The Case of the Swan in the Fog

by A S Croyle

  He did not answer. He just kept walking.

  Before returning to my office, I stopped at the British Museum and went to the room where a beautiful statue of Buddha was displayed. It was a Buddha Vairocana, a Tantric Buddhist image from eastern Java, tenth century. The statue was approximately thirty centimeters high and made of bronze. Buddha’s hands were outstretched, like those of a teacher, and represented a form of meditation that vanquishes ignorance. It had played an integral part in the last investigation in which Sherlock and I had been involved.

  My mind reeled back to a day I had been in this room, just a little over a year ago, when I met a lovely young man from India named Rabindranath Tagore, who had been studying in England. I had opened up to this stranger, confessed many of my feelings for Sherlock Holmes. He had told me, “Love is an endless mystery.” He’d also said, “Weeping is wasted, Miss, on one who does not understand why you cry.”

  I’d taken his words to heart. I’d tried very hard to stop wasting my tears on Sherlock Holmes. I didn’t think that lunch with Jonathan Younger was going to wipe away those tears forever.

  But it was a step in the right direction.

  Chapter 12

  When I arrived at my office, Penelope Potash was waiting for me. I knew at once that something was very wrong. There was a large welt on her cheek and a cut above her left eye.

  I took off my cape and so on and quickly ushered her into the examination room.

  “Penelope, what happened?”

  “A slight disagreement.”

  “I would hardly call this slight,” I said, gently touching her bruised cheek.

  She flinched and said, “It’s nothing.”

  “Was this done by the same man who beat you across your back, Penelope?”

  “Can we just do the treatment, please?” she asked as she removed her blouse.

  I just stared at her. She coughed and caught her breath. “A client,” she finally said.

  “A client? What kind of a client would do this to you? Was it the same man who assaulted you? Who beat you?”

  She pulled her blouse back together and fastened it. “No,” she said, a bit too adamantly. “Nothing to do with that.” She paused, looked down and then looked up at me. “What is it you think I do for a living, Dr. Stamford?”

  “I do not know, Penelope. You are a cordial, well-mannered, well-dressed young woman. I assumed-”

  “A dressmaker perhaps? Or that I work in a milliner’s shop? Or some other ladies’ shop?”

  I nodded, but remembered she’d said she could not avail herself of a privy in a shop because she could not afford to buy anything.

  “I walk the streets, Dr. Stamford. I may not look it. I don’t wear pink silk stockings or too much rouge. But that’s how I put food in my little girl’s stomach.”

  “But you don’t act like... you certainly don’t look like-”

  “You think all street women live down on Granby Street and hang out of their windows bare to the waist? Or that we all waltz up and down Haymarket from midnight til morn? I’ve earned a living that way. I’ve learned to steal so I could buy my daughter clothes. But I have regular gentlemen callers. Decent blokes. I have some who come on a weekly basis and I get two or three pound a week from each of them. So Mary - that’s my daughter - and I can at least afford more than a twelve-foot square room with a bed and a couple chairs and a coal cuttle and a slop pail. I meet the men at a house on James Street. The rooms are clean; there are large beds and a cheval glass. Before I built up a regular clientele, I charged five shillings per customer. Ten per day wasn’t all that unusual. It’s much better now. My artistic name is even in the Bachelor’s Pocket Book.”

  “The what?”

  She tossed her head back, golden curls falling to her waist as she laughed. “I suppose you never heard of it. It gives bachelors directions to a few houses and describes the women who are available. One of the girls is known as ‘Miss Gladiateur,’ like the famous French horse who won the English Triple Crown. She wears his colors and advertises that if you mount her, you’ll feel like you are galloping atop a thoroughbred. And me - they call me-”

  “Penelope,” I whispered. “Don’t.”

  “They call me the Mute Swan because I wear a nightdress with sleeves that look like swan wings, and I never say a word. I just do a little graceful dance, entwine and drape and bob and dunk when they ask. I used to watch them, the swans. I used to watch how they move.”

  She stared at me defiantly but then looked away.

