Mrs Hudson clucked approvingly. ‘I think that’s quite right, Flotsam. The fox will always try to slip the hounds before returning to its den. And there’s something else to consider, Flottie. Who is the rightful owner of this precious document? If Lord Beaumaris had traced it to a hiding place on someone else’s land, for instance, then neither he nor his son had any legal claim on it. Now, I don’t think ownership mattered very much to old Lord Beaumaris. He simply wanted to find it. But it would be the owner who reaped the financial rewards, and those mattered very much to his son.’
A pedlar had appeared in the little square selling brightly coloured sweets, but I was so excited I hardly noticed them.
‘Of course, ma’am!’ I exclaimed. ‘He wouldn’t want to hand over the prize to someone else, would he? He’d want it for himself. And if that meant stealing it… Well, he couldn’t do that while Sir Percival and the police were dogging his footsteps. But if he could give them all the slip… Well, really, ma’am, he had no choice but to disappear!’
The trace of a smile played round the edge of Mrs Hudson’s lips.
‘Which is why it’s a shame, Flottie, that the experts are so convinced the Viscount drowned some months ago. But even so, let us not be too downcast. As Mr de Lacey said, after so much time, one drowned body looks much like another. I’ve suggested to Scraggs that he looks up the man who handed in the Viscount’s ring. I’d like to hear exactly how he came to find it. And there’s one other question bothering me, Flotsam.’
‘What’s that, ma’am?’
‘If it’s true that the Viscount isn’t dead, that he has simply engineered his own disappearance, we’ll have to consider where he’s been all this time.’ She rose slowly to her feet. ‘Yes, Flottie,’ she concluded, ‘I’d give a great deal to know how such a flamboyant and striking gentleman has managed to lie low for so long – and who has been helping him do it.’
*
Dark was already falling when we returned to Baker Street, turning the bright streets sombre and replacing the optimism of the daytime with the lingering menace of nightfall. The remainder of our day had been spent shopping for ribbons and buttons, and for other such dress-making necessities, but by the time we reached home we were glad of the warmth from the stove and the promise of a snug evening indoors. We immediately set about the task of lighting lamps and closing shutters, and had largely succeeded when we were surprised by the appearance of a liveried footman in the area outside our kitchen door. Sir Percival Grenville-Ffitch, he informed us rather coldly, as if reluctant to announce such a grand personage in so lowly a place, was waiting outside and was desirous of a short audience. He was also, we were told, eager to renew his acquaintance with a certain Mr Morley, if that were at all possible.
His message delivered, the footman disappeared up the area steps and was replaced shortly afterwards by the gentleman himself, resplendent in evening dress, with a shiny top hat balanced upon his mane of white hair. However, it struck me at once that the rigours of the last weeks were beginning to take their toll on him. He looked a weary man as he sank into the seat Mrs Hudson offered him, and he accepted a glass of the Morley Madeira with a tired smile.
‘I cannot thank you enough, Mrs Hudson,’ he sighed. ‘It is unforgivable to present myself like this and demand such a rare treat, especially when supplies are so scarce. But I arrived here early for an appointment with Mr Holmes and, to be frank with you, as I sat in my carriage, too enervated to stir myself, it occurred to me that I was probably in as much need of a glass of the Morley as any man in history. I trust you will find yourself able to forgive such impertinence. I assure you, the circumstances are most unusual.’
‘I understand that these are trying times, sir,’ Mrs Hudson acknowledged with a stately nod of her head. ‘And if you would not consider it a sacrilege, perhaps I might recommend a slice of our Dundee cake to accompany the wine? There are very few problems that do not appear less daunting after a slice of Dundee cake…’
While I administered this restorative to him on a piece of our best china, Sir Percival took his first sips of the Madeira and closed his eyes for a moment in wordless appreciation.
‘The very thing,’ he told us contentedly when he opened them again. ‘I will confess to you, Mrs Hudson, that my spirits had sunk rather low. No doubt Mr Holmes has told you something of our difficulties. I have had half the policemen in the south of England knocking on doors in Andover and Teddington to no avail, while the finest Biblical archaeologists in the country are still attempting to work out exactly what it is they’re looking for. And all the time there’s the very real danger that someone else might get their hands on the blasted document first. And if that happens, Mrs Hudson, I’m afraid not only my own reputation, but also Mr Holmes’s, will be in absolute tatters. Half a century of loyal service, worthless, just like that.’
