Sherlock Holmes Vs Irene Adler: A Duel of Wits (The Irene Adler Series Book 4)

by San Cassimally

  ‘Tell the visitors from London about her ladyship,’ someone ventured.

  ‘Sshh...’

  ‘What about her ladyship then?’ Irene asked. The small crowd looked at each other, obviously dying to tell, but scared that somehow if the bosses got to hear they might go the same way.

  ‘A maid said that the Lord had strangled her in a fit of rage,’ a thin man with angry eyes said boldly. ‘I don’t care who knows I spoke,’ he added defiantly.

  After that confession, it was like a dam of memories had burst, and stories came gushing out. Someone mentioned that the ghost of her ladyship was known to walk on the battlements at midnight. We have heard her howl in pain. I have felt her presence when I am collecting wood. Sometimes I hear crying and I know it’s her. She was too kind for this world. His lordship was allowed to do as he pleased. He’s above the law.

  The enthusiasm of the prospective buyers dampened considerably, and their decision to buy the place seemed to be subject to some spontaneous rusting in the emanations of the wickedness they had just heard. They had half decided to make an offer to Crackspill before wending their way back to London, but finally they went away saying nothing. The house remained on the market for a good few more months.

  ______

  When the Club got back to Water Lane, they quickly convened round a flask of the best Sherry which they had plundered from Boccherini and Watsons only a couple of weeks ago. It may be useful to remind readers about the famous (infamous?) Club des As. Armande le Solliec, once a fan-dancer at the Follies de Paris in Shaftesbury Avenue was the French widow of an esteemed wood merchant, Ebenezer Lowchin, who had swept her off her feet, married her, made a will in her favour and then promptly expired. Or, as Bartola put it, behind Armande’s back, ‘The man had the generosity to die young.’ She had inherited a sprawling if dilapidated mansion in Water Lane, in genteel Brixton. She had thought that if she converted the house into smaller units and rented them out, she would not only never be short of companionship, but would, besides, augment the revenue which Mr Lowchin had with great foresight, arranged for her, and thus afford herself greater comfort. Thus it was that over just four years, she had had a number of tenants, mostly people who stayed for no more than three months. If she entertained cordial relationships with all of them, there were a privileged few with whom she developed deep and sincere friendships. These people were more than friends, and they formed the core of the Club de As. Initially they met once a week, usually on Wednesdays, and Armande, an accomplished patissière baked tartes and macaroons for them, and they spent the evening drinking a variety of wines and liqueurs and gorging themselves.

  This circle of friends consisted of Artémise Traverson, a talented but unrecognised artist who had featured in the Salon des Réfusés in Paris, in 1863, but although the cognoscenti agreed that the works shown there were superior to what was exhibited at the Salon Officiel, nothing much came out of it. He had left his native France in disgust, and vowed that he would not return until his compatriots learnt to tell chaff from corn. Anatole Frunk was a Swiss financier who was so dispirited by the underhand practices tolerated in Swiss banking, that he thought that a life of crime might be less dishonourable. He came to London, bent on enriching himself by masterminding a really big coup, but as he was a prisoner of his conscience, he could not commit any seriously dishonest act. Unless one thinks of gambling as one, for this was how he made a modest living. He had discovered that the dens of Wellington Street indulged in a number of felonious moves, which he used to his advantage, to defraud them in turn. There was the Bishop, only a modest parish vicar really, who had lost his faith when he read Mr Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. He was a fount of knowledge which extended well beyond matters scriptural. There was Hugh Probert from the valleys who had destroyed his thespian career by being too good. It’s one of the weirdest stories one could hear: After his first appearance on the London stage, the critics found that they had to coin neologisms to extol the talent of the man. His rise was spectacular, but his fall was bathetic. Whilst waiting in the wings, Emilia Latherby who was playing Goneril had been watching Probert playing Lear, deliver the famous lines: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!/ You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout/ Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks.” The passion he put in these lines drove Emilia to such a fit of uncontrollable tears, that when she had to order Gloucester’s eyes to be gouged, she turned to the audience and apologised. No, she explained, she had seen the light, she refused to give that order. This caused consternation in the audience which soon gave way to a bout of collective hysterical laughter. The play ended in a riot and the devotees of stagecraft demanded their money back. Although Probert was not in any way at fault, the theatre owner (who kept Emilia as his mistress) blamed him for his loss of revenue and promised that he would make sure that no respectable theatre would ever hire him. That was the end of his promising career. Armande helped wean him from the alcoholism he had fallen victim to, and he swore eternal gratitude and devotion to her. Algie, or Lord Clarihoe was Irene’s best friend. He was a Uranian who took lodgings at Water Lane when his father kicked him out for being an invert. Later he and Irene would undergo a marriage blanc to placate his sire. Coleridge also had an interesting theatrical history. Born to slave parents, his unique voice was identified by the church organist who helped him along the path to bel canto. In America, however, it was unheard of for black artists to tread the planks, but Mordecai Asher, an enterprising impresario decided to let him sing Verdi’s Otello without advertising the fact that he was an authentic black man. The audience had raved at the excellence of his performance (and his make-up), and the critics had extolled his performance to the skies. But when the news leaked out that he had not needed to blacken his face, a lynch mob demanded that he be hanged on the nearest tree. He escaped and found his way to England, where he was told (wrongly) that he stood a better chance of realising his potential. He was now working as a stage-hand. He had met Irene who was playing a minor part in the same theatre, and for a time they had become lovers. She thought very highly of him, and had put his name forward to the Club. There was also the aristocratic Anton Vissarionovich Chekhonte, the Russian revolutionary who had sworn that he would never go back to Muscovy before his cousins the Romanovs were deposed. Bartola, an Italian widow wrongly accused of poisoning her husband, but still ostracised, was another member of that exclusive club. The irony was that subsequently she did develop a platonic interest (and expertise) in poisons. Each and everyone of these worthies had clearly demonstrated their total devotion and fidelity to the spirit of the Club. They never carried out rituals like cutting their forearm and mingling their blood, but each one would nonetheless stand in the path of a bullet aimed at any single one of their numbers.

