Abberline was a giant of a man, a rough diamond many said of him. If he believed in a case, he would move mountains to solve it, and he was not too particular about niceties. With his excellent record for busting villains, he sometimes went behind Labalmondière’s back and got away with it. Many in the Force suspected that the Chief of Police was physically in awe of this giant of a man.
Thus it was that a raid was organised on Aztalan. Hiram J. Bleek Junior was caught unawares. He refused entry to Abberline and his men, promising unheard of retribution if they insisted. Abberline just pushed him away and went in. The girls began screaming and running about, but the Chief Inspector had one priority: finding paper evidence of the traffic. He forced open drawers and used his bare fists on cupboards and collected enough evidence to put the enterprising American behind bars for hundreds of years. They put the man from Wisconsin in handcuffs and left the girls alone in the company of a team under the leadership of a Police Matron.
This part is heart-breaking for the chronicler, who would have liked nothing better than to offer readers a happy outcome and end on an optimistic note. However, within a week of his incarceration, Hiram J.Bleek Junior was released without charges for lack of evidence, on condition that he left the country. Lord Maldicott managed to keep his name out of the newspapers. The aged Mr Blaxby, on losing his wife of forty-three years made an honest woman of Emma Klight. Although the “rescued” girls were put in homes, many of them ran away, among them Bertha. She ended up as a very popular member of Mrs Jeffries’ team. A handful of the disciples of the Spirit of Eon did make it to America. As far as is known, none became wives of well-to-do homesteaders. One assumes that they kept the wolf at the door by working as dancehall artists -or sadly, whores. Six of the twenty eight benefited from some sort of schooling and were able to earn an honest livelihood, one as a teacher, another one as a typist, and three as nursemaids. Martha became a writer, and later the most reputed female journalist on Reynolds News.
III
Eyes
The first incident happened in the Spring at Cremorne Gardens. Jasper Crablick was found by Alfie Thorke, a park-keeper, besides the Pagoda, moaning and whimpering, his face covered in blood. He could hardly move his left arm, and only a cursory glance revealed that the little finger of his left hand was broken. Alfie gave a cry of shock when he saw a congealed mass of blood the size of a tennis ball by the side of his left eye. A closer inspection revealed that it was the man’s eye which had detached itself from its socket, clearly not without some assistance from an alien hand. Alfie stood there unsure of what his next step was to be, but he was saved the trouble of taking an initiative by the timely arrival of a man in a hansom. He was well-dressed and looked like a gentleman, but the moment he opened his mouth, Jasper formed the impression that he was foreign. Possibly French, he thought. He was Abélard Léopold Cachefesse, a notorious Belgian. The park-keeper was very suspicious of folks from across the Channel. They came to London, took your jobs, your wimmin, bought your ancient ’omes and turned the capital into an ’aven of vice, prostitution, gambling and God knows what. Cachefesse immediately took the decision out of his hand.
‘My good fello, it is best you menshon notheng to noe-bodey about zis. I will tek care of ze poor devil.’ Alfie would have been less willing to keep quiet had the Belgian not reached over to his hand and put a shiny half sovereign in it. Those furriners ain’t all bad, he was formulating in his head, when the Belgian spoilt the nascent good opinion being formed by adding, ‘I min, if you intend to stay in good hew’th.’ Thorke guessed that for all his expensive suit and cravat, the man was some sort of criminal or gangster.
That was the picture he painted to Inspector Jeremiah Minahan when he came to seek him out a week later. Ex-inspector, more appropriately.
‘I hope you didn’t spend all the money he gave you at the Apple and Magpie,’ said the abstemious Irishman. Oh no sir, the park-keeper assured him, I hardly touch the stuff. That (irrelevantly), happened not to be true.
