The Detective, The Woman and The Silent Hive: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes

by Amy Thomas

  “I want you to tell me with whom you are working and why. Then, I want you to bring me face to face with the ringleader of the gang without him having any warning. That will require you to act as if nothing untoward has happened. You will contact him in your usual way.”

  “If I do this,” he asked, “you will not tell Lestrade right away?”

  “For the moment, it will serve my purpose for you to continue in your present occupation,” said Holmes. “I am curious, however, how you convinced him to let you out on your own for enough time to follow me.”

  “He’s not the cleverest man,” said Keating sullenly, “but he treated me well enough. He thought I had a bright future and encouraged me to take more responsibility.”

  “I suspected as much,” said Holmes. “And now, make your choice. Either help us and secure for yourself what help you can, or take your chances in court alone. You have no way out of this.” My friend could be excessively intimidating when he chose, and he used his entire force of will to push the young man’s mind as far as he could.

  We stood silent for a few moments that seemed, as everyone always says, to be much longer than they really were. Keating stood with his back to the desk, and we all faced him, a tribunal that was ready to convict. He looked at each of us in turn, and I thought he intended to gauge whether one of us was more sympathetic than the others, but he found no mercy in our eyes. He had forfeited it the moment Anna Mason had left the earth.

  “Very well,” he finally said. “I am in the employ of a man named Roy Calhoun.”

  ***

  “The most important matter for the moment is, where is Billy being held?” Holmes spoke eagerly, and I would not have wanted to cross him at that moment, so intent was he on the scent of the chase. Now that he had cornered Keating, I could tell that he had the end in sight.

  “I don’t know,” the policeman answered.

  “Don’t toy with me,” said Holmes, very sharply. “You have nothing to bargain with.”

  “I truly don’t,” reiterated Keating miserably. “I’ve never even met Calhoun directly.”

  “How do you get messages to him?” My friend, I could see, was losing what little patience he had left.

  “Through Lady Helen Dabney,” he said.

  “I know about her,” said Holmes. “Was she part of the scheme?”

  “She only took messages,” he answered. “She didn’t like it, but she was set on Calhoun.”

  “When is your next meeting?”

  “Tonight,” Keating answered, “at Lady Colesworth’s party.”

  “I wish to speak to her sooner.”

  “There is no way. She spends her days with the American. I don’t know where they go.”

  “How did you secure an invitation for this evening?”

  “My mother is the earl’s distant cousin. We’ve never been close, but Helen used the connection to convince her mother to invite me.”

  “Will Calhoun be there?”

  “No, he is unknown to Helen’s parents. She meets with him under the pretext of calling on a friend. Her maid is very amenable and can be paid off to keep quiet.”

  “I see,” said Holmes. “It will not serve my purposes for you to go alone this evening. Miss Adler, Dr Watson, and I will also attend.”

  “How, Holmes?” asked the doctor.

  “Irene will secure the invitations,” he said. “She was once a great friend of Lady Colesworth, Helen’s stepmother.”

  Having gathered these facts, Watson, I smoked several pipes over them, trying to separate those which were crucial from others which were merely incidental.

  - The Crooked Man

  Chapter 14: Holmes

  The Woman stared at Holmes as if he’d sprouted a second head. “Me?’

  “Yes,” said Holmes. “Do you remember a Miss Filcher?” Irene stared at him in incredulity.

  “She was a barmaid.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes, “and apparently a very charming one. It was a great scandal when the earl married her, though the intervention of years has somewhat dulled the acuteness of it. Their union occurred just after your marriage. Helen is the earl’s daughter by his previous marriage. I am unsure of her exact age, but something under twenty. The tale of how she came to be mixed up in this is an interesting one, I’m sure.”

  “You will write to the former Miss Filcher and play on the heartstrings of friendship or whatever nonsense you choose and ask for an invitation to tonight’s party for yourself and three gentlemen. I am not unknown to the earl, and as irregular a breach of etiquette as this may be, I do not believe you will be refused.”

  “Yes,” echoed Watson. “A great many people would like to get a look at Holmes. He refuses party invitations as if it were sport.”

  “Very well,” said Irene. “I might disagree, but I remember Jane Filcher as an extremely generous soul. I am willing to make the attempt.”

  “Very good,” said Holmes. “Now I will go to Lestrade and explain that I require Sergeant Keating’s services for the day.” With that, he got up and proceeded to the inspector’s tiny corner office, where he found the small man rooting around in the pile of papers that covered his worn desk.

  “Good morning, Inspector,” he said.

  “It would be,” said Lestrade, “if you had anything to tell me about either of the murders.”

  “I hope to, very soon,” said Holmes, looking pointedly at the sergeant, who had enough sense to stay silent. “I would be very grateful,” the detective continued, “if you would allow me to have Sergeant Keating at my disposal today. His expertise would be very much appreciated.”

  “Whatever you wish,” said Lestrade shortly. “I don’t know what Keating can possibly do for you, but I have no better use for him at the moment. I’ll let you have the whole force at your disposal if you can solve these cases. I can get no rest from my superiors and the press hounding me.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Holmes. “I will have the solution very soon.” Without another word, the detective led his small brood out of the Yard, paying no mind to the tongues wagging around them. His first objective was to get rid of the miserable Keating, for whom he did not wish to be responsible until evening.