  Initially, they socialised and tried to set the world to rights, but after Irene, then fresh to Water Lane nearly became the victim of a thieving lover, and dramatically turned the tables on him and ended up with the man’s wallet instead, they sat down one evening and agreed on a set of rules which can be summed up in one sentence: Honestly acquired chattels were the sacred possessions of their rightful owner. From this simple tenet many corollaries could be derived. An obvious one was: Once someone is identified as being a profiteer, attempts at depriving him or her of some or all of his or her ill-gained goods were absolutely legitimate. If the law failed to protect an individual, then the Club would. As they discovered that collectively they had a battery of skills, they turned into a powerful force, to fight evil, they claimed. They believed that it was their right to indulge in the good things of life, and quickly developed the means of acquiring them. They had cases of the best Champagne and the best wines, deviated from the warehouses of the wheeling-dealing wine importers who believed in profits in excess of one hundred percent, in whose depots they broke with the ease of flies through barely open windows. Although at first only Lord Clarihoe had enjoyed caviar, the others soon took to it, when they f
ound that they were able to lay hands on boxes of the stuff, for which the fishermen of the Caspian sea were paid peanuts and which fetched hundreds of pounds at Masons & Sacerdoti and similar places run for the rich. Smoked Salmon. Canard Confit. Confitures and Conserves. Jellied fruits. Dried figs and apricots. Plover eggs. Parma hams.

  They quickly discovered that to accomplish their agenda, they needed to develop a number of useful skills. Thus it was that they set about devising and learning, among other things, lip-reading from a distance, using binoculars, to eavesdrop on the conversation of dubious individuals they were interested in. Irene and the artist Traverson made a thorough study of graphology, with the main aim of identifying forgeries. The same pair devised the means of identifying a suspect or person of interest by producing a likeness by putting together different bits of facial features, until the witness agreed about the similarity. Irene had an inborn propensity for opening any locking system. They had tools for making whatever was necessary in the pursuit of their ventures, honest or otherwise.

  Coming back from Hertfordshire, they held a meeting, and it suffices to record its conclusion: There was no way they were going to put seventy thousand pounds in the pocket of the villainous, possibly murderous Lord Sternton, for whom they had developed an unmitigated distaste after hearing the stories of the peasants.

  ______

  Crackspill had been disappointed when Lord Clarihoe (in whose name the property would have been bought) said that he was not ready to make an offer. However, the man was satisfied that once the news of the sale had circulated, buyers would rush from all the corners of the kingdom. He had heard that some American nouveau-riches were keen on acquiring English castles. However he was soon disabused of this optimistic expectation. He could not understand why there was so little interest in such a prestigious property, but had heard those uncivilised peasants talk about strange happenings in the night, about the place being haunted. Is that what was scaring away prospective buyers? He had no more than one enquiry per week, but this left him unfazed, for he knew that his lordship was in no great hurry. It was then that things really started going bump in the night with a vengeance. If in the beginning, no one would declare that he or she had heard the wailing, or seen weird things, it had always been hearsay. Now suddenly people looked really frightened and swore that they had seen with their own eyes, “as clearly as I see you”, and heard with their own ears, of strange happenings. Crackspill was determined to contain the fear and confusion now rapidly spreading like poisonous fumes, and summoned Bill the Ox who looked after the flock of labouring beasts. If the heathenish labour force would listen to anybody, it was Bill.

  Bill, in spite of his huge size and baritone voice, walked in gingerly, so much was Crackspill held in awe, for the man had power of life and death over them. Once he dismissed you, there was only starvation to look forward to. Sit down man, barked the Manager.

  ‘Now Bill, I want your people to stop this nonsense, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Bill, blinking, completely unaware of what nonsense the boss meant. He knew that Crackspill meant for him to leave now, but he could not.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, sir, I will do as you say, but what nonsense are you talking about?’

