THE BOY DETECTIVES

by Adrian Wright

  ‘Are you collecting for the guy?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Gordon. ‘It’s just that …’

  Now, how would Francis carry this off?

  ‘I believe you have a Miss Dean staying here at present?’

  ‘That’s as may be. She may be, and she may not. Who wants to know?’

  ‘It is connected with a case,’ said Gordon, beginning to falter.

  ‘A case? This is a respectable house. We’ve never been in the papers,’ said the woman. ‘There’s been a man waiting outside here since she came. I’ve heard her talk about him. Waiting, and watching. What’s going on, that’s what I’d like to know.’

  Gordon stood firm, and put his foot in the door (another of Francis’s tricks).

  ‘If she is here, I should like to speak to her,’ he persisted.

  ‘Wait here,’ said the woman. She shuffled up the stairs on to a landing, where Gordon heard her knocking softly at a door and calling ‘Are you in, Miss Dean … Miss Dean?’ He looked up to the walls of the stairwell.

  Making her way downstairs again, the woman unsmilingly said ‘Not in. Out.’

  ‘Do you know if she might be back soon?’ asked Gordon, smiling as sweetly as he could. ‘It’s just that I’ve come a long way to see her, and I am sure it would be to her advantage.’

  ‘I can’t say, I’m sure. She’s free to come and go as she pleases. This is why I stopped taking theatricals! If she’d left by this door I could tell you how long she’s been gone, but she may have gone out by the back door. I hear it go now and then, only I can’t see into the backyard from my room. But I’ll tell her you’ve called, Mr …?’

  ‘Gordon… on behalf of the Boy Detectives,’ announced Gordon with supreme seriousness, and with one last blinding smile, he walked back into the street. It was half past nine, and Miss Dean might be out for the day. The street was deserted but for an old gentleman, a tired trilby in one hand, an untidy umbrella and a battered little briefcase in the other. Although he was some way away, Gordon could see that his suit was shabby and shiny around the seat. Gordon wondered at the problems of old age. Think of the difficult lives that people like Miss Dean and that poor old man had inherited after the war. They seemed to belong to a world that was fast disappearing. At least the old gentleman seemed to have some money about him, for he hailed a taxi, gave instructions to the driver through the window, and stepped inside. Such a funny walk, too, like something Gordon remembered from a film. He rang Francis from a kiosk in the shadow of the Cathedral, and told him about calling at the Balmoral, and the man with the funny walk.

  ‘You mean Charlie Chaplin!’ said Francis. ‘Don’t be long in getting back. Sherlock and I might need you here.’

  Gordon made for the bus stop that would take him back to Strutton. He’d had enough of Holmes to last a lifetime, and determined not to think about him and that troublesome memoir of Mrs Hudson’s on the journey home. After all, tomorrow was the fifth of November, and there were still a hundred and one things to organize for the party on the Common. Would there be enough sausages? Should the bread rolls be soft or crusty (a great number of the villagers had false teeth)? Had the fireworks arrived?

  *

  The fifth of November might have dawned, but any thought of Guy Fawkes or bonfires or fireworks didn’t enter Francis’s head. At 10.30, he was looking from the window of Red Cherry House when a taxi drew up outside, and an elderly gentleman emerged. There seemed to be a muddle over payment with the driver, who shouted out of the window ‘Talk about an absent minded professor’ as he drove off. Having first wandered up the next door neighbour’s path, the old gentleman eventually found his way to the Jones’s front door.

  ‘Master Francis Jones?’

  ‘I’m Francis, yes. You must be Professor Faversham.’

  The professor peered anxiously into the street, looking left and right.

  ‘I am being watched,’ he said, and stepped inside.

  Francis supposed that years of study in musty libraries had done their worst for the professor. By the time he had finished with his research at the Museum, all the shops had probably shut, for he was obviously unacquainted with modern fashion. His suit was of the shabbiest, the seat of his trousers might have served as a mirror if the professor had been a contortionist. The trilby was historic. His salt and pepper hair, the dandruff on his sloping shoulders, showed a distinct lack of attention to personal appearance.

