The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes

by Hilary Bailey

  She had breakfast with Sherlock in his commodious room, seated at a table looking out into the garden, where a robin sat peering about brightly on the branch of an apple tree.

  ‘So,’ Charlotte observed to her brother as she cut into a slice of ham, ‘you’ve been out?’

  ‘Very clever, Charlotte, but how do you know?’

  ‘As I approached your room I observed the maid taking away your suit and overcoat over her arm – for sponging and pressing, I assumed. Yesterday was rainy and muddy. I’m glad you’re so much better.’

  ‘I believe I am completely recovered,’ Sherlock said. ‘I deeply regret the pain and anxiety I have caused.’

  ‘In future you must listen to the advice of John Watson,’ she told him gravely.

  ‘Not on topics concerned with detection, surely,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Perhaps not – but where your health is the question,’ she warned.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But, meanwhile, dear Charlotte, you have observed that yesterday I made a little outing.’

  ‘To Baker Street,’ she said, pointing to a pile of books, topped with a meerschaum pipe and a tobacco jar, which lay on the window seat.

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘Convalescence continues, but convalescence can be dull. Some diversion is needed. And, further to that, you owe it to me, Charlotte, not just to pay me a visit as if visiting a tedious, sick relative, but to entertain me with the story of the case you are at present engaged on.’ He raised his hand in warning. ‘Don’t pretend you’re not investigating something, Charlotte. I can tell you are by your manner. And your early arrival means you have some other business for the rest of the day. And as a detective and an older brother I observe you are not very happy about telling me what you’re doing.’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘Right on all counts,’ she said and then told him about her attempt to find fingerprints on the items belonging to one of the victims of the Whitechapel murderer and of her visit to the Ten Bells with Inspector Lestrade. She also informed him about the message which had arrived that morning.

  Sherlock listened in neutral silence but at the end of her account he said, ‘Charlotte! You are doing very well, but this is extremely dangerous. This murderer is a madman.’

  ‘I am assuming he is not,’ she said.

  ‘Quite so,’ he replied. ‘But that is only an assumption. And even if he has a motive for his killings it is plain he’ll stop at nothing. In addition, the neighbourhood in which you propose to pursue your investigations is very dangerous, ill lit, full of ruffians. Charlotte, you know I am an enlightened man but this is no business for a woman. I urge you to abandon your attempts to catch this man they call Jack the Ripper.’

  ‘Sherlock —’ protested Charlotte, but he continued, simply, ‘Charlotte, it is only that I fear for you. I must insist you go no further with this.’

  ‘Insist!’ Charlotte exclaimed. ‘What right have you to use that word to me? Perhaps you are not as well as I thought you were.’

  ‘I am perfectly well,’ he answered. ‘I merely ask you not to enter one of the worst areas of London in search of a madman.’

  ‘Lestrade will come with me if there is any risk,’ explained Charlotte, trying to mollify him. He did not soften. ‘We’ll see about that,’ he announced firmly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I shall communicate with Lestrade and ask him, as a favour to me, not to take you into the slums of Whitechapel.’

  Charlotte stood up, saying coldly, ‘I’m sorry, Sherlock. I was under the impression I was a free Englishwoman at the end of the nineteenth century, not an Indian lady in purdah. You put me in a very difficult position. I must either appeal to Lestrade to ignore your wishes, which will strain his loyalties, or go to the East End alone. Will you please tell me you will not interfere between myself and Lestrade?’

  ‘No,’ said Sherlock Holmes. ‘You are my sister. I am bound to protect you. If that means I have to ask Lestrade not to accompany you to Whitechapel, then so be it. It is my duty. As to going there alone, that would be worse than foolish.’

  ‘I think you’ve made everything plain, Sherlock,’ said Charlotte angrily. ‘I’d better go now.’

  ‘What are you planning to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing that need concern you,’ she responded and coldly left the room.