  I, too, loved to watch the swans, back in the Broads and here in London, in the river at Victoria Park. Suddenly, my head filled like a poet with a flood of confused, erotic thoughts about love and lovemaking, I remembered how mesmerized I was by them. By how they moved and how they glided across the water, the shiny edges of their delicate feathers glistening in the sunlight. The way they mated always fascinated me. A pair would angle their heads and look at each other and then they would move as one, like an accomplished dancing pair on the floor of a great ballroom. Necks entwined, one bird’s neck draped over his partner’s, they would caress each other, circling and touching cheek to cheek, moving slowly like white clouds across a violet-blue sky. I’d watch them through to satisfaction, always a little aroused and filled with desire - and envy - myself.

  I touched her shoulder. “Penelope, tell me who did this to you. If it is the same man who caused the injuries to your back, he must be stopped. I have friends at the Yard. I-”

  She shrugged my hand away. “A man. Just a man.”

  I sat down in front of her and tilted her chin upward. “Penelope. How did you come to have to live like this?”

  She tried to look away again but I persisted. “You are not from Cheapside or Covent Garden or Haymarket.”

  “No, I am not. I was raised in... in a nice place. My father was a kind and wonderful man. But he died. And I was not permitted to take his place as I should have been. As I trained all my life to be. And then... and then I found myself with child and the man... he was very powerful, and very married. He sent me away. He said he was sending me to a safe place. He sent me to a woman in Knightsbridge who ran several brothels. She dressed her ladies well - many of my dresses were costly, made in Paris, and I had jewels. Some real, some not. Most of the good ones I’ve pawned. But when the baby was born, she tossed us both out, so I found work on the streets. I took lodgings on Dorset for a while. Then on New Street in Bishopsgate. Eventually I was able to make the connection to my present accommodation house. And the chap who runs it - he’s good to Mary.”

  “Oh, Penelope,” I whispered, taking her hand.

  She smiled weakly. “That’s not my real name. I’m Kate. Kate Dew.”

  “All right. Kate, then. Kate, the first time you came to see me... you said that you saw something that you shouldn’t. What was it?”

  She stood up abruptly. “I’ve said more than I should. Might you give me some more medicine? For the cough?”

  “Of course.”

  I went to my medicine cabinet and retrieved a small bottle. She outstretched her hand and tried to drop a sovereign into my hand. I folded her fingers over her palms. “Keep it. You and Mary need it more than I.”

  “I don’t want your charity.”

  “Don’t consider it charity then. Consider it payment for an enlightening, educational afternoon. After all, prior to today, I knew nothing of the Bachelor’s Pocket Book.”

  She actually giggled at that but she still slipped the sovereign into my pocket.

  I was about to hand it to her when one of Sherlock’s young errand boys came rushing into the office.

  “Miss! ’ere. A message from Mr. ’olmes.”

  I recognized the boy; his name was Rattle and he was about eight or nine years of age. Still thin as a scarecrow, still wearing o
veralls and a frayed cap above his black, sleek hair, he always remnded me of a street sweeper. “One moment, Rattle,” I cautioned. “I am with a patient.”

  I gave the bottle to Kate and said, “I’ll see you next week, Kate.”

  She nodded and left.

  As I took the message from Rattle, a thought split through my brain like lighting rupturing the sky. I stopped and stared into space.

  They call her the mute swan, I thought. In that despicable, deplorable bachelor’s guide to women of the night. Her father had died, leaving her penniless. Her father, she’d said earlier, had had to make a living by cleaning urinals at St. James Palace for four shillings a week when he could not do his regular job.

  The boy Sherlock had spoken to, Thomas Abnett, told him that a Deputy Swankeeper had died, but his son stayed on for a while and then disappeared. Abnett said he was very distressed that is father was treated shabbily. And there was something else. What was it? Yes, I thought, I remember. Something to do with a member of Privy Council and the boy.

  Kate had told me that she had trained all her life to fill her father’s shoes in his occupation. But she was not permitted to take his place. Why? Why couldn’t she? Because she was a girl, not a boy? Because her gender was discovered when this married man, her lover, made her pregnant and sent her away?