‘Oh, I’m sure things aren’t as bad as all that, sir,’ Mrs Hudson reassured him, and I could see that his anguish had touched her. ‘It may be that Mr Holmes is already closer to solving the problem than you think. In fact, that might be him now, sir. When you have finished here, I shall show you up.’
But it turned out that the new arrival was Dr Watson, returning from another of his fruitless expeditions.
‘Three more Middletons,’ he sighed as I helped him out of his coat, ‘and not a thing to report. Any callers, at all?’
He received the news that Sir Percival Grenville-Ffitch was drinking Madeira in the kitchen with surprising equanimity.
‘Is he, by Jove? That’s a rather rum thing, Flotsam. But I suppose these great men must be humoured. I’d better go down and pay my respects, I suppose.’
The arrival of a second gentleman in her kitchen seemed to take Mrs Hudson no more by surprise than the first. In no time at all she had supplied Dr Watson with Dundee cake and had settled him by the fire, although I noticed that when his eye fell on Sir Percival’s glass she was quick to steer him away from the Madeira and towards a large glass of whisky-and-soda-water instead. Sir Percy, clearly concluding that such surprising domestic arrangements must be usual in the households of eminent detectives, accepted a second glass of the Morley with evident satisfaction.
‘Any luck, sir?’ he asked Dr Watson.
‘None at all, I’m afraid. What’s worse, a fellow I spoke to today said he’d once met a Colonel Middleton in the American army, which made me think that perhaps there are hundreds of colonels we haven’t even considered. After all, why stop at America? There are British fighting men all over the world. Ours might have been a mercenary in Chile or in Mexico. He could even be French! No, I’m beginning to think this task is beyond us…’
‘Courage, my friend!’ None of us had heard Mr Holmes return, but there he was in the doorway of the kitchen, smiling at Dr Watson with that air of amused toleration we had all come to recognise. ‘There remain other outlets for your energies, and for Sir Percival’s too. No, thank you, Mrs Hudson, no Dundee cake for me.’
He came further into the room, waving Sir Percival and Dr Watson back into their seats.
‘I hate to see you despair, Watson. So let me suggest a rather different way of looking at the Viscount’s clue. Sir Percival, if you heard two costermongers planning to visit the Prince of Wales, what would you conclude?’
Sir Percival looked a little bewildered. ‘The Prince of Wales? Well, they would hardly be visiting his Royal Highness, would they? I suppose they must be speaking of some public house…’
He tailed off, realising the implications of his reply.
‘My word, Holmes!’ Dr Watson exclaimed. ‘The Prince Leopold! A tavern! Of course! But tell me, is there any such establishment? It is not a traditional name for an inn.’
‘My thoughts precisely, Watson,’ Mr Holmes declared, producing a slip of paper from his coat. ‘But what if I told you that, not only does such a public house exist, but that its address places it near Warminster, only some thirty miles west of Andover?’
S
ir Percival was on his feet by now. ‘By George, Mr Holmes, I believe you are on to something. We must act at once…’
He paused, his mind apparently racing.
‘My word! It doesn’t stop there, does it? Teddington might not be a reference to the place in Surrey after all. There might be a Mr Teddington. Even a Mrs or a Miss Teddington. And a family of Andovers! Why, Dr Watson, if we concentrate our searches on Warminster for a spell, we may even be able to narrow down the number of Colonel Middletons for your inspection …!’
Mr Holmes’s arrival, and this new suggestion of his, had transformed the atmosphere in the room. Gone was the melancholy that had prevailed earlier, dissipated completely by the surging energy of men intent on action. Plans for transport and accommodation were discussed while glasses were still being drained, and by the time the three gentlemen quitted the kitchen, Sir Percival seemed convinced that the recovery of the Lazarus Testament had become little more than a formality.
Mrs Hudson watched them go and then turned to me in the silence that followed.
‘Mr Holmes is a very shrewd man, is he not, Flotsam?’