  ‘Well, Charlotte,’ said Lady Henrietta de Servingholme, ‘I can see it’s unfair to ask Lestrade to ignore your brother’s direct wishes. I’ll come to the lodging house in Hand and Flower Street with you, if you wish.’ She was a tall woman of about thirty, plainly dressed in a blue serge costume with a very white blouse. She measured tea from a caddy above a long kitchen range into a large brown teapot, took a kettle from the hob and poured in a stream of boiling water.

  She and Charlotte were by the kitchen range in a long room. Opposite was a long table where four poorly dressed young women were operating sewing machines, making dresses and children’s clothing, while at the head of the table sat an older woman, her head bowed over a huge pile of mending.

  ‘Will you cut up some bread, Charlotte?’ asked Henrietta, placing two loaves on a table at the side of the range. ‘It’s time for the women’s dinners. Is all this a secret, or shall we ask them what they think? The East End is close-mouthed, as you’ll know. But someone might be able to tell you something.’

  Soon they were seated at the table, eating thick, meaty soup, bread and cheese. Henrietta explained Charlotte’s aim to catch the Ripper. ‘My mother said I wasn’t to come here today on account of him,’ said a thin, pale girl of eighteen. ‘I wouldn’t, except for the money.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go poking about the courts and alleys here on your own,’ advised the older woman. ‘I know you know the place, Lady Henrietta, but it’s not the same as being born and brought up here. There’s plenty of places I wouldn’t go alone myself.’

  After her conversation with Sherlock Charlotte had felt it would be unfair to call upon Lestrade to take her to Whitechapel, so had gone to the Oxford University Women’s Mission in Whitechapel, where prosperous and well-meaning women organised a workshop, soup kitchen, boot distribution centre and other things for the poor of the district. She had fortunately found a friend from her college days in charge. Now she and Henrietta looked at each other doubtfully. ‘Perhaps if I could persuade Mrs Wills, the sister of the licensee at the Ten Bells …’ Charlotte suggested.

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ said the older woman. ‘Someone like that – landlady of a local pub – is worth ten policemen any day. She’ll know who’s who and what’s what. Send her a message.’

  This was done. Not too much later Henrietta, Charlotte and Mrs Wills, robust in a black coat and a yellow bonnet, were leaving a main street crowded with trams and carts for the narrow area called Hand and Flower Street. It appeared to be enclosed on three sides by small houses in a state of dilapidation. The cobbles beneath their feet were slick and greasy. Though it was drizzling there were children sitting on the pavement, their bare feet in the gutter. An odour of frying, bad drains and general poverty was very bad but another smell, the undetectable odour of fear, also seemed to be present, for, even as Mrs Wills had arrived at the Mission, a boy had come to the door for his sister whom he’d been told to bring home immediately.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ he’d asked the women. ‘There’s been another one – another poor tart dead. In Dorset Street, in a room, cut up like an animal at the butcher’s. You lot had better get back home before it starts getting dark.’ There had been screams and exclamations and a putting on of coats and shawls. The room had cleared quickly. Mrs Wills, surveying the confusion, had said with determination, ‘That’s it. We must do anything to help catch this villain.’

  They had walked through streets where evidently the information about Mary Kelly’s death was still spreading. Knots of people stood about talking. Faces looked stunned, or horrified.

  Now Mrs Wills walked along a row of houses, peering
at each door. Most had no numbers. Finally she came to a decision, stopped outside one and rapped on it with the handle of her umbrella. The door opened. A woman in a black dress with a piece of sacking round her waist, serving as an apron, stood there.

  Mrs Wills, flanked by Henrietta and Charlotte, asked, ‘Are you the owner of this place?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ asked the woman suspiciously.

  ‘I’m Mrs Wills of the Ten Bells,’ said Mrs Wills. ‘And these are two ladies with some questions to ask. Am I right? Is this Cooney’s Lodging House?’ The woman nodded.

  ‘It’s about some events that took place this summer,’ Charlotte added.

  The woman looked at her. ‘No point in asking me,’ she said. ‘I only started here at the beginning of September.’

  ‘You’re a servant here?’ asked Charlotte.

  ‘Well, I ain’t the Queen of England,’ was the reply. ‘What’s more I won’t be working here much longer if I don’t go for young Wilkinson’s beer soon.’

