It was a disconsolate Mary Watson who, having seen off the disgruntled and disappointed aunt by train earlier, arrived at Charlotte’s house in Chelsea five days after the encounter with the Prince. The weather had become autumnal too soon; a cold wind came from the river; there was even a hint of mist in the air, and Mary was only too pleased to be ushered into Charlotte’s small sitting-room, where a bright fire burned. There were roses everywhere – on the small tables, on the piano, even on the mantelpiece, where, Mary thought, the fire would harm them. They were red, cream, some a dark purple, almost black.
‘Such roses!’ she exclaimed to Betsey. ‘Hothouse roses, many of them. How beautiful – how extravagant!’
‘Ain’t her what buys them,’ the maid responded. ‘It’s him.’
As everybody knows, a guest should never question a servant about the doings of the household. ‘Who’s “him”?’ demanded Mary instantly.
‘The Crown Prince – Rudolph,’ Betsey told her. ‘Don’t ask me what’s going on. I couldn’t tell you.’
Mary re-established the line between them. ‘Nor should you. I had no plan to ask you anything,’ she said firmly.
‘I’ll tell her you’re here,’ was Betsey’s reply as she turned on her heel and swayed out of the room, leaving Mary brooding about the bad ways of maids in general and Charlotte’s servant Betsey in particular. She would raise the subject with Charlotte as soon as she saw her, she thought.
At this point a severe-looking woman entered the room without warning. Mary, startled because she had not heard a knock at the door, said, ‘Good morning.’ The woman stood on the threshold, looking at her intently, but did not reply. She wore gold-rimmed spectacles and her under-controlled brown hair stuck out wispily from an unflattering brown felt hat, a coal scuttle-shaped affair. Over a dark blue dress which had seen better days she wore a shapeless brown tweed coat. She carried a big brown leather bag, part handbag, part briefcase. Eventually she replied, ‘Good morning,’ in the precise, well-bred tones Mary associated with sensible women like schoolteachers and librarians, unmarried women who had to earn their own living.
‘My name is Mary Watson,’ began Mary, when the woman advanced into the room, laughing and removing her hat – and the wig under it – which she flung on the sofa.
‘Charlotte!’ exclaimed Mary.
‘I took you in,’ crowed Charlotte. ‘Good. Good. My disguise must be near perfect to deceive such an old friend.’
‘But what on earth is it for?’ asked Mary.
Charlotte did not answer the question. ‘I borrowed all this,’ she said, ‘from an old friend and fellow member of the Fabian Society. The hearts of the Fabian Society are very much in the right place, but the sartorial standards do leave something to be desired. My friend is a librarian.’
‘You do not surprise me,’ Mary said. ‘But I still don’t understand …’
Charlotte said, ‘Let’s have some coffee. Where’s Betsey?’
The door opened and in came Betsey with a tray, which she set on a small table near the fire, observing as she did so, ‘Well, Miss Charlotte, you look a guy and no mistake. Are you planning to wait till November, then sit on the bonfire with a firework up your nose?’
‘Leave my service immediately,’ was Charlotte’s reply.
‘Who else would you find to put up with all these goings-on?’ Betsey retorted, and left the room.
‘I think Betsey’s suitor PC Bradshaw has been moved to another beat,’ Charlotte mused. ‘The footsteps outside my window have changed and Betsey’s in a mood. They’ll have to meet in their own free time now, instead of at my expense or that of the ratepayers’ in the case of Bradshaw, in my kitchen. Anyway, I shall not be able to plot the policeman’s comings and goings from tomorrow on – for tonight …’ and she paused, ‘tonight, I leave for Kravonia.’
‘My goodness,’ said Mary.
‘This is the reason for my disguise. You must say nothing of this but there are grave matters afoot. I go in disguise as an English governess for the two young Princesses, sisters of Crown Prince Rudolph, but that is all a blind. I go to solve a mystery.’
‘What?’ asked the faithful Mary.
‘It’s a secret. I’m under oath not to tell anybody what’s happening. But I shall stay in touch with Sherlock and I’m sure he’ll share with you as much as he’s able.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘A week or two, I imagine,’ replied Charlotte.
‘And these roses,’ exclaimed Mary. ‘From the Prince?’
