by Mrs Hudson
‘Of course, you would visit as a respected guest, Flotsam. I can see that you have come a long way since we last met and I must apologise that I so greatly under-estimated your potential. But it would be wise of you to call. I came upon your brother quite by accident but he is in a poor state and needs someone to help him.’
Fogarty smiled in the grey, grainy light.
‘Don’t think I haven’t made quite sure. His path from the orphanage was a straightforward one and easy to verify. You will be quite safe, and one day you may thank me. Tonight, Flotsam. Later will be too late. I shall be waiting for you.’
And then he was gone. I watched him ascend the area steps then stride boldly into the swirling dusk. A passer-by might have taken him for a superior servant, but his bearing was of someone accustomed to command. And among those he was accustomed to commanding was me.
I was quiet when Mrs Hudson returned and she busied herself about me in the most heartening possible way.
‘Flottie, I have had an excellent day, and have taken a most rewarding walk along Oxford Street with a gentleman who owns ships. His observations have been most enlightening in every respect. What do you say to that, eh?’
For once, however, my mind was not on her words. I had decided. If I was to evict the shadow of Fogarty’s presence from this place he had invaded, I had no choice. I must visit him as he ordered and find out where the truth lay.
My decision made, I could not settle. I passed a listless evening unable to concentrate on any of the books Mrs Hudson had brought me. Since our arrival in Baker Street she had decided that I was ready to move my education in the direction of the physical sciences, having already mastered reading, writing, arithmetic and baking, and having achieved some knowledge of Latin from the Irish knife-grinder who Mrs Hudson paid in pastries while he sat and talked of Ovid in a soft Cork burr. Much to my surprise, I found the sciences interested me greatly. The gentlemen’s microscopes and their rows of slides had filled me with an itching curiosity. It seemed to me that Mr Moran’s butter stain was only one of the things out there to be seen more clearly if you looked closely enough. The racks of test-tubes and the neatly labelled bottles of chemicals appealed to my sense of order, too. It felt as though there was another alphabet out there that I had yet to learn, one which could prove the key to a whole new world of understanding.
But on this occasion my wandering attention would not be reined in by the written page. My eyes stole to the movement of the fire and my thoughts strayed across a perilous landscape. Tonight, he had said. It must be tonight. I would be able to slip out when Mrs Hudson slept. The front door would have to be left unbolted behind me. And out there beyond the door lay Fogarty and the night. My eyes flicked to Mrs Hudson’s comforting form but it seemed my restlessness had communicated itself to her, for tonight there was no port by the fire, no open book. She stood at the table behind me, folding sheets with military precision, a deep furrow on her brow and the line of her eyebrows thin. I longed to confide in her then, longed for her to place an arm around me and tell me what to do. But I knew her opinion of Fogarty and knew what her advice would be and dared not ask. Instead I sat in silence and tried not to think at all.
My bedroom was a box bed adjoining the kitchen, so close to where Mrs Hudson slept that sometimes when I woke at night I could hear her breathing. Sleeping was rarely a problem for me in those days but that night it was easy to stay awake. I listened for the chimes of the clock on Chiltern Street until I counted the midnight and then slid quietly from under my covers. In those days I could move so lightly I barely touched the ground and it was a simple thing to gain the kitchen without disturbing the steady rhythm of Mrs Hudson’s breathing. From there I moved quickly, pulling on clothes and my heavy coat, making no sound until the door had closed behind me and I was free to slip away from the only home I had, out into the anonymous dark.
The rain had left the streets treacherous and the fog was thicker than ever. Light from the gas lamps gathered the fog into yellow circles, leaving the roads below in darkness. The streets were not yet completely deserted but the remaining hansoms seemed dark and hunched, and looming pedestrians were more sinister for being alone. For a moment I wavered, but if I went back Fogarty would be with me there forever, hovering on the edge of every evening. If I went on, I could meet him and know the truth, even if his truth was simply a further web of lies.