  “Miss Adler, you and Watson may return to the flat,” he said, “and I will take the sergeant somewhere that will keep him from bothering us further until he’s needed again. Watson, may I trouble you for your revolver?” The doctor eagerly complied, then gave his arm to The Woman, who left with him to take a cab back to Baker Street.

  Meanwhile, the detective was left with Keating, who seemed to be alternating between abject defeat and a desire to attempt escape. Holmes did not fail to appreciate the irony of the fact that the hunter was now the hunted; after following the detective for several days, the sergeant was now trapped, and since he had no chance to alert his compatriots, there was no one to attempt a rescue. For the first time in some days, Holmes felt confident that he was gaining the upper hand. He had never doubted that he could eventually prevail, but he began to think that he might do so without more loss of life.

  “Come along, Sergeant,” he said. “I am going to take you to a place where you will be well looked after until I collect you again, but on the way, I’d like to hear about Roy Calhoun’s manner of convincing you to join his outrageous cause. In all of this, I’m at a loss to understand what he offered you that was more attractive than an advancing career at Scotland Yard.”

  Before Keating could answer, Holmes herded him into a hansom cab with the aid of Watson’s gun, held surreptitiously so that only the miscreant could see it. He looked daggers at the detective but climbed inside.

  He was silent for several moments, but finally deigned to speak. “Calhoun promised me half of his estate in America.”

  “Greed is a cruel mistress,” s
aid Holmes.

  ***

  Several minutes later, the cab reached a prim building with half-shuttered glass windows. The detective forced his prisoner inside and down a hallway to a small, nondescript chamber that contained a sofa and a chair.

  Holmes rang the bell, and in a moment they were joined by an excessively small and very old man in a black suit of ancient design. “What may I do for you gentlemen?” he asked in an extremely quiet, reedy voice that had become so by modulation and practice rather than nature.

  “If you will be so good as to fetch my brother, Mr Mycroft Holmes,” said the detective.

  “Very good, Mr Holmes,” said the tiny servant, taking himself away with impressive dignity.

  “We will be joined by my brother in a moment,” said Holmes. “I’m afraid I shall have to leave you to his company, but I will see you again this evening. If you try to run, I will withdraw my promise to testify on your behalf, and you certainly will not make it far. This club may seem an innocuous place, but it is far from being so.” He spoke briskly, but the young man refused to look at him and instead kept his eyes fixed on his boots.

  Another five minutes brought Mycroft, whose eyes quickly darted from detective to policeman and back. “I see you’ve found the informer,” he said.

  “Yes,” answered the younger Holmes, rising. “I trust you will look after him. I don’t wish for him to be arrested until after this evening.”

  “Indeed,” said Mycroft. “We are well able to do so here.”

  “I assume you won’t want something so unrefined as Watson’s gun,” said the detective, rising to his feet.

  “Certainly not,” said Mycroft. With that, the brothers parted, and Holmes walked out of the sumptuous haven of the Diogenes Club, thinking that someday, if he became too tired of the irritating ways of the world, he might become a member.

  ***

  When the detective returned to Baker Street, his entrance was blocked by a deliveryman who tapped insistently at the door. “Oh, Mr Holmes,” he said, “I have a wire for you.”

  “Very good, Tyler,” said the detective, paying him off and coming into the flat, eagerly perusing the message.

  “It’s a wire from Sheriff Morris,” he said loudly, opening the inner door. “Excellent man! He was able to discover that James Calhoun’s death was never reported and that he was suspected to be living in Mississippi under a false name. Roy Calhoun is the man’s nephew, and he travelled to England with two friends several months ago. Such is the limit of what his message conveys,” he said, “but it is vastly helpful.”

  “I begin to understand the shape of the thing,” he said. “I had supposed Roy might be a son, but a nephew may easily be like a son, especially in the southern United States, where family ties are very strong. The absence of the elder Calhoun from the current expedition suggests ill health or perhaps even that the man is deceased. It is a simple matter of revenge, then, though the younger Calhoun is clever enough to have partially succeeded at it.”

  “Revenge against what?” Watson asked. “If James Calhoun neither died nor was captured as a result of your encounter with Openshaw, what injury would his family have to resent?”

  “Exile, I should think,” said Holmes. “If the captain was forced to relocate to another state, his family must have either relocated with him, enduring the uprooting of all they held dear, or endured his absence from their lives, with the additional possibility that the aura of scandal has followed them about ever since. If he is now a young man, Roy would have been at an impressionable age back then - young enough to idolise his uncle, but too young to have the proper judgement to temper his feelings.”

  “This waiting is more than I can bear. I wish it were tonight!” said The Woman. Holmes looked up from his examination of the telegram, which he had been re-reading to ascertain that he had not missed any hidden meaning in its contents. Irene had risen and was standing at the window. The light of the sunny day streamed in across her chestnut hair, and her eyes, which were always bright, sparkled with anticipation. She looked to him as Debussy sounded - all colour and light and movement; logical, but never contained; and beautiful, but never safe.

