by Mike Hogan
“But, Woomany,” Churchill squeaked as he backed to the window. “I’m on a case with Mr Holmes and Doctor Watson.”
“I should inform you, my good woman,” I said, “that I have written to Lady Randolph to inform her that, in my professional opinion, her son is perfectly -”
Mrs Everest rolled up her sleeves. “What state his under linen must be in, I cannot conceive.”
I retreated towards the door; Wiggins followed, grinning.
“We’ll be in the waiting room downstairs, Master Churchill,” I said. “Do join us when you are - when you have been - ah. Billy, bring the remains of the coffee.”
The door of the waiting room opened slowly and the sound of shrill female contention outside in the hall was instantly magnified. Churchill tiptoed into the room and softly closed the door. He wore the blue and white sailor suit that I had seen earlier, and he shone with scrubbed wholesomeness.
“She gave Billy a shilling to bring hot water and soap,” cried Churchill with a slight, engaging lisp. “I shall never thpeak to him again.”
“Mrs Everest is a persuasive personage, Churchill,” I said. “I should go halves with Billy on the tip, if I were you, and forgive him.”
“Why should we go back to Limehouse?” asked Wiggins. “I got all the information as was going.”
Churchill smiled and touched his finger to the side of his nose in an unseemly manner. “I borrowed Mr Holmes’s magnifying glass, Doctor. He said I could.”
“Be careful with it.”
I consulted my watch and made to open the door; I paused and listened. “As time is not pressing, we might wait until the hubbub has died down before we venture forth.”
7. The Grapes, Limehouse
Thoughts on Empire
Our four-wheeler made good time through quiet, darkening backstreets. The cabby avoided the main thoroughfares that still thronged with late-diners and theatregoers. Wiggins fell asleep as soon as we boarded the cab. Churchill sat opposite me with his sailor suit decently covered by a coat borrowed from Billy and his eyes shining with excitement.
“This Cresswell Minor of yours at school, the accomplished liar,” I asked, “Is he any relation to Baron Cresswell, the Old Bailey judge?”
“His grandson,” said Churchill.
“Dear me,” I said.
We made good progress until we turned in to Narrow Street in Limehouse. The roadway was lined with sail warehouses and ships’ tackle manufacturers. Provision agents showed cases of meat and biscuit in their dusty windows. Slop shops had hammocks, pilot coats, shiny black dreadnought jackets, and well-oiled nor’wester hats hanging across the frontage of their dingy open-faced premises. Low lodging houses for sailors and dockworkers filled the courts and alleys on either side of the street.
The cabby grew more nervous as we pushed through groups of raggedly dressed, chattering men coming out of long warehouses that smelt strongly of malt, hemp, tobacco, or tar. Their shift had just ended, and they were in a boisterous mood. Hurdy-gurdy players plinked out the latest music hall tunes and the men, and a surprising number of women considering the hour, sang the ditties with less tunefulness than vigour.
Our cabman refused to wait outside the Grapes. He said that there was a stable up the road in the mews in Shoulder of Mutton Alley and that we could send a boy to fetch him when we were done. I had to agree with this strange procedure, as we would otherwise have had little chance of getting another cab in the district.
The Grapes was a tall, thin, Elizabethan building of three or four floors. The upper stories overhung the lower, giving the house a drooping appearance like the public house in a similar situation by the River that I recalled from one of Charles Dickens’s novels. We pushed through the door and into a long narrow room, no more than fifteen feet across, with a small bar on the left side. Men in working clothes occupied the rough mismatched chairs and tables grouped on both sides of the room. Hand-tinted prints of riverside scenes lined the left wall, and the flotsam and jetsam of maritime life: hooks, blocks, coils of intricately knotted ropes, brass lamps, and braided masters’ caps festooned the other. A long harpoon hung over the bar. There was a steady hum of conversation, interrupted by loud laughter and shouted drink orders. The air was pungent with tobacco and rum fumes.
