The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes

by Hilary Bailey

  Charlotte swiftly opened the bureau by the door, finding little but an ink bottle and a wooden pen with a rusty nib. Then she ran to the tallboy between the two long windows and pulled open the drawers. A sad little collection of items met her eyes. In the top drawer some underwear, not in the best of condition, two shirts, one flannel, and a pair of socks. In the next drawer lay a little tobacco box and two thin paperbacked magazines, dealing with the adventures of cowboys and Indians. The other drawers were empty.

  The wardrobe contained a pageboy suit, a silk kimono, two pairs of trousers, one with the braces still attached, and an old jacket. At the bottom of the wardrobe was a pair of black boots, past their best – and a cricket bat. ‘My God,’ whispered Charlotte, at this evidence of a normal boy’s predilection for sport. Then the door was flung open and Jack himself entered, demanding, ‘What’re you doing opening up my wardrobe?’

  ‘I’m to make sure you don’t take nothing not your own,’ Charlotte responded promptly.

  ‘Don’t want nothing from here,’ he answered. ‘Look – I’m leaving. You can’t stop me.’

  ‘Never said I could,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘You can’t. I can,’ said a low, threatening voice from the doorway.

  The figure in the doorway was that of a heavily built woman. Charlotte estimated she was six feet tall. She wore an electric blue dress, heavily beaded in the same colour. There was a scarlet feather boa round her shoulders. Her hair was bright yellow, her face made up almost as for the stage, with lips and cheeks heavily reddened, thick mascara, blue eyeshadow and very white face powder. She filled the doorway.

  This apparition faced the panic-stricken Jack. ‘You thought I was asleep,’ she said menacingly, ‘But I wasn’t. And what are you doing here?’ she accused Charlotte.

  ‘Clearing up, ma’am,’ responded Charlotte.

  ‘Madame Mercury,’ said the woman. ‘Call me Madame Mercury. Your employer. Are you aiding and abetting this boy’s escape?’

  ‘No, Madame Mercury,’ replied Charlotte.

  ‘Then get out and go about your business,’ she said, advancing into the room. ‘Now, boy, do you want to leave?’

  ‘No, Madame Mercury,’ said Jack. ‘No, no. I don’t.’

  ‘Good then, because don’t forget you can’t leave here without permission. I have your bond, your contract here,’ and she produced a document and waved it at him.

  Charlotte, wishing to instruct and inform, yet stay in character, said, ‘That paper, ma’am, it ain’t legal. You can’t keep him here. Slavery’s been abolished.’

  Madame Mercury strode into the room and smacked her heavily in the face. ‘Get your wages and go,’ she said.

  Charlotte, her face stinging, said, ‘Fiend! The police’ll have something to say about this.’

  ‘Get out, before I do worse to you,’ said Madame Mercury. ‘And if you go to the police, they’ll lock you up, believe me.’

  Charlotte did believe her. The woman obviously had some special arrangement with the local police, because, she imagined, highly placed policemen were among the customers. On the other hand she, Charlotte, had a special arrangement with the Royal Family.

  But she slunk off, the picture of a discharged servant, and went to the kitchen, where Liza, a huge bowl of breadcrumbs beside her, was turning the handle of the mincer, presumably with the idea of transforming a small quantity of beef into a large quantity of rissoles.

  Dermot was sitting by the fire, a blanket round his shoulders. Rouged George was making him some cocoa. Charlotte grimly took her coat from the peg.

  Liza stopped mincing and said angrily, ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Sacked,’ said Charlotte. ‘You owe me half a crown.’

  ‘Sacked? How can you be sacked? Only I can sack you. You’re leaving of your own free will, so don’t think I’m giving you a penny. First your pal doesn’t turn up – now it’s you. Everybody in this country’s work-shy, that’s the trouble.’

  Charlotte broke in. ‘Madame Mercury told me to go.’

  At this name, the kitchen came to attention. Dermot’s fevered eyes glittered. George said sharply, ‘Did she catch Jack?’ and Liza, horrified, said, ‘Oh what on earth is Madame doing up at this time? What’s all this about Jack? And what made her sack you?’

  ‘She caught Jack trying to leave and I told her the contract between them was illegal and she had no right to detain him against his will.’ Charlotte spoke now in her natural voice.

