The Adventure of the Lady on the Embankment

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "It sounded plausible enough, Watson. There was nothing in what he'd said so far that was absolutely contradicted by the physical facts I had observed this morning. But still there were one or two points that bothered me.

  " 'Why didn't they turn up to claim her earlier?' I put the most obvious of them to him. 'Or contact the police as soon as she was missed?'

  " 'I wondered that too,' said the inspector. 'Sacker said they'd been out searching for her ever since she'd turned up absent from her bed, and hadn't seen a paper till this morning; the uncle had wanted to call the police, but Sacker had a horror of the publicity that would ensue, and wanted to search himself first. The uncle had convinced him to go to the Yard this morning, when they saw the article in yesterday's paper. The old doctor was quite done in by that time, and sent Sacker around alone to Bart's to collect her.

  " 'Well, she flew into one of her agitated fits when she saw her brother. Dr. Stanley had to give her a sedative before the nurses could get her bundled into the clothes he'd brought. Her coat, by the way, had an American label, so that fit. I took his address and sent them off in a hansom.'

  'You didn't go with them to see Miss Sacker safely bestowed in Camberwell?' I asked.

  'You're out there, Mr. Holmes,' said Lestrade with a chuckle. 'Though it seemed to me that he was more in need of protection than she. She got to be a bit of a wildcat there for a while. But they're not in Camberwell; they're in a rooming house in Hammersmith. You can't expect to be right in every little detail all the time, you know.'

  By this time I should have had alarm bells going off in my brain; but I was slow, Watson, culpably slow. I think I'm getting too old for this sort of work. Senile softening of the brain. I contented myself with taking down the address and sent him on his way, pleased with having the matter off his hands. I had planned to go see the new production of Faust at Covent Garden tonight, but that voice in the back of my brain sent me off to Hammersmith instead. I thought I'd just drop by and see Miss Sacker, perhaps apologize for my rather cavalier approach to her problems this morning, any excuse would do. When I got to the address this fellow had given Lestrade, it turned out to be a solicitor's office, sandwiched between a pub and a chemist's. You can imagine I felt pretty sick. I rang Lestrade up from the nearest Exchange-I sincerely hope I got him out of the bath-and fairly screamed at him to get himself and his people down to Camberwell. I've had four clients murdered in my career, as you know, Watson, and I had no desire to repeat the experience. I jumped back into my cab and dashed back to Baker Street, intending to follow on to the Yard. When I got home I found to my profound astonishment Mrs. Hudson in near hysterics, a cabman threatening to call the law, and this lady-dare I call her my client? her name is certainly not Violet Sacker-bleeding in the front hall.

  "And now, Madam," he went on, turning earnestly to the lady, "I want you to tell us both your story again. Try to be as coherent and complete as you can this time."

  She gave a little nod and began with what was under the circumstances unusual composure, although she still trembled slightly. Her speech was distinctly improved from earlier in the day. Indeed, it improved as her narrative went on, as if practice eased the flow of words.

  "That one-he was the same man I remembered from the green room- came for me at the hospital. They said he was my brother. I said he could not be; I was sure of it. I cannot tell you how I knew-I couldn't tell them how. That little doctor said, 'But if you can't remember anything, how do you know he isn't?' Ass," was her dispassionate indictment of Dr. Stanley. "I refused to go with him, but I could not fight them all. They held me down and gave me something that made me dizzy, and put me into the cab with him. I thought then that if I went with him I could find out something about where I came from, so I stopped fighting. We drove for a long time in the rain. I did not recognize anything we passed. He did not speak to me after we left the hospital."

  "Did you cross the river at any time?" interjected Holmes.

  "No."

  "One more thing. Can you describe the cab and the cabman?"

  "The cab was just ordinary, not very old. The horse was a little chestnut, about 15 hands or a little more, with a white off hind leg. The cabman was a middle-aged fellow, a little taller than I, neither fat nor thin, with a grey mustache. He had a reddish complexion, a lot of little broken veins in his nose and cheeks. Oh! The cab had a number on it. It was #36974."

  "That is all I need," smiled Holmes. "Go on."

  "We stopped and got out in a sort of dull residential area. I was still dizzy He took me by the arm and led me two blocks to a little wooded park. There was almost no one about, because of the rain. We went down along a raveled path among the trees to a small ravine. He drew a knife from his coat. I saw it flash out of the corner of my eye in the grey light. I tried to break from his grasp; that's when I was cut in the arm. It caught up under my coat sleeve. I hardly felt it at the time. Actually, it hurt less than-ah-these stitches.

  "Sorry," I said. "Just a few more."

  "I spun round in front of him and kicked him and ran back up the path." She paused thoughtfully. "He probably should have put the umbrella down first.

  "I ran until my head was swimming and I could hardly breathe, out of the park. I walked past a street of houses into a street of shops; everything was closed. Twilight was setting in. I stepped into the doorway of a shop. I found a handkerchief in the pocket of my coat and tied it tight around my arm. I looked around and saw a cab stand down the street. I scarcely knew where to go, but I wanted to get away before that little man found me again. I did not think I could be so lucky a second time. The cabman-I didn't tell him what had happened, but I must have looked strange to him-wanted to call a policeman, but I made him take me to you. I have about had it with the police. That man, Inspector Lestrade..." She shook her head, apparently unable to think of a word for the inspector.

