by Mike Hogan
“Before we go on,” I said. “I must ask you what your relationship is with Robert W Taylor and with Long.”
“I am Maxwell Taylor, and Robert is my son,” he said matter-of-factly. “I brought him up in Natal, where my wife died. We moved to America when he was six. I came here with him a little under a year ago because I wanted him to go to a great English school and learn the ways of a gentleman. You may believe me when I say, Doctor, that Milwaukee is no place to learn fine manners.”
“And Long?”
He shrugged.
“A thieving servant. I care about him only in the particular that he is with Bobby. My concern is to find Bobby. Long may go to the devil.”
His eyes met mine with a determined expression and firm brow. I had only seen the like in those who manage dogs, boys or horses. I stiffened as he picked up his pistol, but he slipped it back into its holster.
“Someone is in that room behind you,” he said softly. “Is it Bobby?”
“Come out, Churchill,” I called.
Churchill appeared at once. He slipped across the room and took his usual seat at the dining table.
I introduced him to Taylor, who nodded a wary greeting and looked back at me.
“I should tell you at once, Mr Taylor, that the police are investigating a murder in connection with the disappearance of your son.”
Taylor leapt from his seat. My hand went instinctively for the butt of my revolver.
“Bobby?” he cried.
“No, sir. It is a Negro.”
“Is Bobby hurt?”
“Not that we know.”
Taylor sat heavily and sighed. “Was it Long? He was a thieving scoundrel, and he persuaded my son to run with him, but I am sorry that he is dead. He was with me in America for more than six years. I brought him to England as a companion for Bobby. Now Bobby is alone. You say in your advertisement that you have news of the boy.”
“News, yes,” I said. “But I do not know where he is.”
Taylor slumped back in the chair.
“I would give every cent I have to get my son back, Doctor. I would give every cent I possess.”
“I believe you, sir,” I said. “Let us acquaint you with what we do know.”
I described our first visit from Wiggins and his engagement of Sherlock Holmes to find Bobby. Taylor had no knowledge of Holmes or the profession of consulting detective.
“I would have employed him myself otherwise,” he said. “I hired a pair of thief-takers here in London on the recommendation of the Pinkerton Agency in America. They pointed me in many, mostly wrong, directions. I got closest when some boys in Lambeth tracked my son and Long to a house there, but the house was empty.”
The doorbell rang downstairs.
Taylor looked quizzically at me.
“One of our agents, perhaps” I said. “He may have news.”
The door opened, and Billy peeked in and looked a question at me. I nodded. Wiggins pushed past him and into the room. He caught sight of our visitor.
“Mutton-chops!” he yelled raising his walking cane.
“Damn you for a fraud.” Taylor jumped up and reached for his pistol.
I pulled out my revolver and covered him.
Taylor looked from Wiggins to me and chuckled.
“In Milwaukee,” he said. “They call this the ‘Mexican standoff’.”
Wiggins Reports
“Let us all regain our composures,” I said softly. “Wiggins, give your hat and cane to Billy and sit you down with Churchill. Mr Taylor and I will put away our weaponry and sit quietly while Wiggins brings us up-to-date.”
I put my pistol back in my waistband as Taylor holstered his.
“Tea, Billy. Or do you prefer coffee, Mr Taylor?”
He smiled. “I can’t tell the difference here in England, at least the way it is prepared at my hotel.”
“I think you will find that we know our business here, sir. Wiggins, report.”
Wiggins explained that I had requested him to visit the scene of the crime and see what he could discover. He said that he had spoken to two of the dockworkers - nine pence to be refunded for three pints of half-and-half and two meat pasties - and had verified the facts. The body had fallen into the water a few yards from the pub and the dockworkers had fished it out less than a minute later. The landlord called the police. They searched the nearest houses on the upstream side of the Grapes. All had river access by steps or stairways, and all had overhanging balconies. They had found nothing.