I followed Wiggins as he slipped between the benches to the back of the room to a more open space, about the size of our parlour in Baker Street, furnished with a half-dozen sets of tables and chairs. All were occupied except for a table by the window that he ignored. He led us up a couple of steps and through a wooden door onto a narrow terrace open to the River. The over-hanging upper story of the pub formed the roof. There was room for one table and three or four chairs. Churchill and I sat as Wiggins disappeared back inside to fetch drinks.
“It’s like the captain’s balcony at the back of a sailing man o’ war,” said Churchill with a wide grin. “We could be on a ship-of-the-line with Nelson.”
I nodded. The analogy was perfect. I looked over the rickety balustrade straight down to the River Thames. A set of wooden steps led down perhaps ten or twelve feet to the water.
I looked to my right, upstream, at the house next door. The structure was taller and wider than the Grapes. It also had a set of steps down to the water and a terrace at our level, but there was a much larger balcony jutting over the River from the upper floor. Above that, twenty feet or more above us, a balustrade ran around the roof of the building. The building was a huge Spanish first-rate towering over our simple English ship-of-the-line.
A rowing boat was tied up at the bottom of the steps.
The door behind me opened, and Wiggins appeared with a tray of pint glasses and a small, wizened old man in a dark suit and cap.
“Half and halves all round, Gents. This is Mr Mould, what was one of them good Samaritans that pulled the young Negro gentleman’s body from the waters of the Thames.” He passed out the beers, sat Mr Mould in his chair and propped himself against the balustrade behind him.
A strong, acrid smell at once pervaded the atmosphere. I frowned and looked about as I tried to find its source.
Wiggins grinned at me from behind the old man. He pointed to his nose and then to Mr Mould.
“He works down the Spice Wharf, don’t you, Mr Mould?”
“I do,” he said grinning and showing a single black tooth. “I’ve been on the Spice these forty-two years. Before that I was in Sugar.”
“Sugar and spice and all things nice, eh?” I quipped.
“You what, sir?”
Wiggins jumped in and led the man through the events of the previous night. He described the cry, the splash and the discovery of the body.
“Right there it was, sir,” said Mr Mould in a quavering voice. “Just where that boat is now.”
He pointed to the rowing boat moored at the next-door house.
“We pulled the poor gent out at the steps below you. All the back of his head was gone, sirs; you could see his intellectuals, plain as porridge. He was a Negro gentleman and brown all over.”
We thanked him, and Wiggins steered him back inside.
“Well,” said Wiggins on his return. “What’s next?”
I looked blankly at Churchill.
“I’d like to speak with the lady who owns the house next door,” he said.
Wiggins turned to me. “Money for the beers, Doctor, and we’ll need a hot gin for madam. She’s a tough old bird, so I’d go easy.”
I gave him a half-crown, and he disappeared inside.
“Never,” I remarked, “was a man more aptly named than Mr Mould.”
I sipped my beer and gazed upstream along the curve of the Thames towards Wapping and the Lower Pool. The view of the river was stupendous. Vessels of all kinds created a forest of masts, and the dense mass of hulls along both shores almost hid t
he large square blocks of warehouses, and the huddled terraces of homes and businesses. On the River, the tall funnels of steamers belched columns of smoke and sparks.
One ship backed towards a wharf on the opposite shore, its paddle wheels whirling and twirling, forwards and backwards creating showers of spray and a smutty mist that spread on the wind across the River towards us.
Against the opposite bank of the River was a squalid huddle of Dutch eel boats whose cargo fed our foreign workforce and supplied the jellied eel stalls on every street corner in the poorer districts of the Metropolis.
Trading vessels of all sizes lay against the wharves on both sides of the River. Slab-sided and unpretentious, they carried tobacco, coffee, spices, and ton upon ton of essential and luxury commodities from our Imperial possessions and trading partners.
Further upstream, fast packet steamers strained at their moorings as they loaded mail, specie and passengers for the Continent.