  ‘I will come directly to the point, Master Jones. I have made my way here from the British Museum. It is my first visit to Norfolk, and I have found it deeply depressing. You do not need to tell me what has been happening to you. I know everything of the exercise book. It is a volume that I originally reviled as a work of falsification and lies. But I am the most respected authority on Sherlock Holmes …’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ said Gordon admiringly, ‘I have heard of your work.’

  ‘The most respected authority … and of course when that pathetic creature …’

  ‘Do you mean Miss Dean?’

  ‘… that pathetic creature Miss Dean applied to me for assistance and expert knowledge, I almost laughed her out of court.’ Now, the professor moved his face closer to Francis and waggled his finger at him. ‘But I have been convinced otherwise. That truth must now be told, Master Jones, and you are the young man who must do it. That truth must be brought into the light of day. You must let the world know that Holmes was little more than a scoundrel and a charlatan. If you do not act today, I fear for your safety. That gang, that emissary of the gang that I know has been watching me day and night …’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Francis. ‘I’ve been watched day and night, too.’

  ‘Once you tell the world about Holmes, that gang will lose interest. They will no longer be able to get at what they want. But you must act. Don’t even wait for that reporter from the Daily Sketch. He’s in it for what he can get. Don’t waste time. Go to the BBC without delay, go to your local newspaper, hire a sandwich board and march down the streets of England proclaiming the fact that Sherlock Holmes lived, and lived a life of scandal and failure.’

  The professor’s message was clear, and repeated over and over again until Francis thought the man would have a seizure. In some strange way, the wilder the professor behaved, the calmer Francis became. The old gentleman had almost collapsed and was mopping his brow, when Francis smiled back at him, breathed such a sigh of relaxation, stretched his legs and placed his hand together, fingertips moving together and apart, very much as Holmes himself might have.

  ‘It is extraordinary, isn’t it, professor, if we assume that Sherlock Holmes, as you and I indeed know to be the truth, was a living person? Does it mean that all the people associated with him were just as real? Of course, we know now that Mrs Hudson, Mrs Kathleen Hudson, was flesh and blood. That exercise book is proof positive. I have actually had tea and biscuits with the daughter of Sherlock Holmes’s landlady. The next thing that will be discovered is that Dr Watson and Inspector Lestrade were real, as will no doubt be proved by deeper delving into the records of the British Medical Association and Scotland Yard. Then, we may look beyond that close circle, and consider the many hundreds of people Holmes came across through his work as a detective.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the professor, ‘I see your point. A very interesting observation!’

  ‘When Sir Arthur wrote The Adventure of Foulkes Rath … a story you must know well, professor? …’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘In that story of Sir Arthur’s, it must follow that when he wrote of the suspected murder of Percy Longton by his uncle Colonel Addleton … you recall it?

  ‘A dreadful business, the Longton murder…’

  ‘ … in that case, the characters must have been real people.’

  ‘My goodness, Master Jones,’ cried the professor. ‘What a fascinating door this opens for scholarship. The implications are quite astounding.’

  ‘Indeed they are,’ said Francis, an
d snatched up a book from the table which he snapped open.

  ‘And in The Adventure of the Deptford Horror,’ he said, and held up the first page of the story so that the professor could clearly see it, ‘which I always think is one of the less successful of Sir Arthur’s stories …’

  ‘That is a matter for discussion,’ said the professor. He was peering inquisitively at Francis, whose brow was furrowed with excitement, and whose nose seemed to be twitching.

  ‘It’s got that terrific opening line,’ said Francis, ‘which of course we now realize must have been written by the real Dr Watson – “I have remarked elsewhere that my friend, Sherlock Holmes, like all great artists, lived for his art’s sake.” Do you believe in great artists, Professor Faversham? Do you believe in great men, men of outstanding talents who having been given the gift of extraordinary intellect bend it not to good deeds but to evil?’

  ‘You are a philosopher, Master Jones,’ said the Professor, who was now anxiously looking over his shoulder, and playing tensely with his umbrella and trilby. ‘I wish I could listen longer to your theories. Your youthful enthusiasm is to be applauded, but I must go now, go while the coast is clear and while the man in the street is not watching.’