  "How did you find my address?" Holmes asked curiously.

  "The cabman looked it up at the Post Office Exchange," she replied simply.

  I finished applying the dressing to the lady's arm and tied it off neatly. "Very workmanlike," approved Holmes. I pushed aside the mess left by my work and rose to pour us each a well-earned brandy. The lady refused hers with every sign of loathing. Holmes took his and swirled it thoughtfully around the glass.

  "Things are distinctly looking up," he said. "Thanks to our rather inept attempted murderer, there are now a vast number of new leads in this rather chaotic tangle. It now becomes a rather intriguing project to see where they will take us."

  "You have a theory?" I fished. "Who are those men, and why should they want to murder this lady now, when they had her a prisoner for so long totally at their mercy?"

  "Bravo, Watson," said the detective. "You have put your finger upon the primary missing link in our chain: motivation. It is not very difficult now to reconstruct what has happened. We even know why it was done. I am now concerned with finding the why behind the why, as it were."

  "Why the murder was attempted?" I asked, feeling very slow.

  "That puzzled me at first, I confess. It was not of a piece with the rest. Yet I think I can account for it. I am convinced it hinges upon this lady's remarkable memory. You do not see it? Let me recapitulate what we now know.

  "This lady has been kept a prisoner, drugged and helpless, for several weeks by two men, antecedents unknown. The one we have now seen upon our stage, the one who calls himself Ormond Sacker, has not cut a very impressive figure. I believe, however, that among that farrago of lies he told Lestrade he inadvertently let fall one true fact; his companion is a medical man. In truth, I've been waiting for someone with such a background to turn up in the case ever since we observed those spots upon the lady's scalp. This doctor is obviously the leader of the two, the dominant personality, and the engineer of our lady's amnesia. Why?

  "I theorize she was a witness, Watson, of a most unique sort. A witness whose eidetic memory would be unconfused by time, the pressure of sugges
tion, or the distortions of emotion. A witness whose memory of minute detail would make her a powerful threat to the most subtle plot or activity, one so camouflaged as to pass invisibly before the ordinary observer.

  "Her knowledge was a threat to these men; therefore her memory was deliberately destroyed. How, we do not yet know. But they stopped short of murder, or at least the leader did.

  "Then one day she manages to throw off her drugged stupor long enough to manufacture an escape. She falls almost at once into the hands of the police. Do they at once take steps to retrieve their captive? You saw how easily it could be done. But no, they wait two days.

  "I think there must have been a division in their ranks. The first decision was to let her go. After all, the trouble of keeping her a prisoner must have been a great one. The decision was made by the one whose belief in the permanency of her loss of memory was secure: the doctor. But Sacker, who had feared her from the first, was not convinced. As soon as an opportunity arose to evade his dominant companion, he made a unilateral expedition to eliminate the threat of her testimony once and for all. We know what happened then.

  "How criminals are so often their own worst enemies," he went on philosophically. "By Sacker's very attempt to make himself secure, he has drawn all our attention upon them and given us the leads necessary to continue our case. If he had let well enough alone, she would probably have spent some time institutionalized as an unclaimed madwoman whose testimony would be discounted by all around her. The dominant partner, the doctor, had the intelligence to foresee this and the self-control to stand back and let it happen. I predict it is going to be a pleasure doing business with that gentleman, Watson; intelligence has been a quality lamentably lacking in the criminal classes ever since the removal of the late Professor Moriarty.

  "Well, I now must be off to question the second cabman, if he hasn't taken to his heels in dismay by now. I gave him a few shillings and sent him around the corner to wait at the nearest pub. Then I must catch up with Lestrade and apprise him of this new turn of events. If you've no objection, I'd like to leave my client here under your medical care. In fact, if no one else turns up with a more legitimate claim to her, I should like you to take her on as a resident patient. If it won't incommode your household too much," he added as a palpable afterthought.

  "Um," I said noncommittally. My wife is a good woman, but propriety is very important to her. Sometimes I think it is by way of reaction, not to her American upbringing, which was all that could be wished, but rather to the suspicions of our less cosmopolitan acquaintances that anyone born west of Cornwall must necessarily be half wild Indian. I was not quite certain how she would react to the mysterious history of my proposed patient.

  "She will be safer here than at Bart's. No one knows she's here, and there's less chance of unsavory strangers wandering in and out unobserved," my friend went on persuasively in the face of my hesitation. "I'm sure her recovery would be speeded in the heart of a normal home, as opposed to the impersonal confusion of a hospital."

  "Would it be?" I asked.

  "You underrate your abilities, my dear fellow. Certainly it would. And you could be eyes and ears for me when I was unable to observe the lady myself. It would be a great convenience in the case to have free access to her time.

  Although not unaffected by his flattery, I was suspicious of the drift of his thinking. "I shouldn't get too carried away, Holmes," I said a little coldly. "She may be a convenient factor in the case to you, but she is also a woman in great mental distress. Any, ah, experiments you may have in mind would have to be evaluated in that light, as well as whether they would produce data for you."

