The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes

by Hilary Bailey

  There was a pause.

  ‘This is a fantasy, I’m afraid,’ John gently said. ‘Charlotte, your brother’s nerves are sometimes affected by the very genius with which he is endowed. And you, a woman, whose mind is constantly dwelling on subjects more fit for men – ’

  ‘No, John,’ interrupted Charlotte in a reasonable tone. ‘Nancy Flood did not die. A shot rang out; she fell, apparently dead, to the stage. It took little to believe she had expired. She was carried off by the police to the mortuary, the coroner was hastily summoned. Once Mr O’Bannion had, seemingly, done his duty, the corpse was transported at the urgent request of her bereaved family to Brixton. Later Nancy’s coffin was removed to Mrs Flood’s birthplace in Ireland for burial. You may remember the newspaper photographs of the huge crowd at the quay when the coffin was put aboard. Nancy, alive, was in the coffin. But she was not alone.’

  ‘What evidence is there for this interesting story?’ John asked.

  Charlotte replied quietly, ‘As you know, first came the murder of Nancy, and the magician, Gustave Lebon, known as the Great Marvo, absconded. You spent some time trying to find him in France. Now, you’ll recall I was not interested in poor Nancy’s death. I felt Jules Lestrade, Sherlock and yourself were more than capable of doing what needed to be done and in any case, I was not invited to help. It was only when I called on Nancy’s family to express my condolences that I began to see things were not as they seemed.

  ‘You and Sherlock were at that time in France searching for the Great Marvo. Of course you were right in supposing he had something to do with the mystery. At any rate it appears that by that time he had gone to Switzerland. It was a complete coincidence that he came to a small gathering at my house on his return. Incidentally John, your wife is a great favourite of Prince Rudolph’s. I’m sure she’ll end up holding the Royal Order of Kravonia or some such thing. I invited my friend Cordelia Johnson, widow of the breakfast food manufacturer, to this impromptu party. She asked if she might bring Marvo – Gustave Lebon – with her. He was staying with her in London prior to leaving on his tour. We should not speculate about the exact nature of their relationship. So,’ Charlotte said, ‘there, by a complete coincidence, was Gustave Lebon.’ Charlotte paused. ‘But by that time I knew his part in the mystery. Remember, John, I had genuinely abandoned detection. I had become very uneasy about the nature of detection and the role of the detective. I had become weary of entering people’s houses and places of work asking questions, finding out about people’s lives and, perhaps, discovering a malefactor – then departing, leaving the wreckage of lives behind me. And there is always the danger of condemning the wrong man. And by this stage I knew I myself had done so, and my involvement in the death of Nancy Flood was only to put that right.’

  John stared at her in astonishment. ‘What can you mean?’ he asked.

  But Charlotte continued, ‘I knew, John, that you and Sherlock, and Lestrade to some extent, though perhaps a lesser one, had come increasingly to dislike what I was doing. Why, I cannot deduce – I would one day like to ask Sherlock to put his superior deductive powers to work on the answer – but there it was. Sherlock is my brother, and he was cross with me, you are my friend, I sincerely hope, and …’

  ‘Could you doubt it?’ murmured John.

  ‘… the husband of my dear friend Mary, and I am most fond of Lestrade, and all three of you were coming to regard with – I will not call it dislike but perhaps what might, over the years, have become something very much like it – ’

  ‘Never,’ said John. ‘We only ever wanted what was best for you.’

  ‘You know what is best for me, that is your claim. Well, never mind. What was true was that, simply because of my enthusiasm for detection, I was alienating those close to me. I am a human being, normal in my affections. I wondered – was I obstinately to pursue my enthusiasm, and lose the affection of family and friends, or abandon the enthusiasm and retain their love and good will?’

  John and Mary were now regarding Charlotte gravely. ‘I had no idea, Charlotte,’ said John gruffly, ‘no idea at all that this conflict existed for you.’

  ‘Well,’ said Charlotte cheerfully, ‘don’t upset yourself on my behalf, John. In short, I concluded that detection is interesting but life is short, and other things are more important. Certain experiences of mine, while I was abroad, left me in no doubt of that. So I gave up detection and there we are. I have burdened you with all this merely to make you believe that at the time of which we speak, I was not playing the detective in the matter of Nancy Flood and did not wish to.’ She broke off. ‘It’s quite dark now. Shall we go inside, or shall I fetch a lamp for the table?’