  ‘He’s the landlord here?’ asked Mrs Wills.

  ‘Not many landlords round here,’ responded the woman. ‘Just deputies. Anyway, this is nothing to do with me. I’m off for the beer,’ and she walked past them into the street.

  ‘We might as well go in,’ remarked Mrs Wills.

  ‘What’s a deputy?’ asked Charlotte.

  Henrietta answered. ‘The man or woman in charge of the building, collecting the rents, doing repairs, seeing all is orderly. He’s responsible to the landlord’s agent. Many landlords never come here. We might be surprised if we knew who profits by these slums.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Charlotte, and went through the open front door into the passageway. A woman came out of a room to one side, carrying an enamel bowl of soapy water.

  ‘Where’s Wilkinson?’ asked Mrs Wills.

  ‘Upstairs, mending a window,’ she said and went down the passageway with the bowl and through the open front door. As they started upstairs they heard the woman throw the water into the street. On a half-landing, through an open door, a woman was to be seen on a truckle bed, tossing in uneasy sleep. From the basement the smell of an unsavoury meal wafted up. In the front room on the first floor matters seemed a little better. The room was bare; the windows were both out and an energetic-looking young man, in a collarless shirt and old trousers, was refitting a sash cord. Seeing his visitors, and evidently recognising they had not come to find accommodation, he came down the ladder and asked, ‘Well, ladies, what can I do for you?’

  ‘We’ve come concerning some women – Tabram, Chapman, Nichols, Stride, Eddowes and now, Kelly,’ Charlotte said bluntly.

  He grappled with the names for a second, then his blue eyes opened wide. ‘God help us,’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s the names of the women the Ripper done to death. What do you think all that’s got to do with me? You don’t look like the police to me, unless they’re recruiting women now, so what’s your business? Anyway, don’t look at me. I’ve been interviewed twice and I’ve proved I wasn’t here at the time. Except last night, of course, when the last poor cow got murdered. And as to that, I was down in Bromley playing football and twenty-two men, can swear to it.’

  ‘On the other occasions, I take it, you were at sea,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘How do you know that?’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘You have a ruddy complexion and bright blue eyes,’ she told him. ‘You don’t look like a man who’s been living in Whitechapel for a year. Also, I think I see the tip of an anchor tattoed on your arm, just where your shirt-sleeves are rolled up.’

  He glanced at his arm, and laughed. ‘Top marks, lady. But who are you and why are you here?’

  ‘We’re looking for a Mr Wilkinson, who is in charge of this house,’ she said. ‘There’s some question these premises may be involved in the murder.’

  ‘Wilkinson’s my uncle,’ he responded. ‘Now, you’d better tell me who suspects this. I should like to be introduced to them.’

  ‘I suspect it,’ Charlotte replied. ‘My name is Charlotte Holmes. This lady is Henrietta de Servingholme, of the Oxford Women’s Mission, and this, Mrs Wills, the popular landlady of the Ten Bells.’ She put out her hand, which he shook.

  ‘I’ve heard of all of you,’ he said, ‘especially you, Miss Holmes. You were much talked of in Archangel, over the business of Ivan Lensky, the anarchist.’

  ‘You are a socialist?’ she enquired.

  ‘I’m not ashamed of it,’ he said.

  ‘Nor am I,’ she replied. ‘My friend Henrietta here, though, is a true blue – but I suspect she does more for the poor and downtrodden than either of us.’

  Mrs Wills interrupted. ‘I’m not a socialist and I can’t abide them, if the truth’s told. And I didn’t take time off from a busy pub to stand in these insalubrious surroundings discussing politics.’

  ‘I suggest we leave and go and take a cup of tea at the Russian tearooms, round the corner,’ said Wilkinson.

  This was agreed and soon they were seated in a nearby street where old men sat at tables over glasses of Russian tea. Albert Wilkinson said, ‘I took over the place – known as Cooney’s Lodging House, though there’s no Cooney – for my uncle who had to go away in September. I couldn’t get a ship at the time so it suited me well enough, but, frankly, ladies, I wish I hadn’t done it. This is a sad place full of sad people and it’s depressing my spirits something shocking. I wish I’d taken a berth on any rotten ship with a bad master, rather than stayed here.’