The landlord of the pub had offered a reward of a guinea for information on the crime; he said that it was a diabolical liberty to dump bodies outside the Grapes and have blood and brains dripping through the bar when, as everyone knew, the proper dumping place for bodies was downstream, in the marshes.
Wiggins had entered the premises next to the pub: a simple lock. It was unoccupied. All the furniture was draped with sheets, and the floors showed signs of having been swept clean recently. He saw no bloodstains and no signs of a quarrel. The two shops next along were also closed and locked. Again, he had made entry and discovered disused storehouses with dusty hurdy-gurdy parts in one and coils of old rope in the other. He could make nothing out despite the abundant dust, as the police had tramped all over the floor in their big boots.
He went back to the pub where the owners of the three properties were huddled at the bar with a group of locals discussing the incident over hot, peppered gins. They were annoyed that they’d been dragged out by the police in the early morning to open their premises for the search. Mrs Plum, owner of the house next door to the pub, had explained to the police that her tenant had moved out a week previously, so there was nobody in the house and the doors were locked. They had still made her open up.
“Could the body have been dumped from a boat?” Taylor asked.
“No, sir,” said Wiggins. “The dockers would have seen a boat. It was a cloudless, moonlit night. They heard a loud splash, as if the body had dropped into the water from a way up.”
“Was there any news of Bobby? Was he with Long?”
Wiggins looked at me.
I shook my head.
“I told my piece,” said Wiggins. “Nothing of Bobby.”
“You should know,” I said to Taylor after a long pause. “That the murdered Negro was not the lad with Bobby. Wiggins says that they looked alike, but it was not he. However, the police found a small photograph of Bobby in the coat pocket of the corpse.”
Taylor looked at me in confusion.
“Not Long? Then who was it?”
“I hoped that you would tell us that,” I answered.
“I have no idea.”
My eyes flicked to Wiggins, then to Churchill. Both wore noncommittal expressions.
“Could I ask you then, Mr Taylor,” I said, “What induced your son to run away?”
“I don’t see what bearing that has on the problem. My son is missing, and I mean to find him. I am his father.”
“The boy’s motive for absconding can hardly be irrelevant to the case. It is the central fact.”
“May I?” Mr Taylor indicated the match box on the table.
“Of course.”
He relit his cigar with a match.
“You must understand, Doctor, that Bobby is a wilful boy. In that, I guess he takes after his father. I had to put him to school by compulsion, and he would frequently play hooky and mix with the street boys in downtown Milwaukee. He was often in mischief. He is not a bad child, you understand, but he bored easy and he did not settle to schoolwork. I believe, and his schoolmasters agree, that his intelligence and resourcefulness are far above his years.
“I used every means at my disposal to bring him to his books and to shield him from the influence of the bad e
lements he had become associated with.”
“He was beaten?” I asked.
Taylor shrugged. “Not often, and never without reason.”
“You decided to come to England.”
“Yes,” said Taylor. “I thought that I could remove him from the temptations of the street in Milwaukee and that a change of environment, different customs, and above all, the intellectual and physical challenges and manly atmosphere of one of the public schools here would direct his talents to a more positive end.”
I nodded. “A sensible procedure, sir.” Nothing, I thought, could be more calculated to bring out the best in a boy than exposure at an early age to the moral and manly atmosphere of a great school. I was surprised to see that Wiggins’s expression was one of open scorn, and that Churchill looked unimpressed.
“Did you visit any schools, sir?” asked Churchill.
“Five. Let me see: Eton, Winchester, Harrow, uh, and two others. They were the ones recommended to me by the American authorities. There were unexpected delays in securing interviews. My American bankers’ references were considered insufficient -”
“The fees are substantial at some schools,” I said. “I believe fees and living expenses for boarders at Eton can reach a hundred and fifty guineas or more. Winchester and Harrow would no doubt be cheaper - oh.”
I avoided Churchill’s eyes.