‘He is so kind,’ Charlotte said. ‘Now, I’ll pour us some coffee.’
Later she remarked, ‘Mary, I know you have many burdens, but can I plead with you to stay in touch with Mrs Hudson at 221B Baker Street until John returns? There is a Chinese, John Lee, hanging about there. I know him, unfortunately, of old, as does John. He’s a sinister fellow. Would you get bulletins from Mrs Hudson about Lee and communicate with John for me? But please do not tell Sherlock. That is very important.’
‘A secret you are keeping from Sherlock?’ asked Mary incredulously.
‘Even in the best of families …’ Charlotte said, with deliberate vagueness, and Mary Watson, though a little alarmed, asked no more questions.
For the next few days, Mary, going about her normal duties, was able to divert herself by imagining her friend Charlotte’s progress across Europe by train through France and Germany to Norvius, the capital city of Kravonia. As she put a note through the coal merchant’s letter-box to remind him to deliver half a ton of best boiler fuel, she imagined Charlotte in evening dress in the dining compartment of the Continental Express. As she ordered yet another turbot from the fishmonger in the High Street to celebrate – she hoped – the arrival of her husband, she imagined Charlotte winding uphill towards the fourteenth-century, fairy-tale palace of Norvius. She imagined banquets in the great state dining hall; she imagined Charlotte in conversation with the venerable King Weland and his sister-in-law the Countess Seraphine. She imagined balls held under the great chandeliers of Castle Norvius, hunting parties in the forests around the city.
After Dr Watson returned, some rather shocking events ensued at Baker Street which distracted Mary’s mind completely from Charlotte and Kravonia. To put it in a nutshell, some remarks by Inspector Lestrade concerning the Baskerville case upset the delicate and already overtaxed nervous system of Sherlock Holmes so badly that he suffered something in the nature of a brainstorm, in the course of which he attempted to harm the gallant Inspector and did considerable damage to the premises at Baker Street.
Thus Charlotte had been gone a whole week when Mary, while assisting Sherlock Holmes’s housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, to clear up the wreckage in the parlour at Baker Street (poor Mrs Hudson had been unable, through nerves, to tackle the job any sooner), spotted on a desk covered with pieces of broken chemical retort some unopened envelopes bearing the stamps of the kingdom of Kravonia. She stood quite still on a carpet pitted with fragments of glass and eaten into by chemicals, on which lay broken photograph frames, even the splintered fragments of a violin. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear,’ she said aloud. Mrs Hudson, putting a lamp into a sack, stared at her.
‘Miss Holmes has been writing regularly to her brother,’ Mary said, staring at the letters. ‘She must be wondering why there has been no reply.’
‘You’d better write to her yourself, Mrs Watson,’ said Mrs Hudson. Her rosy face was flushed with effort. Her lips were set as she bravely went about her attempt to restore the parlour to something like its normal state.
Mary Watson put the letters into her handbag and went on with her labours. It was only on the bus back from Baker Street, when she opened the letters from Charlotte, that she became really alarmed. The letters, unfortunately, were in the same incomprehensible code – a jumble of letters and figures – which Sherlock had used in his telegram to Charlotte. Mrs Watson promptly jumped off the bus and got a hansom cab to the club where her husband, Dr Watson, wa
s a member.
She waited in the hall (ladies were permitted to go no further) while the porter fetched Dr Watson. At first he frowned, unhappy to be pursued to his club by his wife, but as soon as he had seen the letters he became grave, even alarmed. There in the hall of his club, his wife and the porter looking on, he gave vent to various exclamations of despair, in which phrases on the general theme of ‘Why couldn’t she stay at home like a normal woman?’ predominated, until at last he began to smile. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘why did I not think of it? The answer to our problem lies here in this club! I have only just left Jordan Crouch, the most famous cryptologist of the Foreign Office. If he can’t crack this code no one can. I believe he is to be found at this moment in the library reading The Times. What a mercy!’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘And the fact that he is a servant of the government means there’ll be no breach of confidentiality over whatever monkey tricks our clever and delightful friend Miss Holmes has been up to in Kravonia.’