What was Minahan doing at Cremorne Gardens? the reader will no doubt ask. Hadn’t he been sacked from the Force? Indeed he had. One of the rare officers as yet uncorrupted by the people who had turned London into the vice capital that it had become, he had been dismissed for treading on too many toes. Chelsea was known to house an inordinate number of houses of ill-repute, bordellos, gambling dens and illegal drinking clubs, operating fairly openly, with the non-interference of the law tacitly guaranteed. The primary reason for this was the rampant corruption that touched every institution in London, from the Church to Parliament by way of the Police Force. Officers were offered handsome bribes of money and free access to what Mrs Jeffries or Mr Hammond were able to provide for their clientele, to look the other way. More importantly the people who could afford to indulge in these activities were mainly from the upper class, consisting of titled gentlemen including royalty, members of parliament, army officers, bankers, brokers and knights of industry. Minahan had been warned off by the ineffective Police Commissioner Mr Douglas Labalmondière and even indirectly by the Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt, to steer clear of those areas, but he had not heeded this.
Harcourt was a capable man and had been quite idealistic when he joined the Liberal Party, but naturally ambitious, he had aimed for high office. Sadly, to get there, he had become beholden to too many people, to whom he would owe favours. He had allowed Minahan to be dismissed from the Force whilst knowing him to be guiltless of the trumped-up charges levelled at him. The unemployed officer was now struggling to feed himself and his wife Barbara by offering investigative services to the public. It was now his avowed ambition to leave no stone unturned in his attempt to shed light on any situation which would further his obsessive need to expose the people who had caused his wretchedness. Having been apprised of the incident at Cremorne Gardens (he had a number of contacts in the Force who were secretly sympathetic to his cause and kept him informed), he suspected, not unreasonably, that it was something connected to the reprehensible activities occurring daily in the Wellington Road and Church Street area, with its many-facetted dens of iniquity, among which one can count the many maisons de plaisir belonging to the infamous Mrs Jeffries.
The park-keeper may have taken the Belgian’s shilling, but for some reason, the Irishman’s earnestness struck a chord in him, and he decided to tell him everything he knew. Must be Abélard Léopold Cachefesse, Minahan mumbled to himself.
______
Irene Adler, as is now known, lived in Water Lane in a house belonging to her dear friend Armande le Solliec. Together they had created the Club des As, with a group of like-minded iconoclasts, who, aware of the impossibility for the the bulk of the population to get justice, denied to them by the ineffectiveness and the corruption of the Police, had sworn to right wrongs whenever they became aware of them. They naturally preferred to act more or less within the confines of the law, but when that proved impossible, they did not feel bound by it. Irene herself had once shot a titled child murderer dead, in Ashwood Forest, as the Club had arrived at the conclusion that with his influence the man was never going to be arraigned in an English court to answer for his abominable crimes. Bartola had been accused of murdering her husband by poisoning, but the court had fortunately found her not guilty, and the Club was convinced of her innocence. The Russian revolutionary Vissarionovich preached violence and bloodshed, but the worst that he had done since joining forces with Irene and her friends was kidnapping villains who had come within the sights of the Club, but he had often been scornful of the timidity of his fellow members and vociferous in his support of more forceful actions. Whatever their methods, their intent was always selfless - almost always. Indeed they could be accused of theft, blackmail, kidnapping and even premeditated murder, but Minahan, kept in the dark about the more dubious facts of their lives, found them to be people after his own heart. The Irishman, having worked with her in the case of the disappearance of Lord Clarihoe’s grand niece, decided
to contact her and apprise her of what he had learned about the Cremorne Gardens affair.
A quick reminder of certain facts might be useful: It is now known that after the Reichenbach Falls debacle, Holmes and Irene had gone together to Australia. They needed a change of air after the ordeal that they had endured at the hands of the genius of malevolence, the Napoleon of crime, James Moriarty. With him out of the picture they still felt threatened, in the knowledge that Colonel Sebastian Moran, a renegade military hero, who would inherit the mantle of the late Professor, would throw all his resources into getting even with them, but most of all they needed a rest. They enjoyed Australia, passing themselves for Mr and Miss Smith. Another story.