The door opened and Billy appeared with a tray.
“Here is our coffee.” I busied myself with the cups and plates.
“This is good coffee, Doctor,” said Mr Taylor. “Coming back to the schools, the cost was not a factor. I was in the diamond-mining business at the Cape until I sold out to Cecil Rhodes. I have an ample sufficiency. The problem was not money, but a lack of social connections here in England. Even so, I believe that an accommodation could have been reached but for the behaviour of my son at the interviews. He was disrespectful and insolent. The headmaster at Eton offered to thrash him for me at no charge, then and there.”
He chuckled, and Wiggins and I smiled. Churchill looked distressed.
“But it was no laughing matter. Bobby grew more and more scornful of me. He demanded that we return to America. When I refused, he disappeared. He was abetted by the servant Long. He stole some items of plate and clothing from the house.”
I nodded to Wiggins.
“We met Bobby down Lambeth way, sir,” he said. “He sort of joined up with us. Then he disappeared.”
“He was with Long?”
Wiggins shrugged. “He was with a Negro gent that said he’d been a footman and that his name was Aaron. He had some stuff they pawned to meet their expenses. After they hopped it, you turned up asking questions. So we put the case before Mr Holmes and the Doctor.”
“Well, that was a Christian thing to do, Mr Wiggins. You must let me pay whatever fees are necessary in the case.”
“Just a bob, sir,” said Wiggins. “We can take it out of the fiver you paid us.”
Taylor laughed.
“I put that down to experience.” He turned to me. “I will, if I may, take over as the principal in this case. I will stump up whatever it takes to find Bobby.”
“You are now staying at an hotel?” I asked.
“The Langham, Suite 55. I gave up the lease on the house; it was too painful to retain. My sole aim now is to find Bobby and return to the States with him. We will make a new start and try our luck out West in Nevada or Wyoming.”
“Very well, Mr Taylor. We will contact you when we have more information. I can assure you that we will use all our resources to find the boy.”
The Formidable Mrs Everest
“Well,” I said, as Billy closed the door behind Mr Taylor. “What are our conclusions? Do we believe our Mr Taylor? Or did he kill the young man on the slab at the coroner’s?”
“I don’t think he did, Doctor,” said Wiggins. “He was shocked when he heard that the man was not Aaron. He spoke true when he talked of his love for his son. It was in his eyes, like.”
“He lied, though,” said Churchill. “When Cresswell Minor at my school in Brighton lies, his eyes are right on you, you wouldn’t guess a thing: he is an accomplished fibber. Mr Taylor’s eyes were all over the room when he talked about Bobby’s reason for running away. He looked in the ceiling; he looked at his feet. Mr Taylor lied in an amateur fashion. But I agree with Harry that he’s not the killer.”
“I admit that Mr Taylor made a good impression,” I said. “But we cannot be guided by impressions.”
I was reminded of the handsome young lady in the elegant carriage in Piccadilly. I wondered whether Holmes was indulging in one of his occasional embellishments when he said that he knew her to be guilty of murders by poisoning. Notwithstanding his awareness of her misdeeds, Holmes had doffed his hat, and she had acknowledged him with a smile and a bow in return. Could it be -
“Ahem,” said Churchill. Both boys were looking oddly at me.
“Could it be,” I said, “that Taylor did the foul deed thinking the young man was his servant, Aaron Long? I have to say that Negroes, like Orientals, look alike if you are not used to them. There was no love lost between him and Aaron. He accused the young man of inveigling his son to run off.”
“I don’t think Taylor would mistake a servant if he knew him well,” said Churchill after a long pause. “He said that Aaron had come with him from Milwaukee, and had been in his employ there for six years, then for several months here in London. We have two footmen at Blenheim who are brothers from Balham. They have been with the Duke for just two years, but despite the uniforms and powdered wigs, we can all tell them apart - except for Grandmamma, the Duchess of Marlborough, who calls all servants, ‘You there’.”