  Liza was horrified and frightened. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘For the time being, I want to see that boy off the premises.’

  ‘For God’s sake don’t cross Madame Mercury,’ Liza said. ‘You’ll get us all into trouble, yourself most of all. Who are you? Are you from the police?’

  ‘This place should be closed down,’ stated Charlotte. ‘It’s a brothel.’

  ‘Are you from the Salvation Army?’ Liza asked. She had gone very pale.

  George had taken Dermot by the arm and was pulling him up. ‘We’d better get out,’ he said. ‘Keep the blanket round your shoulders, Dermot.’

  Charlotte fumbled in her battered old handbag and said, ‘Here’s half a crown. Take him in a cab to the Oxford Women’s Mission in Whitechapel Road. Ask for Lady Henrietta de Servingholme. Say I’d be obliged if she’d find somewhere for you to go and be safe.’

  ‘What is all this?’ Liza said. She ran past Charlotte and into the passageway calling, ‘Madame! Madame!’

  George meanwhile took the money and hustled Dermot to the back door. He turned, ‘What’s your name, then?’

  ‘Charlotte Holmes,’ she told him. ‘Go straight there. Don’t wander off and spend the money elsewhere. Dermot’s ill. He needs a doctor.’

  She thought to herself no one now could help Dermot, and so, judging by his expression as they left, did George.

  Then she felt two strong hands on her shoulders and was spun round. Madame Mercury’s two fierce blue eyes looked into hers. Close to, it was obvious Madame Mercury was a man. She even had faint stubble on her chin.

  ‘Who are you? What is this?’ demanded Madame Mercury.

  ‘I’m from the Pall Mall Gazette,’ declared Charlotte. ‘I’m investigating who you are, where these boys have come from, and what use is made of them.’ She hoped to intimidate Madame Mercury. Seven years ago, W. T. Stead, the journalist, had, investigating prostitution, purchased a twelve-year-old girl, and thus exposed the horror of the buying and selling of children. There had been a great scandal.

  Apparently undeterred by any fear of exposure, Madame Mercury wrestled Charlotte to the floor. Charlotte, her shoulders pinned, gazed up into the angry face. ‘See here,’ Madame Mercury said, ‘there is no way you or your scandals can touch me. Any hint that your journal is going to mention me will have only one result. The story will be suppressed and, possibly, the editors jailed for obscenity and libel. No word of this place has ever come out. None will. You may as well promise me you’ll drop your investigations and never write a word about it.’

  Charlotte, having no plan to write anything about the house in George Street for any gazette or journal, stretched a legal and moral point (for she did not plan to drop the investigation) and said, ‘Very well. I see you have powerful protectors. I will not write anything about you for the newspapers.’

  Madame Mercury straightened up. She gazed down at Charlotte, not wholly satisfied. ‘Get up, then,’ she said, ‘and bear in mind I have many powerful friends, so if I catch you looking into my business any more, it’ll be the worse for you. You could find yourself in the river, and no one will ever discover who did it.’

  Charlotte, scrambling to her feet, said, ‘I believe you.’

  She was indeed somewhat afraid of Madame Mercury and that fear must have showed, for Madame Mercury grunted, ‘All right then. Let this teach you not to poke about in other people’s affairs.’ She looked away. ‘Silly little girl,’ she d
eclared, ‘over-educated, ambitious, think you can do anything, write for the newspapers, be standing for Parliament next, I wouldn’t wonder. But you don’t know much about the world, do you? Not the way it really is. The way it really is, is big and dangerous and there are wheels within wheels.’ One hand on the doorknob, she said, ‘Learn the rules, my dear, and learn them quickly, or you may live to regret it.’

  She left, a towering figure in her elaborate gown. After a silence, Liza said, ‘You’d better get out. You’re lucky to have got off so lightly. Leave now, before Madame changes her mind.’

  ‘She’s a man, isn’t she?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘Don’t ask any more questions,’ said Liza. ‘See where the last ones got you. Just get out while the going’s good.’

  ‘And gladly,’ remarked Charlotte, leaving by the back door. ‘At least I won’t have to eat those rissoles.’

