‘Where indeed, Watson? Lestrade must step up the search. And it is time to get the Baker Street Irregulars on the case.’
Holmes spoke briskly, but I could tell that he was troubled. Arthur had been missing for three days now. He had disappeared into the maw of London. If he had fallen into the hands of the underworld – well, it did not bear thinking of.
‘Can Moriarty not be brought to book for his part in this?’ I asked.
‘If, as I strongly suspect, Rufus Armstrong is out of the way, Moriarty will escape justice – on this occasion. It was the poet Longfellow who wrote, “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small”. Moriarty will get his just deserts. I shall see to that.’
We arrived at the telegraph office and Holmes disappeared inside.
He soon returned.
‘What now?’ I asked.
Holmes took out his pocket watch. ‘We have a few hours before our train departs. I wonder, Watson …’ His voice trailed off and I looked at him in surprise. It was not like Holmes to sound uncertain. ‘There is someone I should like you to meet … of course, she might not be at home, but … yes,’ he decided. He leaned out and gave the driver an address in the Place des Vosges. He flung himself back in his corner and closed his eyes, leaving me to wonder whom this mysterious ‘she’ might be.
Holmes and a woman, a Frenchwoman at that! I remembered his impeccable French and wondered even more. Surely this could not be a romantic attachment, an old flame, perhaps even an ex-mistress? Unthinkable! And yet I was thinking it. What else could account for Holmes’s diffidence?
After a while, we left behind the broad boulevards with their brilliant lights and plunged into a dark maze of little streets lined by workshops. We emerged in the Place des Vosges. In the gathering twilight, mist drifted between the linden trees and the fine old sixteenth-century facades.
We got out of the cab and Holmes rang the bell.
The door was answered by an elderly maid, whose face lit up at the sight of Holmes. The next moment, an elegant woman rushed past her and with an exclamation of ‘mon cher Sherlock!’ threw herself into Holmes’s arms. He returned her embrace, while I stood gaping.
After a few moments, he pulled away and turned to me, laughing. ‘Let me introduce you. Tante Yvette, this is my great friend, Dr Watson. Watson, this is Madame Pujol, my aunt.’
I saw now that her trim figure and modish dress had deceived me as to her age. Even so, she scarcely looked old enough to be his aunt. Later, I discovered that she was his mother’s younger sister. They were the nieces of the French artist, Horace Vernet, whom Holmes had once mentioned as an ancestor.
‘Ah, le grand Watson! Quel plaisir! One has heard so much.’ She held out a slender hand laden with rings.
There was only one thing to be done. I took her hand, bent over it and kissed it. ‘Enchanté, Madame.’
She laughed and spoke in a torrent of French, of which I made out only the world ‘galant’.
‘I thought you two would hit it off,’ Holmes remarked dryly. ‘But stick to English, tante Yvette, if you want Watson to be flattered by your compliments.’
In no time at all, we were seated round a dining table, drinking the kind of soup that is made only by a French cook.
Over the meal, Holmes told his aunt about the case. He spoke to her as an equal, omitting nothing, and explaining his chain of reasoning. She listened intently, her eyes never leaving his face, nodding approval now and then at some step he had taken. You would not at first have thought they were related, but the resemblance was there, not only in the keen intelligence that shone from her clear grey eyes, but also in the curl of her lip at the mention of Greuze.
At one point, the beaming maid took away the soup plates and brought in a dish of lamb cutlets and a bottle of good claret.
When Holmes had finished his story, Madame Pujol sat back and considered. Holmes tucked into his cutlets.
At last, ‘You have missed something, Sherlock,’ she said in her accented English.
Holmes looked up from his plate. ‘What have you spotted?’
‘The nurse took the boat train and arrived at Victoria, did she not? There are many good hotels near Victoria. Why then did she book into the Grand Midland Hotel? It is on the other side of London. No woman travelling alone with a child would choose to prolong so arduous a journey without an excellent reason. Sherlock, I have told you before, you do not take the female point of view sufficiently into account.’
A thought occurred to me. ‘You don’t think the nurse had something to do with Arthur’s disappearance?’