  “It will be time soon enough,” he said, “and I very much hope that you will have no trouble convincing the girl to assist us.”

  “You play your parts, and I will play mine,” she retorted. “Mrs Hudson secured an errand girl for me, and I have sent her to Lady Colesworth with a note and instructions to await her answer. Wiggins wanted to take the note himself,” she continued, “but I did not think that you would consider it safe for him to go alone.” The detective had not asked about Wiggins, for he could hear the boy’s laughter coming from the kitchen. It mingled freely with Mrs Hudson’s, and he supposed the lad had not found his imprisonment in the flat as unpleasant as he’d expected. Truthfully, the detective disliked the wait as much as The Woman did, though he spent it sitting silent in his chair instead of pacing about the room as she was wont to do.

  Irene’s message was returned within the hour by the errand girl, a rosy-cheeked child of ten, who stood at the door and handed it in with a flourish, her golden curls bobbing. “Here you are, Miss, and you needn’t give me anything, for they paid me over at the other house, and Mr Holmes says we must never take payment for the same thing twice.”

  “That is very honest,” The Woman replied, her tone serious. “Are you one of Mr Holmes’s Irregulars?”

  “I don’t know any name like that,” the child answered, “but I do some looking about.” She pushed her front half through the door and waved at Holmes and Watson. The detective nodded politely, but his flatmate waved his hand to her.

  “Well,” said Irene, “if I cannot pay you for taking the note, then I will pay you for the time you had to wait.”

  The girl looked contemplative for a moment, as if weighing whether or not her moral code would accept such a compromise. “All right, Miss, if you say so.” She pocketed the coin she was given and ran away, her skirts flying helter skelter around her.

  “What does Lady Colesworth say?” asked the detective, once Irene had taken her seat with him and the doctor.

  “She will be glad for us to come and is honoured to welcome the great detective to her house. I’m happy to say she still has the spelling of an East London barmaid, for all her finery.”

  “Excellent,” said Holmes.

  “Yes,” said The Woman, “but I am in sore need of something to wear.” Holmes stared at her a moment, for the idea had not occurred to him.

  ***

  There is nothing quite like the look on the face of a French dressmaker upon seeing a beloved customer after an absence of several years. Holmes followed The Woman into a tiny establishment that was on a quiet street in the most fashionable part of the city, and he was immediately greeted by the beaming face of a trim, elegantly-dressed man with a luxurious moustache.

  “Miss Adler, you are unchanged!” the man beamed. “And Mr Holmes, you come with a lady this time. I would much rather dress her figure than yours,” he added slyly, but the detective did not deign to reply.

  Francois’s assessment of The Woman was flattering, but it was also true. Her unhurried Sussex life had enabled her to retain her face and figure; she was still the petite, fair-faced singer Holmes had met many years before, with few alterations other than a look of greater contentment.

  “I need a dress,” she said quickly, her eyes lingering on bolts of cloth, imported from the far corners of the world. “I have a party to attend, and I need to be noticed.”

  “Pardon me, but Madam has never had any difficulty attracting the attention,” said the man, rubbing his sharp nose gleefully.

  “Perhaps not,” she admitted, “but I need to be sure this time.”

  “You have come to the right place,” he answered, bowing slightly. “How soon
would you like this cloth confection?”

  “Tonight,” she said quickly.

  The dressmaker was aghast for a single moment, but he quickly brightened. “This is why Madam has come to me,” he said. “You know that I will not disappoint you. Come again late this afternoon, and I will have what you seek.”

  “Very well,” said Irene, smiling. “I had absolute faith in you.”

  “It would be better for you to come to us,” said the detective. He took out his notebook and wrote the address of the flat on a piece of paper, which he handed to the Frenchman. He said nothing of financial compensation, knowing the man would find it indelicate.

  “Very well,” Francois answered. “You English will have your discretion.” The Frenchman smiled knowingly, though Holmes thought he could not possibly be imagining anything close to the truth of the situation. However, the dressmaker was apparently used enough to the detective’s strange ways by this time that he did not protest the arrangement.

  “Good day,” said Irene. “I will look for you this afternoon.”

  “The arresting nature of your ensemble is assured, then,” Holmes commented, following Irene out of the shop.

  “Yes,” she answered, “I trust by Francois’s manner of greeting that you are acquainted with him.”

  “Certainly,” said the detective. “I’ve engaged him on occasion, when women’s dress was required.”

  “Perhaps you should play my role at the earl’s party,” Irene teased.

  “I would, if nature had given me your face,” he retorted, which was very true.

  She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men.

  - A Scandal in Bohemia

  Chapter 15: Irene

  With his usual reliability, Francois arrived before five o’clock, with several boxes and bags in his arms. Mrs Hudson admitted him excitedly, and, I confess, I was no less excited. We ushered the dressmaker into the landlady’s flat, and he began to remove the contents of his packages. The largest contained the gown, which took shape before my delighted eyes and was far grander than I had expected on such short notice.