by Mrs Hudson
The Tell-tale Stain
†
To say the room fell silent would be a considerable understatement. For a full five seconds there seemed to reign not a silence but an absence of sound like a vacuum that drew from everyone all power of speech. Then abruptly the vacuum broke and sound came rushing back.
‘I say!’ exclaimed Watson, knocking over his drink with a strangled flourish.
‘Extraordinary!’ rasped Holmes, rising from his chair abruptly and sending over a small incidental table.
‘Blimey!’ I squeaked, back in the linen room, dropping the candlestick and bringing down a pile of assorted silverware with a reverberating crash.
And Mrs Hudson, putting the finishing touches to the small candelabra, murmured, ‘Well, well!’ very softly with the air of a scientist whose experiment has produced a result both satisfactory and slightly unexpected.
The uproar allowed Mr Moran to sink back in his chair while Dr Watson refilled his glass with brandy and shrub and retrieved the table. Mr Holmes remained standing, tapping his pipe hard against the mantelpiece as if in agitation. Outside, Mrs Hudson was helping me to retrieve the scattered silver.
Dr Watson, aided by a healthy swig, was the first regain a degree of coherence.
‘Really, sir! I don’t know what you’re about, trying to scare us out of our wits! I’ve never heard such ridiculous nonsense!’
‘Dr Watson, my intention is the opposite. Confronted at every turn with facts that seem to permit no natural explanation, I turn to you in the hope that you may find reason and logic where increasingly I can only detect a supernatural hand.’
‘Let us, as you say, concentrate on the facts of the case,’ rejoined Mr Holmes, frowning at his pipe. I was aware of Mrs Hudson tutting very softly by my side.
‘Was there a surgeon resident in Port Mary who could examine the body?’
‘Alas not, Mr Holmes. I was forced to conduct the examination myself and it was clear, although I’m not a medical man, that the poor fellow had been blinded in the most horrible manner. But by what means, I cannot guess.’
‘This man Cartwright, was he well known to you? Is it safe to believe his tale?’
‘I knew him slightly, more by repute than otherwise. But he had been a familiar figure in those parts for some years. He was liked by the other Europeans in those islands and seemed a regular fellow.’
‘And where is he now?’
‘I couldn’t tell you, Mr Holmes. It was the nature of his work to spend most of his life in the jungle. He could be anywhere in the Orient.’
‘And was he quite clear there were no tracks other than his own leading to the body?’
‘Perfectly clear. I’d heard of Cartwright off and on for a few years at that point and knew him to be a tough type. Yet I swear he was badly spooked by what he’d found. I never saw him look so rattled. I questioned him carefully about tracks near the body but he is adamant there were none.’
‘What about disease? Might there have been some natural cause of this sudden affliction?’
‘I have since consulted experts in the field and they can suggest no such cause.’
‘Very well. That is helpful for now. What happened next?’
‘My colleagues took it hard. Where before we had felt isolated now we felt afraid. But it was an insidious, nagging fear, a terror of the unknown, made worse when a persistent, clammy mist descended upon us from the jungle. With it came the nightmares. The night after Postgate’s death I awoke with the sense of a terrible weight pressing upon my chest, and when I opened my eyes I swear for an instant I saw a pair of yellow eyes – animal eyes – staring back at me. This dream was repeated many times in the nights that followed. And then the killings began.
‘The first was a native hunter, one who sometimes traded with us and so had been made an outcast by his tribe. The circumstances of his death were identical to those of Postgate’s, his wounds the same in every respect. And we had plenty of opportunities to make comparisons, for the very next day another hunter who had traded with us was found dead with the same appalling scars. The fourth victim was a white man, an eccentric settler who had gone native years before and lived alone in the jungle. He would occasionally appear in Port Mary with the skins of creatures he had trapped which he exchanged for as much gin as he could carry. Judging by the state of him, he had been dead at least two weeks when he was found.