  ‘What nonsense, he asks?’ Crackspill confided to an invisible presence on his left. ‘This business about ghosts and ghouls.’

  ‘Oh no, sir, no one saw no ghosts or ghouls.’

  ‘Right then. Just tell them to stop it, right?’ Bill the Ox was still not ready to leave.

  ‘What we saw sir, as clearly as I am seeing you now... I was there. It were a flame shooting up from the west turret. Yes sir, everybody saw it.’

  ‘No, you saw nothing of the sort,’ shouted Crackspill. Bill began to tremble. He did not want to lose his job, seeing that Martha was big.

  ‘No sir,’ Bill admitted, but he heard himself say, ‘The wail sir, the wail. Everybody must have ’eard the wail, even in Tring.’

  ‘Rubbish, get out of my sight, you damn fool.’

  ‘It was her ladyship sir, but she were not alone, sir.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean, Ox?’

  ‘Well sir, she must’ve made friends down there in the netherworld sir, and invited them to visit the place where she ’ad suffered so much.’

  It was too much for Crackspill. He stood up, took two steps towards the Oxman, and hit out at his face with the back of his hand three or four times. He then made a grab for his whip, pounced on the man, and lashed at him on both sides of his face in quick successive whacks, only narrowly missing his eyes. He left the poor man on the floor and banged the door as he left. Bill slowly rose and staggered to the door, outside of which Martha, expecting just such an outcome, was waiting to help her dear man home and nurse the cuts on his face.

  Bill intimated to his fellow workers that they ought to stop relating what they kept seeing and hearing every night now. Crackspill, who unsure of what he himself had heard in the night, decided to go abroad one midnight, and came back home trembling, after having witnessed ghostly flames shoot up, and clearly heard phantasmagorical wails mixed with laughter and moans. He could not deny it. He had no choice but to inform Lord Sternton about it.

  Sometimes you pay for your sins, for his lordship treated him in much the same way as he had dealt with Bill the Ox. Slaps followed by lashes with the crop. More, for when he fell down on his knees, the August Leopold added a few kicks to the part of his anatomy which made him suspect, at least momentarily, whether he would be able to father a little brother for his beloved Eugenia, as he had promised.

  It was this that led Lord Sternton to summon Sherlock Holmes to Highbury. The detective sent word that if anybody wanted to use his services, the customary thing was for them to come to Number 221B Baker Street after an epistolary request. It is easy to imagine that the detective was not inclined to form a positive preconception of the man who duly knocked on his door four days later, as arranged and began by asking him if he had any idea of who he was. Holmes chose not to answer the question, and showed him to a chair opposite his desk. Adopting his familiar pose of legs stretched forward under his desk as far as they would go, and putting his hands together allowing the fingers of one hand to just skim their counterparts in the other, he nodded at his visitor, and said, ‘If you would be so kind, Lord Sternton, do tell me in simple terms what I can do for you.’

  His lordship was not used to be spoken with cold formality by anybody from an inferior stratum, but he knew that he needed the detective more than the detective needed him.

  ‘Well Holmes, I take it you are a modern man.’

  ‘I cannot answer that question, as people have different views about the meaning of the word modern.’ Not the answer his lordship was expecting. Further it was delivered with cold clarity.

  ‘I mean you’re not superstitious or anything?’

  ‘Again, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by superstitious. Some people claim that a belief in God is superstitious.’

  ‘Of course that’s not what I mean. Every good person believes in God. That’s not superstitious.’

  ‘I know some good people who do not. I myself plan to look into Mr Darwin’s writings when I retire.’ Sternton had to try hard to keep his irritation in check.

  ‘Right then, do you believe in ghosts?’

  ‘The eminent Mr Arthur Conan Doyle is convinced that fairies do exist. He also believes that the dead don’t just disappear and that communication with them is not only possible, but does happen on a regular basis.’

  ‘We are getting nowhere. Would you come to Sternton Castle to look into what my peasants call ghostly manifestations.’ Holmes did not immediately reply.

  ‘I will pay you handsomely of course.’ Holmes wondered whether they would agree on a definition of handsome in this case, but said nothing. He had an open mind about what was being proposed, and there was an offer to investigate an area which interested him quite considerably. For people l
ike him, twenty-fours hours in one day were not enough to accomplish half the targets they set themselves. He would be a fool not to jump on this offer- and earn something to boot. Yes, he would.

  ‘I would expect a deposit of ten guineas before I set out,’ Holmes, who usually never worried about his financial returns, said calmly.

  ______

  He left Euston on Monday morning for Tring. Railway travel had always held a boyish fascination for him, but one would have read the excitement on his face, unless one looked closely at his lips, which were uncharacteristically if almost imperceptibly curved upwards for the whole fifty-two minutes it took to accomplish the journey. Once outside the Railway Station, he hired a hansom and asked to be taken to Sternton.