By night the streets took on the menace of a veiled threat. Unseen creatures scuttled down alleyways, feeding on rubbish and fattening in the fertile shadows of my imagination. And there was no warm fire waiting at the end of this journey, only the great, blank-faced house where Fogarty was employed. It’s front door opened onto the grandest of squares; the back entrance was hidden in a brick-black alley littered with rubbish and unlit but for a blue lantern suspended above the steps. The fog in the alley was full of silence.
I pulled my coat tightly around me and stepped towards the blue light.
The arm that seized me roughly out of the darkness was so swift there was no time to scream. A strong hand was over my face in a moment and another round my waist, pinning my arms to my sides. I was wrenched backwards, dragged into shadow, then pulled tight against a man’s body, my spine rasped by the buckle of his belt. The hand in my face pressed my head back with a jolt, the pain turning my mind white with panic until a man’s voice spat my own name in my ear with hissing contempt.
‘Flotsam! You came back to us, did yer? Knows where yer future lies after all, do yer?’
It was Smale. I knew him by the poison in his voice and the smell of his breath on my face. Smale the boot boy, my torturer-in-chief at Fogarty’s; a Smale grown in size and strength and capacity to damage.
‘You made a mistake walking this street.’ He gave my head another jolt backwards and sneered at my gasp of pain. ‘We’ve got no mercy on runaway whores round here. You see, I’m not the boot boy anymore. Now Mr Fogarty pays me to keep his girls in order. So that’s what I do. Keep ‘em in order.’
And with a derisive snort he pressed me suddenly even closer, the arm around my waist lifting me against him, the other abruptly leaving my face and reaching into my coat for the front of my dress. I gave a sharp exclamation, then kicked backwards as hard as I could with my heel. At the same moment there was a movement in the darkness and a loud crack by my ear and Smale went limp. His weight dragging me sideways into the gutter as he crumpled. A dark figure in silhouette stood over us, gently massaging his knuckles.
‘Flotsam is my guest, Smale. She is here tonight at my invitation. If you had paused long enough in the pursuit of your grimy and tiresome lust you would have noticed that Flotsam has risen quite beyond any circle you are ever likely to inhabit. You will confine your animal desires to the sort of women I allow you. If you were slightly less unclean I would require you to assist Flotsam to her feet, but I fear that would only expose her further to the contamination of your touch. Allow me . . .’
Fogarty raised me to my feet with immaculate apologies and escorted me to the narrow steps that led to the house. There I paused and looked back to where Smale lay. The darkness hid him completely but I could feel his eyes like prickly heat on my skin. Then Fogarty’s hand touched the small of my back to guide me down the stairs and I remembered that danger comes in more forms than one.
But it seemed that for a moment Fogarty’s claws were sheathed. He showed me into a room furnished like a small study. A solitary light burned on a writing desk, which lay open revealing papers piled in disorderly heaps. Fogarty moved the chair that stood before it to the edge of the light and seated himself. I remained standing before him as I always had.
‘It was put in my power recently to do you a good turn, Flotsam. A man who owed me money happened to mention something that reminded me of the sorry tale you once told me. I promised to help you then but in this world promises don’t come for free. I felt it only fair to look out some means by which you could repay my services. But to my surprise and disap
pointment you chose to decline my offer. You have clearly done well as a result of that decision. I’m afraid the same cannot be said of your brother.’
I stood in front of him cold and bruised, but not defeated. I had prepared myself for this.
‘The man who owed me money gave me the name of another man, a man who had once worked at your orphanage. His job was to provide newly-born infants to families that would pay for them. He assured me that each transaction was carefully recorded. I investigated and found this to be true. The full documentation is there on the desk for you to examine should you wish to. Finding your brother was easy with that. Saving him will prove more difficult.’
‘Saving him?’
‘Your brother did not fare well with his new family. He was supplanted by first one and then two natural children. His temporary parents turned him onto the streets where, after some misadventures, he has developed habits that are likely to destroy him. Follow me.’