  ‘Oh, it is still so warm and the lamps would be prettier,’ exclaimed Mary, partly because the face of John Watson was unguardedly distressed by Charlotte’s words and, good wife that she was, Mary wished to spare her husband the full exposure of his tender feelings.

  So Charlotte went to fetch lamps and while she was away Mary laid her hand on John’s and said, perhaps a little disloyally, ‘John, Charlotte speaks the truth about all this, of course. But with Charlotte there is always something else. I have the strangest sense that you should hold on for some appalling revelation.’

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘I have no idea, but I feel it’s imminent,’ she replied.

  The two lamps brought by Charlotte were positioned and cast a pretty glow over the flowers and bushes of the darkened garden.

  John said, ‘Charlotte, I’m so sorry if anything I or Sherlock have done has made you unhappy.’

  ‘Thank you, John. But soon you’ll feel, I regret to say, less forgiving.’

  Mary smiled in the darkness.

  Her husband asked, ‘You said a little while ago you had accused a wrong suspect. Can you be serious? Who was it?’

  ‘Albert Wilkinson,’ Charlotte said promptly.

  ‘The Whitechapel murderer! How can that be? He was caught red-handed, trying to murder you. You were his intended victim.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte said. ‘That is what it looked like. But the evidence was not really conclusive, when studied in cold blood, as many good men and women believed and still believe. Thus the campaign which ended in his being spared hanging.’

  John Watson, who had, earlier on, spoken to Charlotte in the way in which he ordinarily addressed the unbalanced, now returned to the same tone. ‘Charlotte, my dear …’ He began gently.

  ‘John, you were not there. You’ll recall we spread the rumour Albert’s uncle was about to go to the police with information about the murderer. Lestrade and I were upstairs, waiting. Albert and the police were downstairs. And also his uncle, hidden. There was a warning signal Albert himself was to have used if the murderer had entered the house by the front door and begun to advance upstairs looking for his uncle. The signal was given – or so we thought. But perhaps we were mistaken. We heard a bang and took it for the signal. But I believe all poor Albert did was come upstairs with two cups of tea, out of pity, knowing Lestrade and myself were perishing of cold. We found the broken cups later and thought nothing of it. Lestrade attacked Albert in the darkness, supposing him to be the killer. In defending himself, he knocked out Lestrade. He then advanced towards me …’ Charlotte paused. ‘By that stage I thought he was the murderer, come to kill me. I was in error.’ Then, without referring to the intervention of Sherlock Holmes through the window on that dreadful night in Whitechapel, she said, ‘Albert Wilkinson stated that he was aboard ship on the way to Murmansk and later in port at Murmansk over the weeks during which four of Jack the Ripper’s victims died. His eminent defence counsel, Sir Patrick Hall, making preliminary investigations for the defence – ’

  ‘I wondered who was paying him,’ brooded John Watson.

  ‘I was,’ Charlotte said. ‘By that time I feared I had made a mistake. I believed I owed it to the man to produce the best defence possible.’

  ‘You commanded the services of one of our most
famous criminal barristers to defend the man who tried to kill you?’ said John.

  ‘The man I believed, at the time, was trying to kill me,’ corrected Charlotte.

  ‘I find all this quite incredible,’ announced John. ‘Charlotte, I believe your sanity is in the balance. At very best, you are behaving with the utmost eccentricity.’

  ‘A family characteristic, perhaps,’ Charlotte smiled. ‘John, have a pipe. No, no,’ she said, as he demurred, ‘I absolutely insist you light your pipe.’

  ‘I have’, he admitted, ‘got it with me.’

  ‘John!’ exclaimed Mary in a shocked tone.

  ‘We’re in the garden, Mary,’ Charlotte soothed. ‘There can be no objection to a pipe in the garden. And, to continue, I need a calm and relaxed Dr Watson, a pipe-smoking Watson, to hear my rationalisations.’

