“Sea serpent sighted in the Thames!”
“Jacket, what did that newsboy cry?”
Jacket started to reply.
“Sea serpent terrorizes Thames!”
“That’s what I thought he said,” Lestrade muttered. “Tell me, Jacket, what is this world coming to? Here we are in the dark autumn of the year and those nattering nitwits of Fleet Street are going on like it’s the summer silly season. Sea serpent indeed!” He gestured toward the newsie. “Boy! Paper!”
“Here ya are, guv!” the lad exclaimed, exchanging a penny of the realm for the broadsheet.
“Humph!” Lestrade humphed as he read the story of the sea monster in the Thames. From time to time, he glanced over the river, as if fact-checking the account. “Twaddle, Jacket! The idea the Thames could be home to some antediluvian beast come out of the Atlantic deeps is preposterous! And in the Daily Chronicle…the sort of thing we might expect from Punch or the Illustrated Police Gazette. Tell me, Jacket, does that look like a sea serpent to you?” He punched at a dismal blurred photograph that seemed to make the River Thames flow uphill at a steep angle. “I mean, really, Jacket, are we all addlepated Scots out looking for this wayward Nessie?”
“No, sir, it is really rather a rum picture,” Jacket agreed. “But it does look rather odd, but not at all like a proper sea serpent would, of course; and being in the Thames, wouldn’t it be a river serpent, not a sea serpent?”
“Like it would in real life, Jacket?” Lestrade asked with a slight smirk.
“Yes, sir.” Then Jacket frowned. “No, sir…I mean…”
“Yes, of course,” Lestrade blustered. “The writer of this drivel suggests the ‘river horse,’ as he puts it, is forced up from the depths of the Thames because of the increased currents after heavy rains.”
“It does sound rather far-fetched, sir.”
“And the sea serpent is not all the silliness afflicting the good citizens of London Town, I perceive. Here’s a letter from one Miss Eliza Cookwell of Lower Westbourne Court complaining of ‘the men who make the noises under the ground,’ as she puts it.”
“Barmy, sir,” Jacket commented.
“Probably,” the veteran Scotland Yard detective agreed, but he paused after reading the letter, frowning, tapping the folded paper against his wrist as he contemplated the distance. “The letter writer, this Cookwell woman, her place in Lower Westbourne Court is not far from two of the burglaries, is it?”
“Three are right near to her, sir,” Jacket replied, consulting the detailed map he had committed to memory. “The Westbourne Pawn Shop, the Markham Jewelry Store – to the west – and Gabriel Jewelers – to the east; she’s located between them, and there are two more within a stone’s throw, if we count them in.”
“Let’s have a chat with Miss Eliza Cookwell,” Lestrade said.
A half-hour later, the two Scotland Yard detectives were welcomed into the parlour of Miss Cookwell’s modest residence at the terminus of Lower Westbourne Court, a tidy little neighborhood tucked between two very busy commercial streets, the sort of place never affluent enough to be fashionable nor seedy enough to attract the wrong people; now, hemmed in all about and accessible easily only to cart traffic, the place was long forgotten, and those who lived there had been there for donkey’s years, as alone as their little borough. Such was the case with the octogenarian Miss Eliza Cookwell, who was pleased, surprised and somewhat alarmed at having visitors out of the blue, especially two ‘coppers from the Yard.’
“Oh, I mean no disrespect, gentlemen,” she assured them as she served tea and biscuits, “but I read all those exciting stories in the Strand and Beeton’s; and, of course, my nephew Percy – he’s such a dear boy – regularly brings me books he calls ‘shilling shockers.’ And quite shocking they are at times, but very exciting.”
“No offense taken, miss,” Lestrade replied. “The reason we came, Miss Cookwell, is about the letter you wrote to the Daily Chronicle.”
“Oh dear, I hope I did nothing wrong!”
“No, Miss Cookwell,” Detective Jacket said. “Not at all.”