He led me along a corridor and down steps to a dank cellar room. I could see by the sickly yellow candlelight that the room contained only a bed where a small fragile boy of nine or ten was being tended by a cold-faced woman. I had never witnessed such pain. He was barely conscious and his writhing seemed driven by an inner agony of unimaginable dimensions. He seemed unaware of anything except the pain within. And every movement he made as he struggled etched itself into my soul.
‘Now watch,’ whispered Fogarty, nodding to the woman. From somewhere out of sight she produced a bottle of laudanum and poured a small draught. Then she raised the boy’s head and brought the liquid to his lips. The effect was immediate and a look of blissful release transformed his face in the way I’ve seen dawn change the Thames – fleetingly lighting its corrupt surface with an impossible beauty.
Fogarty was watching me as I watched.
‘Like magic, Flotsam. But magic doesn’t come cheap. While I pay for his addiction he will probably survive for a while. A good doctor might yet save him. But if I were to stop paying, were I to take away the laudanum and leave him locked in here, unattended, for nature to take its course . . .’ His eyes waited for me to look at him. ‘Well, it would be a pitiful, painful death, Flotsam. Thankfully he would never know that it was a fate his sister had chosen for him.’
I looked at the small broken figure who had now subsided into sleep. My brain was racing to keep up with Fogarty’s intentions.
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Oh, I can assure you that the method of repayment is infinitely less demanding than before. It would give me no pleasure at all to see someone of your refinement in the hands of a disgusting creature like Smale. No, Flotsam, I recognise that you have moved on. In fact I would be tempted to make a present to you of the pathetic creature over there if it were not for the fact that you are in a position to do me a simple favour.’
Shivering slightly in the dim candlelight, I still could not see where we were heading. And now, more than anything, that was what I wanted to know.
‘A favour, sir?’
‘You work in the household of Mr Sherlock Holmes. Two nights ago he was visited by a gentleman recently returned from the East. I’m very interested in that visit, Flotsam. Very interested. And very interested in what Mr Holmes makes of his case. You might well find a way to overhear what goes on. If so, there is a doctor in Shadwell who for five pounds would undertake to free your brother of his unfortunate addiction. When I am aware of Mr Holmes’s conclusions, your brother will be delivered to that doctor with just that sum in his pocket.’
For a moment surprise at his request threatened my composure. I grasped at the first words that offered themselves.
‘How do I know you’ll …?’
‘Oh, quite. You may well feel I’m not to be trusted. But think of it from my point of view. Five pounds is nothing to me. It isn’t much to pay to avoid the inconvenience of a messy death on the premises. And what do I gain from cheating you? Very little. Who knows, when you are happily reunited with a recovering sibling we may be able to do business again at some point in the future. Goodwill always has a value, Flotsam.’
There didn’t seem much to say. For a fearful moment I thought he would offer me a hand which I knew I couldn’t bring myself to take, not for all his deadly reasonableness. But the moment passed with a dismissive nod before he ushered me to the door. For now our business was complete.
Outside, the fog seemed to hang undisturbed. I heard the bolts slide across the door behind me and shivered as I turned to face the cold. I was thinking hard as I climbed the steps to street level and it was not until I reached the top that I realised something which made my footsteps freeze. Someone had extinguished the lantern.
I knew from my own time in the household that a blue lantern was set outside to burn all night. Without it, complete darkness filled the narrow alleyway. I stood very still and listened. A horse’s hooves, smothered by the fog, could have been two streets or twenty yards away. Much nearer, a gutter dripped hesitantly on to the cobbles. My eyes searched for anything to give shape to the fog-filled darkness. A very faint smudge of light to my right came from the gas-lit street where my path lay. From there, a right turn and thirty hurried paces would take me to wider streets where ambush was less likely. To turn away from the light, up the narrowing alley, would plunge me into a bewilderment of unnamed passageways.