  As Dr Watson filled his pipe with tobacco, still gazing doubtfully at Charlotte, she went on. ‘Sir Patrick naturally wanted to produce the best possible defence for his client. Therefore he first checked Wilkinson’s alibi. He took a statement from the captain, first mate and other crew members of the ship Albert Wilkinson had said he was on. They had no hesitation in saying that in August and September, when the Whitechapel murderer killed four of his victims, Wilkinson was either at sea or in Russia.’

  ‘A man’s shipmates may swear to anything,’ mumbled John, puffing on his freshly lit pipe.

  ‘A captain with an unblemished record of thirty years’ service in the Merchant Navy?’ questioned Charlotte. ‘No, not only did the captain support Albert’s claim to have been aboard his ship, either at sea or in port, during the relevant periods of time, not only did he paint Albert’s character in glowing terms and suggest no more unlikely murderer could ever be found, he also produced a photograph of ship and crew – yet another example of the value of photography in forensic work – taken by himself, a keen photographer, in the dockyard at Murmansk.’

  John thought. ‘The prosecution pointed out at the trial that the photograph might have been taken on a previous voyage.’

  They did. But one would have to believe the captain, officers and entire crew of a ship were lying to protect Albert Wilkinson. Come, John,’ she said reasonably, ‘you yourself heard Inspector Lestrade say in court that he could not be completely sure Albert had come upstairs to attack him. Nor for that matter, could I.’

  ‘What told against Wilkinson was the knife,’ said John. ‘You and Lestrade had no knife; Sherlock was unarmed. Yet there was a knife in the room. Albert Wilkinson in a wild struggle was stabbed almost to death with it. It must have been his own. Moreover, after his capture there were no other murders in Whitechapel.’

  ‘That is hardly evidence,’ claimed Charlotte.

  ‘It is a significant fact, though, to a person of ordinary common sense,’ said John. ‘But the knife – that was what convicted Wilkinson.’

  ‘What convicted Wilkinson was a hanging jury, desperate to punish Jack the Ripper,’ Charlotte said shortly. ‘The Court of Appeal seemed to take that view. They commuted the sentence. If there were any justice they would have let Wilkinson go free.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ Mary wondered.

  ‘In the United States,’ Charlotte told her.

  There was a silence. A moth flew towards one of the lamps.

  ‘Charlotte,’ Mary said finally, ‘if true, the story you tell is very strange. I hope you have not become involved in anything dangerous.’

  ‘Or illegal,’ John said, some grimness in his tone. ‘You tell us the late Nancy Flood is alive and living in the USA as is also the man accused of the Whitechapel murders.’ He paused, ‘I wonder whether I or Mary should be listening to you. I was touched – upset – when you explained you had felt compelled to abandon your hobby of investigation in order, as you thought, to retain the affections of your brother and others. It was at that point that Mary – she will not mind my saying this – privately reassured me. She told me she felt you had other revelations to make. She seems to have been right. But frankly, Charlotte, these revelations seem to me either to indicate that you are deluded, or to hint you’re involved in something dubious yourself. If you really know where these people are, why do you not inform the proper authorities? That is your duty. For myself, I’m not sure I wish to hear any more. One does not have to be very intelligent to think there must be some connection between the escape of Albert Wilkinson and the escape of Rory Flood, who is also the brother of the murdered girl – who you claim is alive. No doubt you will now tell us Rory Flood is in the USA too. At present I am uncertain if you have developed a delusory system or are implicated in a jail-break, as I believe such events are known in the USA. If you are so involved, I shall have to go to the police and I scarcely want to do that.’

  ‘Very well, John. I will not tell you I am so involved,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘That is hardly good enough. I shall have to tell Sherlock.’

  ‘Really, John,’ exclaimed Charlotte. ‘Fancy going to inform on me to my older brother.’

  John said grimly, ‘I begin to see why you’ve given up detection, Charlotte, for either you’re mad or you’ve joined the other side, the side of the law-breakers. I’m distressed. I scarcely know what to think.’

  ‘Many now believe Rory Flood to be innocent of any complicity in the bombing of the underground station,’ Mary said timidly. ‘There has been talk of an appeal, or even a retrial.’

  Her husband addressed her sternly. ‘Until pronounced innocent by an appeal court, or other, Rory Flood is guilty. I am tired of these plaster saints unjustly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.’