“My nephew Percy attempted to dissuade me, you know,” she told them. “He said people would think I am…now what did he call it? Oh, yes, ‘off my chump,’ he said.”
They let her read the letter as it had been printed in the daily newspaper; she handed the paper back with a frown.
“Could you describe the sounds you heard, Miss Cookwell?” Lestrade asked, motioning for Jacket to take notes.
“Well, they were quite muffled, but I am sure I heard what seemed voices of several men shouting,” she replied. “There were other sounds as well, but they are more difficult to describe, like gasping or wheezing, but very rhythmic, and there were also clangs and thuds, like wood or metal bumping against stone.”
“When did you hear these voices and other sounds from underground, Miss Cookwell?” Lestrade asked.
“Let me think…hmmm…” Her brow furrowed, then she fixed the men with her clear blue eyes. “Do you mean the first time, or the last time?”
“You mean, this has happened more than once?”
“Oh my yes,” the prim spinster replied. “ It all started about two months back. I noted all dates, and supplied them in my letter to the Editor of the Daily Chronicle, but that gentleman – and I use the term very loosely when it comes to our nation’s scribes – obviously saw fit to edit my letter to the point where I must appear quite mental.”
“Do you have a list of those dates,” Lestrade asked, “or a copy of that letter?”
“Indeed I do, Inspector.”
She went to the secretary against the wall, opened a drawer, withdrew a journal-book, and handed it over, opening it to entries she had made in a neat and precise hand. As Lestrade poured over the entries his frown deepened; he then passed it to Jacket.
“Do you see it, Jacket?”
After a moment the junior detective nodded. “Not a journal entry for every burglary we’ve investigated, but certainly a burglary on every journal entry. What can it mean, sir?”
“Miss Cookwell, you said the sounds came from underground?” Lestrade asked.
“Actually, no, I did not,” she replied. “As I said, I included all details in my letter, which were cut out, but I was also not complaining about voices ‘rising from the earth like lost souls,’ as the Editor chose to write; I am sorely tempted to write a letter of protest to the Editor of that publication, but I shudder to think what liberties he would take with it.”
Lestrade smiled indulgently. “Why don’t you tell us what you really wrote.”
Miss Cookwell had first heard the sounds in her basement, and she conducted the two detectives downward, giving each of them a candle. The subterranean room was quite large, but seemed smaller because it was filled with the relics of empire, of exploration, of generations who thought their exploits in all the outposts of progress would never be forgot, but which were now all covered with webs of neglect.
“You must forgive the clutter,” Miss Cookwell said as they descended into the history of London. “My father and his brothers, and their fathers before them, were very well travelled, and brought back many odd and unusual things.”
Lestrade frowned and cocked his head a bit. As they made their way down the stairs, a peculiar and persistent sound had arose, starting just below the level of conscious audibility but which was now quite apparent, even if still quite soft.
“Miss Cookwell, that sound…is it –“
“Oh no, Inspector,” she countered. “That is not it at all; this is a sound I am quite used to, for I have lived with it all my life.”
“It sounds a bit like the wind,” Sergeant Jacket offered.
“The wind?” Lestrade said. “That’s daft, man!”
“No, not a draft at all, Inspector,” Miss Cookwell said, misunderstanding Lestrade. “It’s the river.”
“The river?”
“But, Miss Cookwell,” Jacket protested. “We
are quite some distance from the Thames!”
“Not the River Thames,” Miss Cookwell corrected. “It’s the River Westbourne.”
“The River Westbourne?”
“You mean the River Westbourne flows on the other side of that wall?” Lestrade asked.
“Other side and below,” Miss Cookwell concurred. She paused and listened for a moment. “We must be getting some rain upriver, for the river is rising; whenever we have rain the river is quite deep, and swift.” She thought a moment longer, and one could see she was sifting mentally through her journal entries. “If the rain keeps up, I think I might hear those sounds again.”
“Sir, what is the River Westbourne?” Jacket asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Oh, Sergeant,” Miss Cookwell said, “it’s one of the lost rivers of London.”