Wiggins and I digested that slice of aristocratic life chez Marlborough.
“The dead man looked enough like Aaron to be his brother,” said Wiggins.
“Mr Taylor is old to be the father of a thirteen-year-old,” I said. “Although he perhaps looks older than he is.”
“Why did Bobby disown him?” asked Wiggins.
“Perhaps Taylor was cruel to him,” I said. “He admitted beating the boy, but that is not unusual. He had rough-and-ready manners, but I do not think he is a cruel person. He had ambitions for his son to be a gentleman.”
“My headmaster at Ascot carried himself like a gentleman,” said Churchill stiffly. “And he was a fiend.”
Wiggins and I looked blankly at Churchill.
“We should go to Limehouse,” he said.
“Why?” said Wiggins. “I’ve already -”
The doorbell rang downstairs.
“Perhaps another enquirer about Bobby,” I said.
Churchill sprang to the window.
“Oh lawks,” he cried. He turned back to us looking pale.
“What is it Churchill? Is it Taylor again?”
“No, Doctor,” said Churchill with an appalled look. “It is my nurse.”
A short, red-faced woman in a voluminous black dress and shawl bustled into the sitting room. Churchill introduced her in a quavering voice as Mrs Everest.
“Well, Doctor Watson,” she said, “you can see why I had to come, despite the hour; it’s as plain as a pikestaff. Look at the state of that boy’s shirt. I ask you, sir, I really do, is it not a public disgrace?”
She twisted Churchill’s head towards the gas light.
“Look you here, sir, behind his ears; Lord love us, you could grow potatoes. He missed his bath last Friday. And has he had his daily cold-water douche that Doctor Roose insists upon? No offence to yourself, Doctor, but Doctor Roose is physician to the family, as is well known. The doctor prescribed a cold douche after Winston’s bout of you-know-what last year. Has he had his douche every day, regular like, as he should? If so, I am the Emperor of Japan.”
I tried to assemble a remark that would avoid a particular position on Churchill’s ablutions - although I had to admit he was becoming somewhat rank - while assuring the lady that she bore no resemblance, as far my little knowledge went, to the Mikado.
“Pneumonia,” explained Churchill, blushing pink and looking down at his toes. “I had pneumonia last year. Doctor Roose says that I must bathe in cold water every morning to toughen my system.”
“Ah,” I said, grateful for a topic on which I could offer a safe opinion. “I have a cousin who bathes in seawater every morning, winter or summer, rain or shine. Of course, he lives in Eastbourne, where the weather -”
“I had to bring a new suit of clothes,” Mrs Everest said, overriding me. “That filthy suit could catch a cab home, pay a grateful tip to the cabby, and smoke a long cigar at the fireside in the sitting room without so much as a nod or a wink. What her Ladyship would say if she saw the state of him, I do not know. He’s not been home for five days or more, not even for his colic syrup, or yet for his rice pudding with brown sugar that the cook makes special on Thursdays. I don’t know, I’m sure.”
She took off her black wrap-around bonnet and took me by the arm.
I stiffened and backed to the wall.
“I asked the lady downstairs, Doctor, for the use of a tin bath and enough buckets of hot water to fill it,” she confided quietly. “Very polite I was mind, as is my nature, unless put upon. I have to say, sir, that neither she, nor the slavey, was co-operative. I wonder if you might be good enough to intervene, Doctor? You can see that I had to call, sir. I could not wait another moment. Winston needs a good scrub up, down and sideways. I brought my own carbolic soap and nit powder.”
She unpacked soap and scrubbing brushes from a large basket.
“He’s twisted Her Ladyship around his little finger with his talk of investigating this and detecting that. And she and His Lordship busy with the Jubilee and their official engagements with Her Majesty and the Lords of the Realm.”
She wagged her finger at Churchill.
“He won’t come home, the wilful mite.”