I took a tentative step towards the light and paused. The dripping gutter paused too, waited a moment, then dripped again, softly, like a final heartbeat. I took a second step. Nothing. Then a third – and in a blur of sound and shapes three things happened at once. A clear, decisive footfall rang out at one end of the alley, near the light; a sudden movement in the corner of my eye sent me ducking to the cobbles; and somewhere above my head I heard Smale’s curse as he tripped over me in the dark and the fog, knocking us both to the cobbles.
He fell harder than I and in a moment I was gone, quickly to my feet and flying in the other direction, away from the light, up the alley, into the blackness. ‘Two of them,’ my brain registered briefly just before my knuckles banged the brickwork of an unseen wall. Using it as my guide, I pushed on into the gloom, stumbling over invisible obstacles but not slowing down. Behind me I was dimly aware of another crash like someone hitting the cobbles hard and headlong and from then there was only one set of footsteps on my trail.
I was moving faster than the fog allowed. I could see almost nothing and I stumbled more than I ran. I kept my right hand to the wall, turning into every unseen alley revealed by my fingertips, once splashing through water up to my hips and scrambling out up a bank of mud and slime. The footsteps behind me seemed relentless, unerringly choosing the path I had taken. Sometimes I heard a voice, muffled by the fog, calling my name, and I thought of Smale’s hand over my face, the dreadful helplessness as he forced his body against mine. He would be ruthless this time. I knew what had driven him to wait for me in the fog. There was no Fogarty to rescue me this time and Smale had never been slow to settle his scores. So I struggled on, hoping to gain enough distance to find myself somewhere to hide. Then, turning a corner, I slammed into a post that sent me crashing to the ground, one knee numb and the other bleeding. My eyes blurred with tears as I stumbled forward again. Desperation was beginning to weaken me. A stitch seemed to be burning my side. The footsteps behind were regular and less panicked than my own. They were closing now, slowly hunting me down.
I turned another corner and ran into a dead end. A thin light from a solitary warehouse showed me walls on three sides, their tops lost in the fog. I tried to double back, but I could hear the footsteps approaching, and again that voice, barely audible over my panting breath and beating heart, still calling my name. Gasping now, I ran to the darkest corner and sank to the ground, groping frantically for something to hide me. My fingers closed on a piece of sacking, no longer a sack, its contents once something thick and foul, now rotting. Without hesitation I pulled it tightly over me.
My gasping breat
h wasn’t enough to stop me hearing the footsteps of my pursuer at the entrance of the alleyway. They paused there, perhaps puzzled at their quarry’s sudden silence. Then they began to inch up the alley, stepping carefully, risking no mistakes. I could hear breathing as heavy as my own and then three final steps that ended right beside me. Even under the sacking, I could sense the height of the figure looking down on me. Suddenly calm, I realised my eyes were full of silent tears. Somewhere in the darkness a small boy was sleeping. A tiny figure in a blanket had been taken away from me, letting in the cold. It was cold now, very cold.
The unseen figure above me took a deep breath and a voice filled the darkness.
‘Flotsam, my girl,’ it pronounced grimly, ‘if you are not back in your bed in twenty minutes I shall ask Dr Watson to give you a taste of his heavy stick. Not,’ the voice continued grumpily, ‘that I can imagine that particular threat striking much fear into anyone.’
The warmth seemed to flood through me and well out in fresh tears.
‘Oh, Mrs Hudson!’ I cried, throwing aside the sacking and leaping upwards with my arms open. ‘Mrs Hudson, it wasn’t my brother!’
The Sailor’s Widow
†
The fire was burning brightly in the kitchen range and, for all Mrs Hudson’s threats, the distant church clock had struck four before I was back in my cupboard bed. Before that, as we picked our way homewards, I had been subjected to a scolding that can rarely have been surpassed for eloquence. Clutching Mrs Hudson’s hand as the streets became familiar again, I was far too happy to do anything but hang on tight and take comfort from her masterful invective and the unthinking certainty with which she navigated the fog-filled yards. To my astonishment, only a few minutes walk saw us turning back into Baker Street.