  ‘Why did your uncle go away?’ asked Charlotte. ‘And where? I must ask these questions. I suspect, though I do not know, that there is a connection between your house, or somewhere very like it, and these dreadful murders. I will tell you the truth – I believe all the dead women stayed at Cooney’s, or nearby, on one, crucial night in early August. What happened then, I don’t know.’

  Henrietta and Mrs Wills were astonished to hear Charlotte put forward this theory. Albert Wilkinson looked doubtful.

  ‘Come, come, Charlotte,’ Henrietta reproached. ‘Aren’t you trying to make bricks without straw? Isn’t the most likely explanation for these killings that there isn’t one? That the murderer is mad?’

  ‘That’s what I’d have guessed,’ Mrs Wills said in support. ‘Here’s a neighbourhood full of foreigners, all dirt poor, they can’t hardly speak the language and half of them, if they can make themselves understood, will tell you horror stories of what happened to them back home in Russia. That’s why they’re here. Because they’re Jews and the Tsar sends soldiers to get rid of them. Small wonder if one of them’s gone off his head. Goes off it on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. That’s when all the murders are. I’ll be frank, Miss Holmes, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Charlotte. ‘But, as to your uncle, Mr Wilkinson …’

  ‘He had to go down to his estranged wife at Gravesend,’ Wilkinson explained. ‘She’s not too well at the moment and in spite of past disagreements, he felt he owed her some loyalty. And as to his being the murderer,’ he went on, ‘you can put that out of your head. He’s got a shocking leg caused by falling out of the rigging when he was a young seaman aboard a clipper ship. This fellow – Jack the Ripper – is a nimble man, otherwise they’d have caught him. Half the women were still warm when they found their dead bodies. My uncle would still have been hobbling round the corner when the police arrived.’

  ‘I take your point,’ Charlotte said. ‘Even so, I should like to talk to him. Will you give the address at Gravesend?’

  ‘Certainly, ma’am,’ said Albert Wilkinson, but his expression betrayed the fact that he thought Charlotte was about to embark on a wild-goose chase.

  Henrietta evidently thought the same. ‘Really, Charlotte,’ she exclaimed, ‘what information can you hope to find there? Wouldn’t you be better off at home in your laboratory, studying these fingerprints, or whatever you call them?’

  Only Mrs Wills at that stage showed any faith. ‘
I’ll come with you to Gravesend,’ she said. ‘You may be on the wrong tack but I’d feel better doing anything to try and catch this man, even if it doesn’t work. After last night, and that other poor woman’s death, catching the Ripper’s all that counts. And she was in her own room, not like the others. None of us are safe now. And trade’ll be slack tonight. Half the customers won’t dare come out for a drink.’

  ‘Then let’s go now,’ Charlotte said and, parting from Henrietta and Albert Wilkinson, Charlotte and Mrs Wills took a cab to the station.

  It was dark when they reached Gravesend. Another cab took them rapidly to a small house near the docks. They walked up a neat garden path to the front door and knocked on a well-polished brass knocker. No one answered.

  ‘Funny if they’re out,’ Mrs Wills said unhappily, for it had started to rain. Charlotte, peering through the letter-box, said, ‘Someone’s in. I can see a dim light at the end of the passageway. They’re in, but they’re afraid.’ Mrs Wills sniffed sceptically.

  Charlotte knocked again, harder. She called out, ‘Mrs Wilkinson! I’ve come to see your husband.’ Then she knocked on the door again, and again called out. ‘It won’t be a woman they’re afraid of,’ she told Mrs Wills.

  The door opened and a woman, past her youth, looking very tired, peered from the crack in it.

  ‘Mrs Wilkinson,’ said Charlotte rapidly, inserting her foot in the door, ‘is your husband here? I’d like to speak to him. He has nothing to fear from me. Did you know another woman has been killed in Whitechapel?’

  ‘Wait,’ was all she said, and closed the door. Charlotte barely got her foot out in time.