On their return to London, Holmes went back to Baker Street and rekindled his dormant practice. Having been greatly impressed by Irene’s sharpness of mind, he advised her to open a similar agency to his own, as he was flooded with cases which he could not handle. He was not amenable to a partnership with her, feeling that he and Dr Watson were working perfectly well together. He had further advised Irene to pass for a man. ‘In spite of the appearance on the scene of estimable people like Mr Carlyle and Mr Ruskin, or Mr George Bernard Shaw and that young trouble-maker Mr Wells, preaching a new order, our nation is not yet ready to trust a woman in matters concerning crime,’ Holmes had said. When Irene had looked at him sternly, he had blinked once, looked at his feet and promptly added, ‘I assure you that I am not responsible for this state of affairs. Indeed this is a situation which I deplore as much as you do, Miss Adler, but trust me, a time will come when women will even write credible detective fiction. But this time is yet to come.’ Thus it was that she had assumed the persona of Mr Dai Lernière. She thought it was fun to dress like a man, and indeed in her tasty tailored suit, courtesy of Bartola de Acestis, fellow Club member and modiste, she looked very dashing in an effete sort of way, causing a tangible flutter in the hearts of many a young woman who cast eyes upon her, as well as half the Uranians in London. She had opened an office in Warren Street, and already she was building a sound reputation for herself.
She met regularly with her mentor, at Lea Gower Meet, and often consulted him on some thorny point. Sherlock did not consult anybody, but there are instances of his having taken her advice. They had even, in a few cases, been on opposite sides, but it would still be fair to think of them as natural allies. Not that the man from Baker Street approved of some of the extra-judiciary, bordering on illegal methods, that the Club were not averse to using. Not that he knew the full extent of what he would have thought of as their villainies. The members of the As had no compunction in indulging in torture or blackmail, if they were convinced that there was no other way.
______
Minahan revealed to Irene that the victim picked at The Gardens was none other than Jasper Crablick, a small-time crook who had escaped justice on account of his being protected by Abélard Léopold Cachefesse.
‘Who, may I enquire, is this Cachefesse?’
Minahan was always ready to tell the world about the misdeeds of the villains he knew.
‘Mary Jeffries,’ he began, ‘is responsible for the running of a number of bordellos in London.’
‘I know that.’
‘Yes, of course. But you may not know how she runs her empire of vice.’ Irene nodded. ‘She does it with the help of a number of devoted helpers. Let me quickly add that this devotion is anchored in self-interest. She sits at the top of the pyramid, but is propped by John Sallecartes...’
‘Oh yes, another Belgian. I have heard of him.’
‘Sallecartes is her recruiting sergeant. He works with a small team of like-minded scoundrels. Mary Watts whose official title is Secretary, is an assiduous inveigler of young innocent children. Another one is Franz Schultz, a handsome Lothario whose specialty is to dazzle nubile innocents, offer them meat pies, marshmallows and ice-creams, and make them fall in love with him so they can be more easily manipulated. Cachefesse is another, a wheeler-dealer handling overspill from the Jeffries stables. We know of four others. And of course there is Mr Charles Hammond who runs the male bordello in Cleveland Street, you know the one where the Prince Albert Victor was caught red-handed.’ The member caught may have been red, Irene mused, but it certainly was not a hand.
‘There may be more,’ Minahan continued. ‘These scoundrels locate vulnerable girls and promise them decent employment as seamstresses, and are then taken to meet Jeffries. That harridan is a dissimulator who could easily be earning a fortune for Mr Irving on the stage, such is her power of persuasion. These girls, some as young as eleven, are fed meats and puddings, dressed in colourful fineries, and once they’ve started trusting the wicked entremetteuse, she tells them that on account of their singular beauty, rich men on the continent would welcome them in their mansions, marry them and turn them into fashionable ladies and respectable housewives. They are furnished with passports and forged birth certificates, and indeed taken across the Channel, to Paris, Ostend or Brussels, but in no time at all, they’re sold to houses of ill-repute and forced to sell their fragile little bodies.’ Irene was surprised to see one tear drop fall from the gigantic Irishman’s eye. He blew his nose and continued. ‘In a foreign land with no friends, they have no one to turn to. Many of those wretched girls end up catching syphilis or die of consumption, and those who do not, are picked floating in the North sea, in the Meuse or in the Seine.’ Irene was speechless, but Minahan had not finished.