  Mary, ignoring her husband’s angry remarks, could not refrain from asking, ‘Did you really organise the escape, Charlotte?’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘No. Don’t think I’m up to organising a dynamite party. I’m barely involved, I assure you. My position is not impeccable, but it’s not criminal either. Let me explain. Please.’

  John hesitated, then said unhappily, ‘Very well.’

  And so Charlotte told him. ‘As I told you, I had, for the reasons I have said, abandoned practical detection and given myself over to forensic science. I visited Mr and Mrs Flood only to offer my sincere condolences on the loss of their daughter. I arrived in a seemingly normal apartment above the orderly and respectable public house run by Mr Flood – and was very surprised to find Mr and Mrs Flood, only days after the death by violence of their daughter Nancy, remarkably unstricken by grief. Yet everything about them and their home pointed to their being normal, affectionate parents. The closeness and unity of the Flood family has often been commented on. Yet here they were, with a son in jail and a daughter murdered, apparently in good spirits and only concerned, it seemed to me, with finding out what progress the police and you, John, and Sherlock, were making. Indeed, when I arrived I was told they were seeing no one, but they agreed to see me quickly enough, because, I later suspected, my name is Holmes and they thought I could give them information about the progress of the investigation. Mr and Mrs Flood, as I say, seemed very lacking in signs of bereavement and, as if that weren’t enough, their other son, a young man of about twenty, sat solidly eating his dinner with good appetite while the death of his sister was discussed.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said John.

  ‘So I thought. It was behaviour verging on the monstrous, I considered, until I reached home. Which was when, suddenly, I saw that the Floods were either extraordinarily brutish individuals, to whom the murder of one of their children and the imprisonment of another meant absolutely nothing – or that perhaps Nancy was not dead. The Floods were not grieving, because they had no reason to. Without hesitation, but with no idea of what I could do or say when I got there, I set off back to Brixton.

  ‘I passed the long journey, on two omnibuses, completely bewildered, the only thought in my head, oddly enough, of Gustave Lebon and his strange disappearance after the murder. The man who runs away after a murder obviously becomes a suspect.
But if Nancy were not dead, why had Gustave Lebon taken flight? What did he know? In what way could he be involved? My mind was in a state comparable to being up in a balloon swaying between earth and sky, being blown hither and thither by currents of air. As the long journey continued, though, I began to suspect some of the reasons why the magician, Lebon, could be involved.

  ‘I crept into the family apartment, I have to confess, by way of the fire escape leading up from the yard at the back of the public house. I slipped through an open window into a bathroom, then began to creep along the corridor to the Flood’s parlour. That was when I passed a half-open bedroom door and observed Nancy’s coffin lying there on a trestle. I opened it – there was no body inside. I surprised the family – Mr and Mrs Flood and their son Dominic – playing cards. I myself had, so to speak, no card to play. I merely opened the door and said, “Nancy’s not dead, is she?” They started to tell me, of course, that I was mad, and reproached me for intruding in this way at such a terrible time for them – but even as they spoke, in came a figure in a bathrobe, hair wrapped in a towel – Nancy!’

  ‘My goodness,’ said John and could say no more for some moments. Then he remarked, ‘Small wonder the Floods were seeing no one.’

  Charlotte continued. ‘They were forced to take me into their confidence. Not trusting the Court of Appeal to acknowledge the innocence of Rory, on the grounds that if one miscarriage of justice had already taken place there was no guarantee there might not be another, they had contacted their son’s associates in the Irish League. There is no doubt he was a member of this group; there is every doubt he was involved in anything to do with the bomb. The plan was to get Rory out of prison. The difficulty was, how to get him out of the country once he was free. It was Nancy, apparently, who first suggested that Gustave Lebon might be able to construct some kind of trunk with a false bottom in which Rory could hide while they got him by boat to Ireland, where they would be able to count on enough support to take him further – to America, away from the British authorities. This idea was only one jump away from a better one – that of a coffin containing the body of the much-loved Nancy Flood. Who would distress the family of the murdered girl by investigating her coffin? That is why Gustave ran away – to collect the false-bottomed coffin from skilled associates on the Continent and bring it back to Britain.’