Haughty steamers from the Peninsula and Oriental line, with their gilt sterns, mahogany deckhouses, and gleaming brass binnacles, showed white lamps on topmasts and red and green riding lamps as they steamed down the fairway bound for Aden, Colombo, Rangoon, or Sydney.
I had never beheld a better visual metaphor for the glory of Empire.
The door opened again and Wiggins led in an elderly woman in a grey bonnet with a dark shawl over her black dress. Churchill and I stood as he sat her opposite me. Wiggins struck a match and lit an oil lamp in a bracket above the door.
“Good evening, Madam,” I said. “I am Doctor Watson and this is Master Spencer-Churchill. I believe you know Master Wiggins.”
She nodded suspiciously. In the light, her face reminded me instantly of Mrs Punch in the street show. I avoided Churchill’s eye.
Wiggins put a glass of hot, spiced gin on the table in front of her. “This is Mrs Plum, sole proprietor of the fine premises next door.”
“I wonder, Madam -” I began.
“We are looking for a riverside property to rent,” said Churchill, overriding me in a high-pitched patrician tone. “Mr Wiggins has suggested that you may have a suitable building.”
Mrs Plum looked up at Wiggins, winked and reached for her drink.
“I might have,” she said, taking a slug of gin.
“You see,” said Churchill. “We are looking for accommodation and for storage facilities close to the River.”
“Storing what?”
“Bibles, Ma’am,” said Churchill smoothly. “The Doctor represents a charity that aims to place a Bible in the hands of every seafarer visiting the Port.”
“My old man were a seafarer,” said Mrs Plum. “He were in the Whaling. When that fell off, we had hard shrift. Then he bleeding well fell off the ship hisself in a storm off California, the one in America. At least, that’s what his captain said. A scheming, shifty-eyed villain as ever you’d see in a day’s walk.”
“Your old man, Mrs P?” asked Wiggins with a grin.
“The captain,” she cried laughing, elbowing Wiggins in the ribs. “The sauce on him! Impudent rascal.”
Wiggins grinned and slipped back into the pub.
“How long do you want the place for, then?” she asked, giving Churchill a narrow-eyed look.
“At least a year.”
“Bit young, aren’t you? Who’s to sign the lease? The doctor is it?”
“No, Madam. That would be my father, Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is the patron of our society.”
I spluttered in my beer and was instantly wracked with heaving spasms. Wiggins came back out with another hot gin. He thumped me heartily on the back.
“The doctor is not used to beer,” Churchill explained. “He generally restricts himself to Champagne of the finest vintages.”
“Oh,” said Mrs Plum looking respectfully in my direction. “I see. You’ll want to view the premises, My Lord?”
“We would like to have a look now,” said Wiggins. “As we are pressed for time, like.”
“We aim to lease a property immediately,” added Churchill. “The Bibles are due at - at - Baker Street on the morrow.”
Mrs Plum gulped the second gin in one long swallow and stood unsteadily.
“Come along, then.” She led us to the adjoining building.
The Furious Rower
Mrs Plum opened a stout padlock with a heavy key. I wondered how Wiggins had managed to enter the house so easily the night before. He guessed my thoughts because he gave me a wink and a nod at a ground-floor window. He mimed opening a clasp knife and fiddling the lock. I gave him a dark look.
Mrs Plum opened the front door and stood aside.
“I’ll wait here. There’s gas laid on. Mind you put it out when you’re done.”
Wiggins and I trooped through the door and along the corridor. Behind me, I heard Churchill addressing Mrs Plum.
“One of the fellows from the Christian Tract Association rented a space along here somewhere last month,” he said. “The gentleman described a similar building.”
“Did he, then?” said Mrs Plum.
“I believe so. I don’t recall his name, but he was a narrow, sharp-featured gent with a stoop and an inward twist to his leg. I am certain he was the fellow who rented from you last month. He spoke highly of the premises.”