‘By now my colleagues and I were seriously unnerved. No-one would trade with us after that, and our business ground quickly to a halt. The next victim was an old man who lived alone in a ramshackle hut near Port Mary. He was an outcast from the tribe, surviving on scraps and hand-outs. Postgate sometimes gave him liquor. On the night he died, there was no part of Port Mary where you did not hear his screams.’
Outside, the cold was beginning to press against the shuttered windows. Inside, in the warm half-light, Mrs Hudson paused in her polishing and placed a hand quietly on my shoulder, where it stayed when Mr Moran continued his tale.
‘The final straw came one evening, just before sunset, when the high priest called a gathering of the elders to ratify the curse he had pronounced. They gathered in the small area of open ground in front of our offices. By now we were living as if besieged and my companions were nearing nervous collapse. I believe the situation could still have been saved by a show of courage and determination, but that night, in front of us all, illuminated by the blaze of the setting sun, the priest performed the calling down of the spirits’ curse. It is a ceremony that the European might mock, but I was there, Mr Holmes, and as I listened to its low chant grow louder under our windows I could feel within it the gravity and weight of a death sentence. At its climax, a dagger is soaked in the blood of animals and the spirits are called down to inhabit that knife. The knife is then delivered to the person or persons accursed, and from that point forward the spirit enoki will not rest until he has claimed that man’s soul as his own. That night, still reeking with warm blood, the knife was delivered to our door.’
Mr Holmes continued to stand rigid against the mantelpiece, his thin angular body catching shadows from the fire. Dr Watson fidgeted uncomfortably as if he, like me, had suddenly remembered the silver dagger of the previous evening, now glinting red in the firelight on a table next to his brandy glass. Mrs Hudson’s hand on my shoulder gave an extra squeeze.
‘It was too much for my companions,’ Moran continued. ‘The following morning they planned their departure. I tried desperately to change their minds. What remained of our investment would be irrevocably lost if we quit the island and I begged them not to invite ruin in this way. But their nerve had gone and their fear was too great. I confess we quarrelled, Mr Holmes. In fact my efforts to dissuade them took such a toll on my health that when the day set for our departure arrived I was too ill to travel, laid low by a crippling fever. Fearing for their own lives if they lingered, my companions left me in the hands of Penge, my loyal attendant, and set sail for London. So virulent was my fever, it seemed unlikely I would survive it, but survive I did, and as soon as I regained some semblance of consciousness, Penge made arrangements for me to be moved to a small sailing boat. Before I was properly aware of my surroundings we had been smuggled out of that fateful island and were bound for Singapore.
‘As I recuperated, I realised that events in Sumatra had left me a ruined man. The small amount of stock the Company held outside the island was just sufficient to cover our debts, but none of our initial capital remained. Relations with my father had been too deeply affected by my perceived defiance for me to hope for help from that quarter. I resolved to return to London where Neale and Carruthers, my erstwhile partners, had retreated to attempt the salvage of their fortunes. However, on the very eve of my departure, I was disturbed by a visit from a Chinaman newly arrived in Singapore. He was a so-called medicine man who travelled the islands gathering herbs to sell to his countrymen. He had been in Port Mary when I was there and knew of the shaman’s curse. He in
formed me that we were not forgotten by the priest and his acolytes. Indeed, guessing our destination, a second dagger had been cursed and was to be put aboard the Matilda Briggs, the regular London packet ship that served the islands. An acolyte of the priest’s was charged with delivering the dagger. And once delivered, nothing could stop the spirits achieving their purpose.’
The speaker’s eyes sought out those of the great detective.
‘Mr Holmes, when I wrote to you last night, I sent you a knife. Last Tuesday I passed the night in a boarding house on the docks. When I awoke the following morning, that same knife lay by my bedside. Two days earlier, five days after my own arrival, the Matilda Briggs had docked at Gravesend.’