  ‘No, Professor Faversham, I think we may safely assume that the man in the trench coat is not waiting in the street.’

  But by now the professor was out of the door, walking a little hastily away from the house, in search of a taxi.

  *

  ‘What I don’t understand is … was that person a man or a woman?’ asked Gordon.

  ‘That remains a mystery,’ said Francis.

  ‘Well, an aspect of the mystery,’ said Gordon. ‘To you, Francis Jones, belongs the glory!’ He made an exaggerated bow to his cousin, who spluttered with laughter and relief that the Mrs Hudson mystery had been resolved. Of course, he had never once considered accepting the newspaper reporter’s offer, had never wanted to become rich overnight.

  ‘By the way, if you will allow me my own little moment of Holmesian brilliance,’ suggested Gordon. ‘There may still be one missing part of the jigsaw.’

  So the case was not over yet! Francis realized how indispensable Gordon was. How selfish he’d been in recent weeks, his head too deep in Conan Doyle’s stories, until – and how ridiculous and foolish it seemed now – he had begun to feel the alien spirit of Sherlock Holmes seeping into his body. How considerate and long-suffering Gordon had been, always on hand and ready to accept Francis’s silly pretensions. For goodness sake … they were a pair! They were the Boy Detectives!

  ‘Gordon Jones,’ said Francis, ‘you’d make a great detective.’

  ‘It will mean catching the no. 79 bus,’ said Gordon.

  Half an hour later, the boys were standing outside the Balmoral Guest House, above whose portico the neon still spluttered.

  ‘Someone should fix that dodgy bulb,’ said Francis. ‘The place looks a bit grim. As in Brothers Grimm.’

  Even before she had fully opened the door, they heard the woman’s voice moaning. ‘No vacancies. Can’t people read? No … Oh … Oh it’s you again. Brought your friend this time, have you?’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Gordon. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you again, Miss … ?’

  ‘Evans. Mrs.’

  At first, Mrs Evans had only glimpsed Francis, but when she looked at him again, and squinted at him, and peered through widely opened eyes, she smiled with a beam that cancelled out the faulty bulb. It seemed to Gordon to be a magical transformation.

  ‘Of course,’ she laughed, and turned to Gordon. ‘I remember you saying you was one of the Boy Detectives. Soon as you’d gone off, I knew I’d seen your picture in the paper. Well, come in the two of you.’

  The back parlour of the Balmoral was poorly furnished and dark, but a coal fire in the grate did its best to break through the dusty gloom. Mrs Evans bustled about with cups and saucers, and warmed the pot from a kettle that seemed to be permanently steaming. She couldn’t have been more cheery.

  ‘Not every day we have celebrities calling at the Balmoral,’ she said, her ample rump filling up the Windsor chair and smiling broadly as if in disbelief at their presence. ‘Does this mean you’re working on a case?’

  ‘Well,’ said Gordon, ‘as a matter of fact, you may be able to help us. Could we walk up your stairs?’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘It’s just that when I called here before, and you went upstairs to see if one of your guests was in her room …’

  ‘Oh, yes. Miss Dean, wasn’t it? Funny little woman. As respectable as could be, I thought. How wrong can you be! Went off this morning, not three hours since, without paying. What a state the room was in, too. Hair grips and some glue on the dressing table, and there’s a man’s trench coat she’s left in the wardrobe, too. Goodness knows when she planned to wear that. Not exactly fashionable, Miss Dean.’

  ‘I couldn’t help but see as you were going up the stairs that there were a lot of fascinating photographs lining the walls.’

  ‘Oh, them!’ said Mrs Evans dismissively. ‘Been there years.’

  ‘And I remember you said something like “That’s why I stopped taking theatricals”, which set me thinking. So you used to be a theatrical digs?’