She smiled at me. ‘No, no. Sherlock is right there, I am sure. She gave her life for that child. All the same, “Cherchez la femme.” That is my advice. There is more to be discovered about that nurse and the circumstances of her disappearance.’
‘There is no one on whose intelligence and intuition I put more reliance, not even Mycroft,’ Holmes told me as we drove to la Gare du Nord.
Indeed, his first act on reaching Victoria after another wretched night crossing was to take a cab for the Grand Midland Hotel and question the manager. He learned that on the evening of her disappearance Mrs Shaughnessy had asked for a cab to be brought to the servants’ entrance. Clearly she had desired to leave the hotel unseen.
So began three days of the most intense frustration. Lestrade’s men questioned local cab drivers with no result. Holmes instructed the Baker Street Irregulars to find out if Mrs Shaughnessy had been seen in the streets around St Pancras. They found a chestnut seller who had seen someone fitting her description walking up Judd Street, only a few minutes from the hotel. She had been alone.
‘My theory is this,’ Holmes told Mrs Armstrong. ‘Mrs Shaughnessy feared there would be another attempt to snatch Arthur. She took him to a place where she thought that he would be safe, somewhere close at hand, for I believe she was walking back to the hotel when Moriarty’s men accosted her and tried to find out where the child was.’
Mrs Shaughnessy’s own relatives all lived in Ireland, but she had worked for a family in London for some years. This seemed to open up some possibilities, until Holmes discovered that the family was in America so she could not have lodged Arthur with them. But there the trail went cold.
Mrs Armstrong grew thinner, and the shadows beneath her eyes became more pronounced. She was supported only by the need to care for her little girl. It grieved me to see her and I know that Holmes felt keenly his failure to relieve her anguish.
On the morning of the fourth day, we had a late breakfast. Holmes was turning over his notes on the case, trying to find some chink in the darkness that had gathered around us.
He thrust the papers to one side. ‘It’s no good, Watson. There’s nothing.’
I caught sight of the ribbon that had been wrapped up in oilcloth and concealed in the bosom of the nurse.
‘We never did get to the bottom of that ribbon,’ I remarked, as Mrs Hudson came into the room with a tray of dishes.
‘We probably never shall, since Mrs Armstrong could throw no light on it.’
In his usual meticulous way, Holmes had also consulted a local haberdasher, but had learned nothing of interest. Cheap ribbons exactly like it could be purchased in any number of places.
He examined it. ‘Still, it is curious, the way this end has been cut in a jagged line. Lestrade may be right, some kind of lover’s token—’
Behind me I heard a gasp, followed immediately by a great crash.
I looked round to see kedgeree all over the carpet and Mrs Hudson standing with her hand to her heart.
‘What on earth is the matter?’ I cried.
Holmes was on his feet. There was an eager light in his eyes. ‘You don’t mean to say that you know the meaning of that ribbon, Mrs Hudson?’
She nodded. ‘I believe I do, Mr Holmes.’
We took Mrs Hudson with us and collected Mrs Armstrong from the hotel. Very soon we were drawing up outside a plain Georgian building off Brunswick Sq
uare. We asked to see Mr Brown, the warden, and were shown into an office with walls lined with ledgers.
A man of about fifty with keen eyes and mutton-chop whiskers rose from behind a desk.
‘How can I help you, ladies and gentlemen?’ he enquired.
‘I think you will recognize this,’ Holmes said. He laid the piece of ribbon on the desk.
Brown frowned. ‘Can you tell me how you came by this?’
‘It was concealed on the body of Mrs Shaughnessy.’
‘The body!’ He was visibly shocked.
‘You didn’t know that Mrs Shaughnessy was dead? It was in the newspapers.’
He shook his head. ‘I am a busy man, Mr Holmes, with many souls in my care. I rarely read the newspapers. Is this lady … ?’ He gestured to Mrs Armstrong.
‘Yes, this is his mother.’
Brown turned and took down a large and ancient ledger. He laid it open on the desk. As he turned over the pages, I saw other scraps of ribbon attached with rusty pins. What a tale of heartbreak and loss each one could have told! Near the back was a ribbon of the same design as the one we had brought with us. Brown fitted them together. They were an exact match.