There followed over the course of the evening a great number of questions from both Mr Holmes and Dr Watson. They rapidly established that the second dagger was, as far as Moran could say, identical to the first, that no-one in the boarding house, least of all Moran or the watchful Penge, had been able to account for its mysterious delivery. That very day Moran had consulted with his former partners and the three had resolved to seek the assistance of Sherlock Holmes. His companions, Carruthers and Neale, had taken the precaution of changing their lodgings but were both happy to wait on Mr Holmes at any time should he feel it necessary. Dr Watson took a note of their addresses.
To my great surprise, Mrs Hudson showed very little interest in any of these questions, choosing instead to return to the kitchen to prepare the breakfast things for the next day while sending me about my round of bedtime tasks. It was late in the evening when I heard Mr Holmes bring the interview to a close with a promise to make enquiries on Mr Moran’s behalf.
‘I need hardly say that the solution of a mystery with its roots so many miles away is not to be attempted with any guarantee of success. But what steps Dr Watson and I can take shall most certainly be taken.’
I heard Mr Moran reply that he would be collecting messages from the offices of the Rangoon & Occident Shipping Line should Mr Holmes wish to communicate with him, and then the bell was rung and I was summoned to show Mr Moran to the door. It was not until he had reached the street that something surprising occurred. Mrs Hudson, moving down the corridor with surprising alacrity, called Mr Moran back.
‘Begging your pardon, sir, Mr Holmes has asked me to put to you a question he forgot to ask earlier. He wishes to know . . .’ and here Mrs Hudson paused, apparently out of breath but just possibly so she could position herself better to see his face in the lamplight. ‘He wishes to know if you shall continue to keep your rooms in New Buildings for many more days?’
The effect of the question on Mr Moran was extraordinary. He began to reply, hesitated, began once more and again came to a halt. Even in the pale light from the street I could see a flush rise to his cheeks. Finally he mastered himself.
‘I can see Mr Holmes is an even more remarkable man than I had been led to believe. Yes, you may tell him that I shall remain in New Buildings until further notice if he should wish to contact me there. He is clearly already aware of the address.’
And with that he turned on his heel and made his way into the night, the ring of his boots on the cobbles marking his progress long after the night had enveloped him.
Mrs Hudson chuckled to herself.
‘Come on, Flottie. It’s bed for you and me.’
And I went quietly, deciding to keep my questions for another day. But my hearing is sharp and I could have sworn on the Bible that the bell had not been rung a second time; that Mrs Hudson had not been called to the study; that in following us to the door she had most certainly come directly from her own kitchen.
*
The rain that had set in during the night continued off and on for a further three days. Even the broadest streets turned slowly to mud and, by the Thursday, pedestrians, horses, carriages, even the pigeons, had begun to take on in their lower parts the same drab grey covering that is the true colour and texture of London. Or as Dr Watson put it, after three days of rain you might begin to believe that the mud and filth of every inhabited part of the Empire had emptied itself into our crowded streets.
The morning after Mr Moran’s visit was another of great activity. Mr Holmes had been called to an incident in Paddington and Dr Watson accompanied him, so for a few hours at least the contemplation of Mr Moran’s plight was laid aside. Mrs Hudson, however, was displaying the energy of a desert dervish, commissioning errands, summoning representatives of tradesmen from all over London, dispatching messages and turning the rooms in Baker Street into an oasis of warm welcome amid those splattered streets. At one point, returning from the post office where Mrs Hudson had sent me with a bag full of letters, I discovered her in the kitchen surrounded by a dozen scruffy boys between the ages of eight and fourteen among whom I instantly recognised Scraggs and seven or eight others who were regular suppliers of provisions to Mrs Hudson’s previous establishment. One had just finished speaking and Mrs Hudson was nodding thoughtfully in his direction.
‘Thank you, Mills. Remember, say nothing to Wiggins. He seems to be going to the bad.’
She looked up when she heard me at the door. ‘Now here’s Flottie,’ she continued warmly, ‘so you’d better all go about your business sharpish and not get under her feet. Some of you seem to imagine that the presence of a pretty girl is an excuse for malingering up here when there’s work to be done.’