Mary said, ‘That is excellent, my dear. Although I am sure there have been no “monkey tricks”, as you call them. Please, John, hurry the messages to him and implore his help. I am so worried about Charlotte.’
‘If only Sherlock were in a position to help,’ sighed the doctor. ‘But I am convinced Jordan Crouch will solve our problem for us.’ And with this he disappeared into the fastnesses of the club for almost an hour. Mary Watson, waiting in agitation, was obliged after half an hour to ask the porter for a chair. She sprang up as she saw John Watson approaching, though, as he came closer, she could tell from his expression that the attempt at decoding Charlotte’s letters had not been successful.
‘Crouch did his level best,’ he reported dismally. ‘He even recruited another member, once an even more distinguished cryptographer than himself – but it was hopeless. Neither of them could make head or tail of the business. This is like no code either had ever seen before.’
‘Then what can we do?’ cried Mary. Two gentlemen crossing the hall gave her a severe look and the porter stared pointedly at Dr Watson as if to say, ‘If you cannot control your wife, please remove her.’
‘Hush, Mary,’ John said to his wife. ‘After all, there may be nothing amiss in Kravonia. Charlotte may even now be on her way home.’
‘John,’ remonstrated Mary, ‘we cannot be at all sure of that.’
‘The best we can do,’ he said, ‘is send a telegram to Castle Norvius, asking for news.’
But Mary Watson’s face lightened as he was speaking. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘There is another answer. Mycroft! Is he in London?’
‘I think you’ve hit it,’ responded John. ‘Mycroft may be at his club, only a step from here. Porter! My hat and coat if you please.’
John and Mary Watson hurried through the streets to Mycroft’s club, which was in a nearby street. Once again Dr Watson left his wife in the lobby as he went inside the club to find Mycroft Holmes. A few minutes later one of the club servants came with a message to inform Mary that Mycroft had been found. Only minutes afterwards John Watson and the rotund Mycroft Holmes came hurrying towards her. Mycroft had Charlotte’s letters in his hand. ‘Simple enough,’ he said to Mary, ‘to anyone with a basic knowledge of the Akkadian tongue. I’m a little surprised my old friend Jordan Crouch declared he couldn’t work it out.’
‘You could hardly expect him to think in terms of a language of which I must admit I myself have never heard,’ John said.
‘I suppose the language has not been spoken for three thousand years,’ Mycroft remarked. ‘But one would expect the Foreign Office to show some flexibility in their approach – never mind that. The essential thing is to transcribe all this as quickly as possible. Events in Kravonia are moving fast and from what I have seen Charlotte has been asking for Sherlock’s comments on a daily basis.’ He dropped his voice. ‘The fate of the Kravonian royal house, I believe, may be hanging in the balance.’
‘My dear Mycroft,’ said Dr Watson, horrified.
‘I shall be better at home, I think,’ Mycroft went on, ‘where I have various books to assist me in sorting out any knotty points I may come across in the messages. There, too, I will be able to consult certain Kravonian exiles who will interpret matters for me if necessary.’
‘But are such exiled men likely to be trustworthy in matters concerning the monarchy?’ questioned John Watson.
‘Some of the exiles, of course, are not to be trusted,’ replied Mycroft. ‘I shall have nothing to do with them. But I shall be talking to the reformers, perfectly respectable men only seeking constitutional change. It has to be said that at present it takes very little to be exiled from Kravonia.’
‘I see,’ said Dr Watson.
‘Very well,’ said Mycroft busily. ‘To work – to work. I suggest you and Mrs Watson return home and await my messenger with the full text of Charlotte’s letters. Then we will confer over what action it may be necessary to take.’
‘I’m deeply thankful we found you,’ Mary said.
‘So am I,’ responded Mycroft. ‘Charlotte, though often opinionated and leading what seems sometimes to be an ill-regulated life, is still my sister. Now, if you go about your business I will go about mine and I hope in some hours to have translated the letters.’
It was not until late in the evening, well after John and Mary Watson had eaten their dinner, that a knock came at their front door. Mary had been trying to occupy herself with some mending; John had been smoking his pipe and reading. At the sound of the doorknocker John sprang to his feet and went out into the passageway – dim, for the lights were turned low to save gas – and hastened to open the door. Mary put down her sewing, crept to the door of the sitting-room and peered into the passageway.