“Lost rivers?”
“Well, it is more accurate to say the rivers are hidden, Sergeant,” Lestrade said.
“I suppose it is rather difficult lose a river,” Miss Cookwell admitted with a chuckle. “The Westbourne is one of the rivers that drains into the Thames, but it is prone to flooding in heavy rains, so its channel was entirely bricked-lined, and its course built over.”
“One learns something new everyday,” Jacket quipped.
“It’s hardly new, Jacket,” Lestrade scolded. “Did you think that London had only one river, and that the Thames had no tributaries? There are many so-called ‘lost rivers,’ but the three largest are the Westbourne, the Tyburn and the Fleet; they all –“
Lestrade stopped and looked as if he had swallowed a fly.
“Sir, are you all right?” Jacket asked.
“Oh dear, should I get you a glass of water, Inspector?” Miss Cookwell enquired. “This basement is so unhealthy.”
“Thank you, no, Miss Cookwell,” he said, turning abruptly and pounding up the stairs. “Come along, Jacket, I want to get to the nearest crime scene quickly as possible!”
“That would be Gabriel Jewelers, Inspector,” Jacket said.
“Oh dear, Inspector!” Miss Cookwell cried as she followed the two rushing detectives back into the house. “Is there something wrong?”
“Yes, it’s going to rain soon!”
They grabbed their hats and fled to the door.
“I’m sorry to be so abrupt, Miss Cookwell,” Inspector Lestrade said, though he did not pause, “but this is a matter of some urgency. If all works out well, I shall try to return on the morrow to explain it all to you, and hopefully this shall be the last time you are troubled by subterranean sounds.”
“Thank you, Inspector.”
But the door had already slammed shut.
“Well, I never!” she complained to the closed door.
As they left the court’s narrow entrance, Lestrade instructed Jacket to obtain a map of Central London and meet him as soon as possible at the jeweler’s. When Jacket returned with the map, which he had had to purchase at a stationers, he found Lestrade rampaging through a basement storage area.
“Mark the locations of the burglaries on that map, Jacket,” Lestrade said. “Let me know when you’ve done that. Quickly, Jacket! Quickly!”
The Sergeant did as he was instructed, after which Lestrade appropriated the annotated map.
“Keep searching,” Lestrade said, taking out a pencil and sitting down with the map and tracing meandering lines on it.
“Yes, sir!” After a moment, Sergeant Jacket paused and looked to his superior. “What am I searching for, Inspector?”
“A way up, Jacket. Leave no box unturned.”
Jacket sighed, shook his head, and said nothing about the strange vagaries of Scotland Yard inspectors who had been pushed beyond reason by the pressures of the job and over-tasking superintendents. A few moments later, however, Jacket uttered a surprised exclamation and called Lestrade over.
“An entry has been cut in the floor,” he announced as the Inspector joined him. “An attempt was made to hide it – a good one since it escaped detection before – but you can now see it plainly.”
“Everything becomes obvious once you see it.”
“Shall we try to open it, Inspector?”
“I should think not,” Lestrade said. “It’s the Westbourne down there, but these days it’s more sewer than river.”
Jacket made an evil face.
“Just so, Jacket, we’ll have it looked into later.” Lestrade tapped the map urgently with a blunt forefinger. “Look at these lines!”
“They match the burglaries precisely,” Jacket said. “Each of the stricken businesses is on one line or another. What are they?”
“The Rivers Westbourne, Tyburn and Fleet!” Lestrade said, jabbing each hidden tributary so hard he nearly punched through the heavy parchment. “Every place burgled was entered from below, via one or other of the lost rivers, the floors cut through, then the entrance carefully hidden from detection.”
“But, Inspector, how is that –“
“The sea serpent, Jacket!” Lestrade all but shouted. “The Thames sea serpent!”
Jacket started to speak, but could not think of anything to say, so just stood there with his mouth open.