‘The hospital discontinued this system in favour of a written receipt long ago,’ he said, ‘but in this instance it seemed wise to revert to it. Follow me.’
He led us down a long corridor and opened a door into a large room full of wooden tables and benches at which children were seated at a meal of bread and cheese. They were all boys, aged from about five up to around ten, all dressed alike in brown serge. Some of them looked up as we came in, but most were engrossed in their food.
A pleasant homely-looking woman came towards us.
‘Would you get Thomas Paine for us?’ Mr Brown asked. ‘Mrs Shaughnessy thought it best not to use his real name,’ he added.
‘Mama!’ It was a cry to wring the heart. A small boy started up from a table in the middle of the room.
‘Arthur! My Arthur!’ Mrs Armstrong took a few steps forward and her arms opened. Arthur came hurtling towards her and, the next moment, his arms were round her knees and she was pressing him to her.
I am not ashamed to confess that there was a lump in my throat. Holmes was strangely silent, too.
It was left to Mrs Hudson to ask Mr Brown how was it that Mrs Shaughnessy had thought to bring the little boy to the Foundling Hospital.
‘She and my wife were old friends,’ Mr Brown explained, ‘girls together in Ireland. She had reason to fear that Arthur was in imminent danger and we promised to take care of him and to surrender him only to the bearer of the token. We fully expected that she would return in a couple of days.’
‘A brilliant idea,’ Holmes admitted, ‘to hide him among paupers. It is the last place anyone would think of looking for the heir to a fortune. That nurse was a woman of genius.’
Holmes declined his fee, Mrs Armstrong insisted, and they compromised on a substantial donation to the Foundling Hospital and a handsome present for Mrs Hudson.
Holmes told her about it later that day when she brought up the tea tray.
‘That will be ample for a new gown and a bonnet or two, eh, Mrs Hudson?’
‘Indeed, Mr Holmes. Mrs Armstrong has been most generous.’
Holmes was too busy cross-referencing his index to the most infamous criminals in Europe to see the twinkle in her eye.
‘And what will you really be spending your little windfall on?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been going to the penny lectures at Morley College on Thursday evenings, Dr Watson.’
I had heard of this new venture. The lectures were given by some of the most eminent scientists and philosophers of the day and were open to the public. I had sometimes thought of going myself.
Mrs Hudson went on. ‘Now I can afford to do an extension course in German at the University of London so that I can read Mr Marx’s Das Kapital in the original.’
It is one of the very few times that I’ve seen Holmes lost for words.
After Mrs Hudson had left the room, we were both silent for a few moments.
Holmes sighed. ‘My aunt is right. I fail to take the female point of view sufficiently into account. But I ask you, Watson, how can one ever get the measure of them? It is a hopeless task.’
For me, one question still remained. I followed Mrs Hudson down to the kitchen and asked how she had come to think of the Foundling Hospital.
‘Oh, no, Dr Watson, you can’t think that I … ‘ She sighed. ‘Though if I had, I wouldn’t have been the first poor girl newly arrived in London … but no, when I was first in service, I knew a parlour maid … I went with her when she took her baby to the Foundling Hospital. She was one of the lucky ones. She married a good man, who let her go and get her baby back.’
One final note must be added. I fear that Holmes’s conjectures about the fate of Rufus Armstrong were correct. When he left the Grand Midland Hotel that night, it was as if he’d vanished off the face of the earth. He has not been seen from that day to this. Arthur inherited the whole business when he came of age and has proved worthy of his distinguished father.
Author’s note:
The Foundling Hospital was established by philanthropic sea captain, Thomas Coram, in 1739. Residential provision ceased in 1954, but it continues its work for young people as the Thomas Coram Foundation. The Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury tells the story of the Hospital, the first UK children’s charity.