  In the cab taking her in the direction of Whitechapel, she brooded over the terrible boy-brothel at George Street. It lay less than half a mile from a police station, a mile from the Houses of Parliament, where the laws were made. And was presided over by a violent and tyrannical man, dressed and made up as a woman, who kept as virtual slaves boys dressed as Arabs, girls, stable-boys and Indian servants to pander to the lusts and depravities of powerful men. These boys had no idea of their rights. Little was open to them but the cold streets, the hostile faces of passers-by, or a cold prison cell.

  Meanwhile, how much closer to solving the mystery of Henry Liversedge was she? The boys at George Street thought he might be dead. She hoped Dermot and George had gone to Whitechapel where she would be able to question them.

  It was as the cab moved in heavy traffic down the Strand that Charlotte spotted a familiar figure begging outside the Savoy Hotel. At his feet was a small bundle of his possessions, including a familiar shape wrapped in what looked like a pillowcase. She made her cabbie cross the crowded road.

  ‘Jack!’ she called, getting out of her cab and rushing towards him. He was terrified at hearing the shout, and plainly ready to take to his heels. Seeing her, though, he paused, alertly, still ready to take off.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you, Jack,’ she said, producing two half-crowns.

  ‘What about?’ he asked, eyeing the money.

  ‘This isn’t a very good place to avoid Madame Mercury.’

  ‘I’m trying to find a friend who’ll take care of me or lend me my fare to Dover,’ he said. ‘I could go to France and lie low. He’s in there,’ he said, nodding at the hotel, ‘but my appearance is against me and they won’t wake him like I asked. He’ll help me get away, when he sees me, most likely. In the meanwhile, I have to risk staying here or I might miss him. And who are you, and what’s it all about? You aren’t what you seem.’

  ‘I must talk to you,’ Charlotte said. ‘Can you come with me to where I’m going? George and Dermot ought to be there. We can leave a message for your friend.’

  He looked at her doubtfully, then made up his mind. ‘Will you do it?’ he asked. ‘Write a letter – say where we’re going?’

  The name he gave her was a famous one, that of the great Italian tenor who had for some months been on tour delighting audiences at concerts in all the main cities of the land. The attendant at the desk of the hotel agreed with Charlotte that Signor Domenico Gambini was indeed a guest at the hotel, but had issued instructions, after his performance the previous night, that he was not to be disturbed. Charlotte left a message on Jack’s behalf, asking Signor Gambini to find him, when he awoke, at the Oxford Women’s Mission in Whitechapel.

  Then she got back into the cab. Jack was in it, with his bundle and his cricket bat. He had taken the precaution of checking their destination with the cabbie.

  ‘Is it on the level?’ he asked, as they began to move on.

  She gave him a version of the morning’s events.

  ‘I slipped out while Madame Mercury was busy with you,’ he said.

  ‘I thought as much,’ Charlotte told him. ‘I heard the front door open quietly.’

  ‘So what is it?’ he said, as they passed St Paul’s Cathedral. ‘Are you in the business of rescuing boys from a life of vice and crime?’

  ‘No,’ she said bluntly – too bluntly, as it turned out. ‘I’m in the business of finding out what happened to Henry Liversedge, on behalf of clients.’

  He opened the door and jumped out, still carrying his cricket bat.

  ‘Pull up!’ cried Charlotte to the cabbie. In the jam of carts, wagons, omnibuses and carriages around St Paul’s she thought she had lost the boy, but then spotted his nimble figure racing up the steps into the cathedral. She risked an accident by charging in front of a pair of huge shire horses pulling a brewer’s dray and got on to the pavement. She ran up the steps of St Paul’s after Jack and entered the vast, vaulted building.

  She found him half-way down the aisle, crouching on the floor between two pews.

  She cried into the silence of the cathedral, ‘Jack! Don’t be stupid! I’m only here to help.’

  A black-robed verger came hurrying up. Charlotte dived into the pew, hurried along it and dropped to her knees, blocking Jack’s escape. She hissed, ‘My name’s Charlotte Holmes. I have influential people on my side. If I can find out who did this crime the whole sordid state of affairs at George Street will end. Madame Mercury will have no more power over you.’

