obliged to; I detest crowds. I alighted farther along than I had intended owing to a distracted and possibly deaf cabman with a wilful horse, and so I was obliged to make my way back along Oxford Street through a mob of pedestrians. I noticed a young lady ahead of me walking at about my pace, slowly and steadily. I noticed her in particular because she wore a straw hat with a silken band of precisely the shade of pale lavender that I am contemplating for the curtains in my study upstairs.”