‘These criminals are handsomely remunerated by Jeffries who knows very well that for her business to prosper, she needed to humour and cosset her lieutenants. So, she usually rewards them by putting them in charge of one of her maisons closes, and sharing the massive profits with them. Which explains how Cachefesse was able to dress like a lord, run his personal handsome cab, and live in a luxurious apartment in Knightsbridge.’
‘But Inspector Minahan, where does Jasper Crablick come into this?’
‘Crablick was... eh... is Cachefesse’s errand boy. I’ve heard a rumour to the effect that he is the child of an erstwhile mistress, so he might well be his own son. I have as yet no idea how or why he lost his eye. All I can suggest is that one of the girls he was trafficking, on behalf of Cachefesse, himself acting on behalf of Jeffries, had a beau who had no intention of letting go of his inamorata.’ Irene looked at him, stunned.
‘Or it might be a settling of accounts between thieves,’ mused the Irishman.
Irene had the capacity of listening to the facts and simultaneously forming a plan to tackle the issues involved. Her friends at the Club said that she had two brains which could operate simultaneously on different matters. She felt that she had got a perfect grasp of the situation, but since the police had been kept in ignorance of the assault, there was no obvious angle from which to tackle the case. Further, Minahan had reported that no less a luminary than the eminent Septimus Mallalieu, Professor of medicine at University College was visiting the now convalescent boy twice a day at Cachefesse’s Knightsbridge abode. She asked Minahan if there was anything she could do. The dour Irishman shook his head. Not at the moment, he said, and bade Miss Adler good-bye.
‘Oh, but before I take my leave, I must tell you that the aforesaid Professor Mallalieu is well-known for his priapic cravings and as a result visits Cachefesse’s establishment four or five times a week, and is much beholden to the villain.’
______
Only a week after Jasper Crablick was rescued at Cremorne, Alfie was doing his rounds when he heard a soft moan behind the Pagoda. He shook his head and smiled. I am at it again, he told himself. After the first incident, he kept imagining stumbling on a wounded or beaten man every time he turned a corner. He had also had a few nightmares on the same theme. He had even once mistaken a log of wood for a prostrate man on his last legs. But another moan gave him a jolt. He tiptoed to the place it was coming from and saw a near lifeless man lying on the grass. A giant of a fellow, built like a boxer. He immediately saw that like Crablic
k, a week earlier, the man had a broken little finger and, to his horror, saw that his left eye was hanging out of its socket, wrapped in a coat of congealed blood like a bloodied Scotch egg. He almost expected a hansom cab with Cachefesse to arrive but as it did not this time, he had to run to a warden to ask him to send for help. He was surprised when a horse-drawn carriage from the St John’s Ambulance Brigade arrived within the hour and they took the badly bruised man away. The near-dying man declared to the police that he had tripped and badly hurt himself.
Thorke thought it best not to waste time worrying about the second “accident”, but he came across Minahan who had the habit of drinking one glass of ale every week at the Hound and Basket a couple of days later. It was Minahan who approached him and offered to stand him a drink. Since people, with the exception of Finns, it is said, went to the pub for two purposes, to drink and to make conversation, the park attendant could think of no better topic than what had happened at work during the week. Finns, conventional wisdom has it, visit bars only to drink. Minahan listened intently, nodding and pursing his lips, saying nothing, but he formed the hypothesis that the second victim was no other than Ironglove. He did not think it was meet to impart this knowledge to the park-keeper.
Ironglove was a well-known ex-boxer who had fallen on hard times, and with a sick wife he was devoted to, he never refused job offers. Minahan knew that he earned his crust as an Enforcer. For bad people, sadly. Early next morning, Minahan told his wife Barbara that he was aiming to seek clarification about another beating at the Cremorne, after telling her about his encounter with Alfie Thorke. Barbara made him an egg sandwich and a Dewar flask of tea. Her man liked it sweet, but they hadn’t bought any sugar in the last week and as there was very little of it left in the jar, she just put two spoonfuls in, when she knew that he would have liked four.
Sherlock Holmes Vs Irene Adler: A Duel of Wits (The Irene Adler Series Book 4) Page 9