  He muttered something like ‘’Ome Seckerterry.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Home Secretary comes to Madame Mercury’s.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That may be what Madame Mercury tells you, but how do you know it’s the truth? She’s probably trying to intimidate you. Does he give you his visiting card with his address on it when he comes? I doubt it. Come with me to the Mission. Your friend Signor Gambini has the address and will no doubt look for you there. What we must do is attempt to clear up this whole murky business.’

  And so, as the great cathedral organ began to make the pew tremble with its strains, Charlotte persuaded Jack to leave the cathedral with her and joined the infuriated cabbie outside. They set off again for the East End.

  Passing through increasingly crowded and poor streets, she said, ‘Now you must tell me about Henry Liversedge.’

  Jack had been thinking. His face hard with fear, he asked, ‘These powerful friends of yours, who are they? Anything to do with the Queen?’

  Charlotte gave him a sharp look. ‘Not a bad guess,’ she told him. ‘But I can’t tell you more. It’s confidential. What of Henry Liversedge, the missing boy? How old was he?’

  ‘About fifteen. Small for his age, very fair-haired, like a choirboy – the angel-face type. He met one of our lads in the street, said he was starving, didn’t know what to do next, so our boy, which was Albert who ran off, said to him, “Well. There’s a living to be got at Madame Mercury’s if she likes you and if you aren’t fussy about what you do.” So he came, just like that. When he come he’d been living rough and made out he was like the rest of us. But he wasn’t.

  ‘Because his appearance was so bad, and his shoes had holes in and he’d no coat, and because he’d the knack of talking rough, like I do, for example, he must have took in Madame Mercury. But we soon cottoned on to him, though she didn’t. We never gave him away. He was well liked – but he was different. The truth was, he’d run away from a parsonage, where his father was the vicar, a very strict, God-fearing man, who tried hard to beat the sin out of him, till he couldn’t stand it any more. Like a silly boy he’d run off with a party of gypsies who came to his village. They set him to begging, on account of his pretty looks, he said. Then he couldn’t stand them any longer so as soon as they got to London he legged it. Then he regretted it,’ reported Jack, ‘for as you know, these streets here ain’t paved with gold. By the time he got to Madame Mercury’s, he was ragged and starving.’

  At the Oxford Mission Henrietta de Servingholme, somewhat flustered, greeted them. On one side of the big
main room three girls and women were sorting out a huge pile of used clothing on the floor. On the other, the same number of women, and George, were tackling a mountain of boots and shoes. ‘People are very kind,’ said Henrietta. ‘We have never had so much donated. But sorting it is a problem. I had to recruit your friend George.’ She said to Jack, ‘Dermot has gone on doctor’s orders to a convalescent home in Kent, where they hope to cure him. You know he has consumption?’

  ‘We guessed,’ said Jack. ‘Will he get better?’

  ‘I wish I could tell you for certain he would,’ Henrietta said. ‘But he’s very ill, you know. Still,’ she added more cheerfully, ‘fresh air and good food can sometimes work wonders.’

  She looked to Charlotte. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘who else have you brought me, and why? And, more important, are you hungry?’ she asked Jack. ‘Silly question – young men are always hungry. We have our usual fare here, stew, tea, rice pudding. Does that suit you?’

  ‘Has anybody sent a message for me?’ asked Jack urgently. Henrietta shook her head. ‘Look,’ said Jack, ‘I need somewhere to go. They could be coming after me.’

  ‘Who?’ demanded Charlotte. ‘Come on, Jack. Your story, please.’

  Meanwhile, Henrietta led them to the table in the big room and set a bowl of stew and potatoes in front of Jack. George joined them, while the women went on sorting clothing and shoes.

  ‘Any more of that stew, lady?’ George enquired. Henrietta fetched some, which George ate enthusiastically. ‘Just like Mother made,’ he remarked appreciatively. To Charlotte he observed, ‘Not like your half-cooked potatoes and raw cutlets, if I may say so. Come on, Jack,’ he said to his friend, ‘eat up.’ But Jack lacked appetite.

  ‘We have two places where persecuted girls can go for a short time. They might allow these lads a night or two …’ suggested Henrietta.

  ‘Let us come to that in due course,’ Charlotte said firmly. ‘George – it’s about Henry Liversedge.’