  This started Mrs Evans off on a long recollection of the many stars who had, a very long time ago, perhaps when the Balmoral had been more appealing than it was now, stayed under her roof. She was delighted to give them a conducted tour of the photograph gallery that graced the stairwell. The portraits dated from several decades earlier, of guests who had left Mrs Evans a signed picture of themselves as a memento of their transient fame. A toothy woman in a poke bonnet and frilly dress had signed ‘Long live the Balmoral! Love, Daisy Delmont’; next to it, a middle-aged man in evening dress in front of a backcloth was signed ‘To Mrs Evans, landlady supreme! Affectionately Harold Sneddock.’

  ‘These were real music hall acts,’ Mrs Evans said proudly. ‘No one would remember them now. This one is Monsieur Gardonimi with one of his performing seals. Stank out the bathroom, he did, and the seal wasn’t much better. That’s Reginald Cray, the Sophisticated Songster. And this one, well, it’s the pride of my collection …’

  The boys bent closer to the wall to overcome the bad lighting.

  ‘My goodness,’ said Francis. ‘It’s signed Charlie Chaplin.’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘A bit boring, but as nice as pie. The bigger they are, the better they are, that’s what I always found.’

  ‘I noticed that one when I was here before, ‘ said Gordon, ‘just a glimpse of it. And I thought it looked like Charlie Chaplin. It’s the classic Chaplin pose, isn’t it? Funny thing is, when I walked back into the street I saw this old gentleman in the street walking away in the opposite direction and, it was so odd, he was doing the Charlie Chaplin walk, you know, the thing with the legs and the umbrella and everything. And there’s another photograph at the bottom of the stairs … one with brown spots all over it.’

  ‘This one, you mean,’ said Mrs Evans, leading the way down. ‘Oh! This is a very special photograph. Handsome lad, wasn’t he? Funnily enough, he was in Charlie Chaplin’s troupe. Stayed here the same time as Charlie. Very smart young man, acrobat and juggler and goodness knows what else. Brainy, too. He used to entertain us after the shows when we all sat in the front room, and he’d do these things … illusions he called them … and you’d never believe what he could make happen. When you looked at him, it was as if you couldn’t focus on him. Makes me sound daft, but you’d look away and then look back at him and it was as if he’d changed into someone else, someone else who’d just come into the room without you hearing them come in. Even after all these years I can see him now, he used to look at you, just look at you normal like, but his eyes, his eyes … He stayed here just that once, but I’ve never forgotten. And when he left, he came into the parlour, just where you boys are now, and he looked at me and he said ‘I will return.’ Such
a way with him when he said it, and I went cold all over. Them eyes looking into mine, and him saying … ‘I will return.’

  It was the eyes that caught the boys’ attention, too. Francis saw in them the eager, penetrating stare of Professor Faversham, and of the newspaper reporter who had offered fame and fortune. Gordon looked into the eyes and saw the watery gaze of poor, muddled Miss Dean. It didn’t take much imagination to see those eyes looking out from beneath a tilted hat under the shadow of a lamppost, either.

  ‘This is the only photograph that’s not signed,’ said Gordon.

  ‘Is it not?’ asked Mrs Evans, and looked closer to make sure. ‘Just as well I remember his name. Fancy, after all these years. Shows what an impression he made on me. One thing I remember … He was in here sat down with me and a pot of tea one day, and I suddenly shot out of this chair. “Whatever’s up, missus?” he says, and I said “can’t you smell that soup burning?” Horrible stink it was, and he stood up and opened that window and laughed, and said despite all the gifts he’d been given, all the marvelous stuff he could do, he’d never had much sense of smell. Funny, the things that come back to you when you’ve forgotten them for years. You’d think I’d be standing here going on about having known Charlie Chaplin, wouldn’t you, but it wasn’t him that got into your head, it was young Mr Moriaty.’

  *

  Branlingham’s Bonfire Night was a great success. The day had been dismal and cloudy, but the night turned crisply cold, the clear blue-black sky peppered with stars. Francis’s parents had returned home in time to help with the final arrangements, and Uncle Billy had appointed himself Controller of Fireworks. The enormous bonfire roared with pagan splendor long after the last rocket had wheeled up to heaven, and at the end of the night, when the crowds had faded away and the fire was reduced to a glowing intensity, Francis and Gordon stood before it, well wrapped up with scarves and gloves and bobble hats.