The boys filed out, nudging each other and grinning, while I looked as reproachfully at Mrs Hudson as I dared. She watched the last one depart with a look that was only superficially stern.
‘They are good boys, each of them, Flottie, and it’s a proper scandal that in this whole city of do-gooders there’s nothing done to set them on their way to a decent calling that would get the best out of them. Still, they see and hear everything that goes on in this city, for there’s no house however grand that doesn’t open its doors to the butcher’s boy and the grocer’s lad and the young man from the chandler’s. They’re like a web of knowledge, they are. Keep in with them and you never need pay a penny more than you need for anything from lettuces to lamp oil. Now, Flottie, let’s get to work and never mind my teasing.’
And with that the whirlwind of activity continued, keeping me far too busy to ask questions about the gathering I’d interrupted or about the series of messages delivered directly to Mrs Hudson in the course of the afternoon.
The evening post brought more letters, one for Mr Holmes and two for Mrs Hudson, and what with reading them, planning supper, folding the laundry and setting me on another round of dusting and polishing, there was no rest for her or for me until five o’clock, when we’d lighted the fires and closed out the blustering night. This was my favourite time of day and we pulled our chairs to the hearth with a rich sense of self-indulgence. As a reward for the work completed, which I honestly believe would have taken two days in another household, Mrs Hudson treated me to a piece of candied peel from a box sent by Mr Rumbelow with the previous day’s sherry. Mrs Hudson was clearly in an excellent humour under her stern exterior and she held her glass up to the light with the air of a satisfied woman.
‘Once the work’s done we can move on to the important things, eh? Look at that, Flottie. This is one of the finest sherries. Not at the height of fashion just at the moment but magnificent nonetheless. Remember that light straw colour. One day, when you’re mixing in far better company than mine, it will help to know these things.’ And I nibbled my peel meekly and felt flushed at being included in such remote, adult knowledge.
After a short, contented silence, Mrs Hudson turned to the subject that had been on my mind all day, regardless of the tempest of activity that had engulfed me.
‘So, Flottie, what’s your feeling about Mr Moran’s strange tale?’
‘Ma’am, I don’t know what to make of it. This morning, with rain dripping down my neck, it seemed hard to believe in men being tracked down in London by a strange foreign curse. But last night, when he was talking, I could almost
feel that dagger was watching us all, waiting for its moment. Do you think it could be poisoned?’
‘I have a feeling there was something dangerous present here last night, Flottie, but I don’t think it was that knife. However, Dr Watson will be able to show you how to test for poison on something like that. You should learn from those two gentlemen, Flottie. If we’re to stay in this house it’s no good being scared of all those chemicals and equipment. Besides, the doctor needs an occupation. It’s a year since he came back from Afghanistan and trotting around after Mr Holmes all day is no sort of a way for a man to pass his life.’
However, Mrs Hudson’s schemes to further my education were of far less interest to me than the matter in hand.
‘Wasn’t it amazing how Mr Holmes was able to know so much about him from his letter, ma’am?’
‘It is and it isn’t, Flottie. It certainly seems as if Mr Holmes got a good deal right but somehow I just wonder . . . For instance, Mr Moran went to a lot of trouble to show how afraid he was of this strange threat that hangs over him. Afraid for his life, he said. Both of our gentlemen agreed his note was dashed off hurriedly in a mixture of fear and fever. He was supposedly in too great a haste to write in a straight line across the page or find a decent pot of ink.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ I could only concur with Mr Holmes and Dr Watson. Everything from his handwriting to his nervous manner seemed to suggest a fear approaching desperation on the part of Mr Moran.
‘Let’s have another look at that letter, Flottie. I took the liberty of tidying it away when it became clear Mr Holmes had no further use for it. You’ll find it in the drawer in the dresser, next to the mousetraps.’
I scurried to retrieve it and Mrs Hudson spread it open under the lamp so it was visible to us both.
‘Now is there anything on that page that you didn’t notice before, perhaps because it was too dark to make out?’