“Close your mouth, Jacket, you look ridiculous.”
Jacket closed his mouth, but still could not think of anything to say that would not get him into trouble.
“Don’t you see it, man?” Lestrade demanded. “The so-called sea serpent. The lost rivers. The coincidence of the rains. The patterns of the crimes. The facts are before us, Jacket, and once you eliminate everything that does not conform to the facts, what you are left with, no matter how fantastic, is the answer. It’s elementary!”
None of it seemed elementary to Sergeant Jacket, but even if the situation was not clear, what was clear was that Inspector Lestrade had got some sort of bee in his bonnet, and that a Detective Sergeant who hoped for advancement within the Metropolitan Police would be better off just nodding in agreement, which he did.
It was raining hard by the time the two detectives returned to Scotland Yard, and Lestrade started a whirlwind of activity that engulfed not only the police force, but the Thames River Police and even the Admiralty. The Superintendent, the Commissioner, the Home Secretary, and various commanders in the Royal Navy all raised protests, but by that time Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade had become an unstoppable and undeniable force of nature.
And so, just a few hours later, Inspector Lestrade and Sergeant Jacket found themselves on the heaving deck of one of the supervisory steam launches belonging to the Thames Police, lashed by the rain, buffeted by the winds. They were with the task force covering the area where the River Westbourne finally ceased its subterranean journey and emptied into Thames. Arc lamps played upon the outlet, which was now gushing huge quantities of water, and reinforced nets had been hung in the Thames.
“This notion of yours is preposterous, Lestrade!” snarled Commander Bryson, of the Thames River Police. “You’re wasting everyone’s time and placing lives in jeopardy.”
Lestrade paid no attention. He knew both the chance he was taking with his career, and what he was asking of everyone, and he certainly did not need some bloody river copper telling him. Right or wrong, they would all find out soon enough, and he was prepared to take responsibility, no matter which way it went.
Abruptly, there was a pause in the flow and a rumbling sound above the roar of the storm, audible even at the distance held by the steam launch. Almost instantly, the rush resumed, but in the watery exhaust was a dark cylindrical shape, narrowed to a point at the stem, while the stern flared with rudders and diving planes, and a rapidly spinning brass propeller that gleamed in the arc-lamps. The hull was constructed of a dark wood, reinforced with copper bands and studded all around with hard rubber. A pale light gleamed from a transparent dome, through which a human figure was visible. Lashed to the foredeck was a curious shape, long and curved, and were it to be lifted into position, a distant observer might conclude he had sighted a long-nec
ked sea serpent.
As the strange craft plunged into the Thames, it was caught in the mesh of the nets, totally restrained despite the increased spinning of its propeller and the heightened throbbing of its furious steam boilers.
The arrayed vessels closed in.
There was no escape.
And Inspector Lestrade smiled in satisfaction as a quite blasphemous oath escaped Commander Bryson’s lips.
“A submersible boat?” Miss Eliza Cookwell exclaimed as she poured tea for her guests. “How absolutely fantastic!”
“It’s steam powered and based on the design, so I was told by the Admiralty, of the Ictineo, a Spanish submarine built several years ago,” Inspector Lestrade explained. “How the breakers got their hands on it, we don’t know yet, but their jobs are now clear.”
“When it would rain,” Sergeant Jacket supplied, “the lost rivers would flood, and become quite navigable to their craft.”
“Flooding is why the rivers were put underground to begin with,” Miss Cookwell said. “The current must have been quite fierce.”
“Indeed it was, Miss Cookwell,” Lestrade agreed. “But their steam engines allowed them to resist the current; once they had come up underneath a business, guided by their pilot, they grappled into place, bored upward until they broke through – an easy matter because the foundations were all so old – and then they could steal at their leisure, the reason why the thefts seemed so organised. Then they concealed their entry, returned to their vessel, and either fled to the Thames or burgled another establishment, all depending on the flow of the water and the likelihood of further rain.”
Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) Page 14