  "I promise you, no experiments without your medical approval. I may take it as fixed, then? There's a good fellow."

  I found myself committed, and he took his leave.

  With a sigh I prepared to go rouse the housemaid to make up the spare bedroom and look after the personal needs of what was now my resident patient. The lady watched my face gravely, with misgiving.

  "Will I discommode your household, Doctor?" she asked abruptly. "Not at all," I answered immediately, in hearty reassurance.

  "You are a gentleman, I perceive." She smiled a dry, sad smile and followed me without further comment.

  ***

  The next morning found her improved still more in her speech and bearing, but still without any return of memory beyond the past three days. The housemaid served her breakfast in her room. Later in the morning I took the opportunity to conduct a more thorough neurological examination upon her. The results gave me food for thought. I found her reflexes and perceptions unimpaired. She could read with understanding and write, after some initial hesitation, without difficulty. Her understanding of mathematics was unhesitant and surprisingly good, from simple arithmetic through elementary calculus, but she could not remember how she had learned it. I became increasingly convinced that she had not suffered organic brain damage at all, and that the cause of her amnesia must be searched for among purely psychological factors. When not forced to engage in necessary or requested activities, she returned to her earlier quiet and withdrawn mode, not speaking unless spoken to directly.

  In the course of the morning as I encountered, not for the first time, some conversational awkwardness in addressing a lady with no name, and as she objected to the appellation of Violet Sacker, I elected to christen her "Miss Smith." "Miss Smith?" her attention riveted upon the name in sudden concentration. "Miss Smith..." she repeated slowly.

  "Could it be that I have hit upon your real name by accident?" I cried in astonishment.

  She shook her head with a puzzled frown. "No, I don't think so," she said. "But it must be very close. Smith. Smith."

  "Smithson?" I suggested. "Smithfield? Smithaven?" She fairly hissed with frustration in her hopeless effort to remember. "I don't know," she shrugged at last in defeat.

  On impulse I rattled off perhaps two or three dozen women's first names, but none produced a similar feeling of familiarity, so Miss Smith she became. I found the puzzle of her identity intruding continually upon my thoughts as I made my professional rounds that afternoon. If indeed her loss of memory was hysteric and not organic in origin, then the possibility of inducing its return became feasible. The vague feeling of recognition and non-recognition to which she admitted suggested the hope that it might not be buried so very far below the surface after all. Might not a familiar stimulus bring some image glimmering up through the deep chill water in which it had been drowned? The idea was an exciting one. The only problem lay in guessing what might be a familiar stimulus to her. I thought back over what Holmes had said during our first meeting with her, which now seemed much longer ago than yesterday morning. On a sudden bright impulse I stopped in at a pawnshop on my way home and made a purchase.

  Because she seemed so improved, and also to continue my observations, I had Miss Smith come down and attend supper with my wife and myself. It was not a great success, for my wife was rather nervous of her and so unable to help ease her out of her withdrawn silence, but nonetheless it produced a few new pieces of data. Her table manners were ladylike enough, suggesting that in spite of my impression of a certain roughness about her, she was not from the lower social classes. She held her knife and fork in the American manner, confirming Holmes's hypothesis of a principally American origin. She also continued to refuse wine or spirits in any form.

  After dinner we withdrew to the drawing room.

  "Do you play cards, Miss Smith?" inquired my wife after the initial bustle of getting settled had resolved into a silence whose length threatened to become uncomfortable.

  "I don't know," replied my patient with a frown.

  "Well, there's one way to find out," I said cheerily, cutting across the slight embarrassment I could see rising in my wife's cheeks at the feeling that she had committed a faux pas. I seated the ladies at the little table and dug out a card deck from the secretary desk. "If you can't remember a game, we'll teach you one," I
said, handing her the deck. "See if something comes back to you."

  She took the cards and held them in her hands a moment, as if weighing them. Then she cut them and began to shuffle. In spite of a certain stiffness from her injury, they whirred, blurred in her hands. A sudden grin passed over her face, like a patch of sunlight over a distant hillside on a cloudy day.

  "I don't remember a game, but I remember some card tricks." She eyed my wife a moment as if sizing her up. "Place your hands upon the table," she commanded Alicia, "and I will show you the even-odd trick."

  I nodded reassuringly at Alicia's questioning glance, and she placed her palms down upon the table.

  "Now, pick a small, even number," my patient continued. "Two?"

  "Fine. Now I will place two cards between each of your fingers. An even number, you see, between each finger-we count the thumb as a finger-of each hand. But between the last two fingers we place an odd card, one card. Now," she went on with easy, cheerful assurance, "I shall take each pair of cards from between your fingers and put them into two even piles. An even number of cards divided evenly into even piles. Now take the last card, the odd card that is left in your hand, and make one of the even piles odd."

  My wife complied with a polite, bewildered smile. I suddenly realized that my nearly two decades of climbing the seventeen steps to 22IB Baker Street had not been entirely profitless for my mental faculties.