‘You mean that idea about the public house, ma’am?’ I considered this for a moment. ‘I suppose that might be the answer…’
‘Goodness me, Flotsam, it wasn’t the country tavern I was referring to. I’d no more expect to find the Lazarus Testament in that Warminster pub than I’d expect to find the Archbishop of Canterbury in an opium den on the Isle of Dogs. But Dr Watson and Sir Percival are men of action, and men of action are only happy if they are rushing about a lot. Mr Holmes, having unleashed the straining hounds, will now have some peace and quiet in which to consider the real problem of the Viscount’s clue.’
‘But Mrs Hudson, ma’am, didn’t you say that you already knew someone, some expert, who might be able to decode it?’
The housekeeper frowned slightly. ‘I did indeed, young Flotsam, but it appears he is out of town. If he hasn’t returned by tomorrow, I shall think of somebody else.’
And with that she turned and began to clear away the Dundee cake with perfect equanimity, as though there was no more important task in the whole of the world.
*
That night, when I came to close up the study, I was in no mood for imaginings. My mind was firmly on the matters in hand, and I barely looked into the street below. And if a tiny movement disturbed one patch of darkness, well, I wasn’t going to imagine the shade of Lazarus watching from the gloom. Lots of gentlemen wore cloaks at dusk on chilly spring evenings. Some of them wore hoods too. If I’d seen anything at all, it was probably one of them, hurrying home to his fireside. It was absurd to imagine otherwise. I hurriedly dismissed it from my mind.
Chapter VIII
Miss Blenkinsop Remembers
The following day, a strange peace descended upon Baker Street. Dr Watson and Sir Percival were absent, the focus of their investigations having shifted to the area around Warminster, and, with the exception of one or two stray Colonel Middletons, we had few callers. Mr Holmes barely left his room, consuming a great deal of brown ale and the better part of a Chatsworth ham, while sending out for volumes which included, if I remember correctly, A Beginner’s Guide to Boxing Slang, Recollections of a Hare-Coursing Man, Forgotten Card Games of the Regency and a book that arrived in discreet brown-paper covers entitled The Rake’s Lexicon. Mrs Hudson meanwhile directed our daily household routines with her usual vigour, and took advantage of Dr Watson’s absence to begin one or two larger cleaning projects of the sort generally impossible when both gentlemen were in residence.
Nevertheless, I was aware that, for all her serenity, she too was growing impatient, and that afternoon she took the step of waiting on Mr Rumbelow, who had been tasked with locating Pauncefoot, Viscount Wrexham’s former valet. While she was gone, I set off, in rather sombre mood, to my next lesson in Bloomsbury Square. On arriving there, it was some consolation to find that Miss Peters refused to be downcast.
‘Nonsense, Flottie! Of course Mrs Hudson will sort it all out. She always does. Rupert says the talk at his club is all about the Viscount having been kidnapped by Nihilists who want to convert him to their views. Are Nihilists like Methodists, Flottie? If so, it can’t be much fun for him, with nothing to drink and having to listen to all those hymns. Now, do tell me, what news about that haunted house of yours?’
Miss Peters, who took a great deal of interest in the clothes of other young ladies, had been much taken by my description of Mrs Summersby, the young American lady, and frequently inquired after her, even though I had heard no new bulletins from Mr Rumbelow about the situation at Broomheath Hall. It was Miss Peters’s belief that Mrs Summersby required rescuing. She found it impossible to believe that an attractive young lady with good taste in matters of feminine attire could possibly remain in such a remote spot except under protest. Her husband, Miss Peters felt certain, was a brute.
‘I’m sure he must beat her, Flottie,’ she insisted. ‘Or perhaps she has a dreadful secret, a dark stain on her past which means she must hide herself away from the world like a nun.’
This last remark was overheard by Mr Spencer, who had joined us in the library.
‘Really, Hetty, for a young lady who has surely never got much beyond the cover of a Gothic novel in her life, you have a remarkably well developed instinct for horror. Please ignore her, Miss Flotsam. I hope you are well?’
My lesson that week was largely geographical, concerning the lines of the tropics and the significance of the Equator, and all about latitude and longitude. With the help of a very big globe, Mr Spencer showed me how the world could be reduced to a simple grid where any position could be expressed in terms of degrees, minutes and seconds, and he explained some of the difficulties in calculating longitude. He had a rare ability to convey these matters in such a conversational way that it never really felt like a lesson. And throughout he would smile so charmingly with those brown eyes of his that I felt sure, on more than one occasion, that Miss Peters had forgotten to breathe.