The Case of the Choleric Cotton Broker
Martin Edwards
“My collection of M’s is a fine one”
Sherlock Holmes, The Empty House
The Diogenes and the Tankerville clubs occupy premises a mere seventy yards apart, yet concealed behind their doors are worlds as divergent as Mayfair and Madagascar. The sound of a raised voice in the silent sanctuary of the Diogenes would startle a listener as much as a volley of gunfire. By way of contrast, the bustle and argument indigenous to the Tankerville calls to mind Charing Cross Station at six o’clock on a Friday evening. When, one chilly April afternoon in 1889, a sturdily built visitor to the Tankerville proclaimed in loud and forceful tones his disdain for Colonel Sebastian Moran, nobody paid the slightest attention, except for myself and Professor Moriarty.
“How dare you, sir!” the man thundered. “Place this city out of bounds to me, would you? I never heard of such impertinence!”
The other three men were unaware that their conversation had an interested witness. This was as well. My life would have been in the gravest peril had they known that I was eavesdropping. I had taken up my station, in a tall, high-backed, and thankfully capacious William and Mary armchair, some twenty minutes before Moran ushered his guests into the Reading Room. This is the smallest and least frequented of the public areas in the Tankerville. Members seeking to take advantage of the facilities offered by that institution have more pressing concerns than literature, although the club library caters generously for those with recondite tastes. My chair was separated from the three confederates by an untenanted chess table, and a small desk at which an elderly member who, having discarded his ear trumpet, was poring over an exotic calfskin-bound book, privately published in Marseilles. Occasionally, he emitted peculiar yelps of pleasure at the more extravagant illustrations.
Intelligence had reached me indicating that Moran had summoned a senior associate to an urgent meeting at the Tankerville. The agenda was unknown, but believed to be of the utmost gravity. I deemed it essential that we should learn something of whatever fresh devilry was contemplated by the Professor’s henchman. Of my two most trusted lieutenants, however, one was recovering from his injuries after being set upon by a gang of Moriarty’s thugs in the Old Kent Road, while the other’s face was already familiar to Moran from a previous skirmish in Berlin. With the utmost reluctance, I concluded there was no choice but to take the exceptional step of involving myself directly in the matter.
The organisation that I shall, for the purpose of this
narrative, identify simply as the Office had procured the recruitment of two of its agents to the staff of the Tankerville. One man, T, who served as a porter, had made sure that I was furnished with a forged membership card, while his colleague, J, supplied an occasional glass of brandy in the capacity of waiter. The Reading Room was reputed to be Moran’s favourite haunt, and the location where he liked to issue instructions to his acolytes. What we had failed to anticipate was that the Professor would also attend the meeting. Nothing could more clearly confirm the seriousness of their business, since despite the intimacy of their relations, it was unheard of for Moriarty and the Colonel to be seen in public together.
“How I amuse myself in private is none of your business.” The man’s accent suggested a curious mixture of influences. Having made a small study of the subject, I concluded that he was a native of Liverpool (the south of the city, rather than the north, in my opinion) but one who had travelled far and wide. I even detected a faint twang redolent of old Virginia. “And that, sir, is an end of the matter.”
Prior to my arrival, J had effected subtle adjustments to the positioning of the furniture, so that I was able, by craning my neck, to benefit from a view of much of the room in an ornately framed mirror without myself being observed. In the reflection, I saw Moran take a single pace towards his guest. Advancing years had not diminished the Colonel’s formidable physical presence, and he resembled a ferocious tiger – of the kind he had bagged so many times in India – about to pounce. Any ordinary man would have quailed at the malevolence in those penetrating blue eyes, but his companions were no ordinary men.
Moriarty did no more than allow his eyelids to flicker, yet it was enough to halt the Colonel in his tracks. When he spoke, the Professor’s voice was clear, yet pitched low enough for it to be difficult for me to hear.
“Gentlemen, please. Such a display of rancour is unseemly. You must appreciate, my dear fellow, that the Colonel is simply anxious for your own well-being.”
“You … authorised this command?” The man appeared taken aback. He thrust a hand into the pocket of his jacket, drawing out a small pillbox. With legerdemain of a kind born only of long practice, he extracted two tablets, and swallowed them whole.
The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty Page 27