Outside on the step stood a man with a black beard and long black hair. He wore a dark overcoat and a big black hat which he swept off with a broad gesture as he asked, in strongly accented English, ‘Are you Dr John Watson?’
‘I am,’ responded John in an unwelcoming voice. He did not like the look of this visitor.
‘A friend asked me to deliver this,’ said the stranger, producing a thick envelope from his overcoat pocket. ‘I believe you know what it is.’
‘I believe I do,’ John said. He did not take the package immediately. ‘Who are you and how do I know who sent you?’
‘I am harmless, Dr Watson,’ replied the man. ‘This package contains messages from the sister of the man who sent me. Does that satisfy you?’
‘It does,’ John said stiffly, taking the envelope from the man’s hand.
‘Then,’ said the stranger, ‘I will bid you good evening,’ and, bowing slightly in the foreign manner, he clapped his big hat back on his head and went down the Watsons’ garden path into the darkness.
‘What is it, John? Is it Mycroft’s messenger?’ asked Mary once her husband had closed the front door.
‘Hm,’ said John as he re-entered the sitting-room. ‘I didn’t like the look of him. Mycroft’s got some peculiar friends. Well, sit down, my dear, and let us see what we have here.’
Standing with his back to the fire, Dr Watson opened the bulky envelope and pulled out a thick collection of pages, covered in small, precise, black handwriting. He took a smaller piece of paper from the top of the others and told his wife, ‘This is headed with Mycroft’s address and says, “Dear Dr and Mrs Watson, Here is the complete transcript of Charlotte’s three letters. Please read them as rapidly as you can – we must act quickly now. My messenger, by the way, is a certain Parsifal Oblomov, a member of the People’s Monarchical League of Kravonia, a group desiring a less absolute monarchy in Kravonia.” Good God!’ exclaimed John. ‘I thought the fellow looked like an anarchist! I hope it was not a mistake to involve Mycroft in all this – I hope he’s not mixing us up with a gang of bomb-throwing revolutionaries.’
‘The People’s Monarchical League sounds as if it supports a monarchy,’ reasoned Mary. ‘So perhaps he was not a really dangerous man.’
‘Who knows?’ said J
ohn dubiously. ‘The politics of Central Europe are very unlike our own. But’, he said, in a resolute tone, ‘Mycroft advises us to read Charlotte’s letters to Sherlock with speed, so that is what we will do. I shall read aloud, to save time.’
For many hours after the respectable dwellers of the neighbourhood were fast asleep, John Watson was standing by his fire, reading aloud the decoded letters to his wife.
‘My dear Sherlock,’ Charlotte’s first letter began, ‘I write to you at the end of my first day in Kravonia, hoping that what I can tell you at the outset of my stay will help you to form impressions which you could then pass on to me. I am sure your mind will work more rapidly than my own on the information I convey and would be so grateful if you would write and tell me what you think.
‘But first things first. I arrived at Norvius station yesterday evening, after three days in the train from Paris – an uneventful journey, the last part eastwards across the tip of Kravonia, after leaving Bohemia, then south through the forests and plains to the city of Norvius, capital, as you know, of Kravonia, and a flourishing seaport on the Baltic.
‘A carriage had been sent to meet me and, darkness having fallen and the weather cold, I was glad to swathe myself in the fur rug provided and lean back with the clear night sky overhead as the carriage pulled slowly through the town and up the hill on which Castle Norvius is built. You will know, Sherlock, that this stronghold was erected in the tenth century by King Fayinn of the Osteire, conqueror of Kravonia, in order to protect his men against the assaults of the conquered people, the original inhabitants of Kravonia. The old Kravonians, rather like the Welsh in our own country, still live in the west. They dwell against the German border, mostly speaking their own strange language (philologists associate it with Turkish and Finnish, but in my own view it has little connection with either) and observing many of their original customs. They are protected by thick forests. Their part of the country has poor roads, is undeveloped, and the people there are a byword among the others for their primitive lives. However, I do not imagine I will have any dealings there. I shall be chiefly at Norvius, I imagine, which is of course prosperous, mostly German- or Russian-speaking.
The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes Page 3