I followed Wiggins upstairs and we checked every room. The meagre furniture was cloth covered, and the floors were swept clean as he had reported. I opened a pair of French windows on the first floor and stepped out onto a wide balcony.
Churchill lit the gas lamps and examined the balustrade with Holmes’s magnifying glass.
I looked down at the rowing boat moored below.
“Why is that here?” I asked. “The house is empty.”
I looked up. “Wiggins, did you check the roof yesterday?”
“Roof? What’s on the roof?”
“There must be some access.”
We ran back inside and relit the gas in the top-floor rooms. We opened every door and cupboard. In the front room, what looked like a cupboard door opened to reveal a steep wooden staircase. We rushed up the stairs and out onto a wide, empty roof space with high walls on the street front and sides. I looked over the curving balustrade on the River side.
A thick rope tied to a pillar hung down to the water. Its end trailed with the tide. The rowing boat was gone.
“There, Doctor!” Wiggins pointed downstream. A boat was just visible in the pale moonlight. A single man rowed furiously. He wore a dark coat and had a top hat pulled over his face. It could have been Maxwell Taylor. I took out my revolver and sighted on the boat.
I shook my head and lowered my gun.
“Doctor, he’s getting away!”
“I will not shoot at a man because he is rowing on the River Thames, Wiggins.”
He pointed to a deep scratch in the wood of the balustrade and some stains, black in the moonlight. Churchill held up a lantern and examined the stains through his glass. They were rusty red.
Wiggins looked expectantly at me.
I shook my head.
“I cannot, sir, be judge and jury. And now he is much too far away for a fair shot.”
We dropped off Wiggins, in a foul mood, at a ‘bus stop near Waterloo Bridge, and we continued west towards home.
“You were right not to fire,” said Churchill.
“I know, but I may have let the murderer of that poor fellow escape.”
Churchill was silent for a while.
“But we have a great deal more information for Mr Purchase.”
“Well, I’m not sure that I can give a useful description. He wore a top hat, and I caught the white of his shirt. He was probably in evening clothes covered by an opera cloak. Not much use.”
“Oh,” said Churchill. “We can do better than that. The man is over six feet, in his sixties, swarthy-complexioned, and with a full salt-and-pepper moustache and grey hair, balding at the top. He is left-handed and he favours his right arm as if he has hurt it. He habitually wears evening dress. A surprising number of gentlemen in evening dress frequent the area, especially the Chinese opium dens and the houses of ill repute, so that is not singular. He carries a leaded cane.”
“Churchill, how on Earth -”
“I described Inspector Lestrade to Mrs Plum as the man who leased her property for a month and supposedly left last week. She vehemently denied my description and gave hers. We traded detail for detail. Her lessee may be our man. He did not offer references, but he left a substantial deposit; he said that he had just arrived from America. He could easily have copied the key.”
I was dumbfounded. I admit that I was also a little disconcerted. I had a great deal more experience in methods of detection than the aristocratic young whippersnapper seated so complacently in the cab opposite me. “How do we know that this lessee is connected to the case?”
Churchill leant back and steepled his fingers in an annoyingly Holmesian gesture.
“He signed the lease in the name of Richard Wilmer. And he spoke with a pronounced accent that Mrs Plum describes as ‘Dutch or German’.”
“Wilmer.” I said. “Well, Mr Taylor and Mr Wilmer have too many similarities to be unconnected. Could he have been Taylor in disguise?”
Churchill nodded. “Perhaps.”
I pursed my lips. “How did you know that the murder took place in Mrs Plum’s house?”
“I didn’t. But if there was no boat, the body must have fallen from one of the riverside buildings. The violent blow to the head surely poured with blood. We had to make a more thorough search for stains. Mrs Plum’s building, right next to the pub, was the most likely location for the murder. When you have eliminated the impossible, what is left, however unlikely -”
The cab wheels screeched against the kerb as we stopped outside 221B; Churchill made to get out.