With all the other excitements in my life, I had rather forgotten the mysterious message Reynolds had asked me to convey to Mrs Hudson; but I was reminded of it later that evening when, as I came to depart, he slipped a note into my palm.
‘For Mrs Hudson,’ he whispered solemnly, and sent me on my way with the most elegant of bows.
I found the housekeeper at home on my return, busily engaged in chopping carrots.
‘Ah, Flotsam,’ she greeted me, ‘grab a knife and join me. There’s all the vegetables still to prepare, I’m afraid. I’m only just back from Mr Rumbelow’s, and am a little behind as a result.’
‘Did he have any news, ma’am?’ I asked hopefully, but my inquiry was met with a shake of the head.
‘I’m afraid not, Flottie. He has been in contact with the executors of Lord Beaumaris’s estate and finds that no record was kept of Pauncefoot’s new position. The valet simply worked two weeks’ notice and went. No forwarding address at all, apparently.’
I digested this as I removed my coat and hung it carefully behind the door.
‘Well, we don’t know for certain that he’d have been any help to us, do we, ma’am?’
She lopped the pointed end off a carrot with some force.
‘That’s true, Flottie. But I would most certainly have liked to speak to him all the same.’
When I gave her Reynolds’s note, she read it with a smile and then tossed it back to me.
‘Well, that’s some good news at least. Have a look, Flottie. You might find it of interest…’
The note was written in the butler’s rather beautiful handwriting and the message was succinct.
‘Turkish Delight unplaced in Lincolnshire Handicap,’ it read. ‘Cook and I most grateful for your warning. James, alas, could not be dissuaded.’
‘So that’s what he meant by Turkish Delight, ma’am! A horse! I thought he meant something completely different!’
But instead of laugh
ing along with me as I expected, Mrs Hudson merely turned her attention to her chopping board. ‘Indeed, Flotsam,’ she agreed, ‘it would be an easy mistake to make, wouldn’t it?’ And with that solemn utterance, she once again engaged with the vegetables.
Shortly after the last carrot had been dealt with, but before Mrs Hudson and I had finished with the parsnips, Scraggs arrived.
I had scarcely seen him since the day he presented me with the bluebells, and I blushed a little on his arrival, but he gave me an affectionate grin and proceeded to help himself to some stray slices of carrot.
‘Blimey, Mrs H, you’ve had me chasing all over the place,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘I’ve been hanging around the docks like a dose of the… Well, like a dose of something nasty. This man Smith who found the ring…’
‘Yes, Scraggs?’ she asked, drying her hands carefully. ‘You’ve found him?’
‘Nah!’ he replied, unabashed. ‘And d’you know why not? I’ll tell you, Mrs H. Cos he doesn’t exist.’
The housekeeper returned the towel neatly to its place and then lowered herself into a seat by the kitchen table. Only a twitch of her eyebrow betrayed her interest.
‘Go on, Scraggs. Tell me more.’
And so we heard the full story of Scraggs’s search for the man who had claimed the discovery of Viscount Wrexham’s ring. His name and address had appeared in the large pile of police papers deposited by Sir Percival on the table upstairs. But when Scraggs had visited the address, a cheap boarding house in Shadwell, he had found no record of a lodger called Smith.
‘Of course my first thought was that he hadn’t wanted to give the police his real name. Perhaps he’d taken it in hoping for a reward, then got cold feet or something. So I went and looked up the bobby on duty at the time. I know him a bit. He’s all right. Gave me a good description, he did. Said the bloke was tall, with a big black beard, and bald as a coot. You don’t forget a man like that, he said. Spoke almost like a gentleman, he thought. So I went back to the lodgings in Shadwell with that description, but still no luck. Nobody looking like that had been staying there, nor at any of the places nearby. I checked ’em all, and nothing. I’m telling you, Mrs H, this man Smith is phoney. I don’t care who looks for him. They ain’t going to find him.’
Mrs Hudson and the Lazarus Testament Page 10