  ‘They call me the Mute Swan because I wear a nightdress with sleeves that look like swan wings,’ she’d said.

  What if Kate knew all about swans, had been trained by her father to become a swan keeper, but could not occupy such a position because she was a girl? What if she and her father had hidden that fact from everyone but then, with her pregnancy, she was turned out on the streets by the Queen?

  “Rattle!” I shouted. “Rattle, I have a job for you,” I said as I knelt down and placed my hands on his shoulders. “That young woman who just left. The pretty one wearing the blue dress. You saw her, didn’t you?”

  He nodded.

  I reached into my pocket and held the sovereign out to him. “This is yours. Follow her. Follow her and then come back and tell me exactly where she lives. Now she may go to James Street or she may go to New Street in Bishopsgate.”

  “Worlds apart, Miss.”

  “I know. But I must know both addresses. Another half-crown to you if come back here with both addresses.”

  “But the message from Mr. ’olmes...”

  “Yes, yes, give it to me. Now hurry so you do not lose sight of the woman. And do not let her know you are following her, Rattle.”

  “Me, Miss? Rattle is like a shadow.”

  He quickly turned and dashed down the hall.

  “Run,” I whispered. “Run, run, little shadow.”

  Chapter 13

  Sherlock’s message was cryptic, as usual. “Currently out of the Metropolis. Expect to have much information beyond the obvious facts when I return. Should be back tomorrow evening. Meet me at Four Swans Inn, Bishopsgate at seven.”

  “Bishopsgate,” I said to myself.

  Bishopsgate was named after one of the original eight gates, in the London Wall. It was one of the main entrances to the city built by the Romans to defend their strategically important port town on the River Thames, Londinium. Many old coaching inns that accommodated passengers setting out on the Old North Road were there... the Old Bull Inn, the Flower Pot, the White Hart. It was thought that some of these inns were built on cellars constructed by the Romans. Until the railway lines out of Liverpool Street had opened a few years before, the inns were always busy with passengers and goods transported by wagon. Even now, many men leaving their offices for home would stop at one of these taverns after work. Despite the decrease in coaching passengers, they did a good bar trade.

  Swans dominated the motif on Bishopsgate and Gracechurch Streets. At the south end of Gracechurch was the Four Swans. To the north, was the One Swan, and not far from there was Two Swans Inn. I’d been to the Four Swans only once with Uncle Ormond when London Hospital was short-staffed and desperate enough to allow even a woman doctor to lend a hand. I remembered the rump steak and kidney pudding and the balcony above the courtyard with its beautiful depiction of four stately swans. I thought of the mutilated swans and Kate Dew’s “artistic name.”Had Sherlock discovered a link between her and the swan investigation as well?

  I tended to several more patients, all the while thinking about Kate and what Sherlock was up to. I gave thought to contacting Mycroft to tell him of Sherlock’s whereabouts but I didn’t really know them. I knew only that, for whatever reason, he wasn’t in London. I was about to close up my office when Rattle returned, out of breath, panting, as always.

  “Miss, I’m back.”

  “I see that Rattle. What did you find out?”

  “The lady... she went to a place on James Street. Stayed on an ‘our. Jus’ ’bout. Then t’ New Street. Buller’s ’ouse.”

  “Is it a workhouse?”

  He shook his head. “More a dosshouse, Miss. ‘Cross from th’ Bishopsgate police station.”

  “Cheap lodging then.”

  He nodded. “Wiggins knows th’owner. Will’m Buller and ’is wife Eliza. Moved from St. Giles.”

  He went on to say that the house was not far from some warehouses owned by St. Katherine’s Dock Company and the East India Depot, and a fire station. It was close to the Liverpool Railway Station... and not far from Spitalfields. I was sure Wiggins knew the area well. Despite the traffic to the taverns, the East End was not the most hospitable portion of London. If I met Sherlock there, I might just take young Wiggins with me.

  Chapter 14

  I picked at dinner that night. I was not hungry for one thing. Secondly, Aunt Susan had hired a new cook and she wasn’t very good. After Martha, the previous cook, was fired for having let Sherlock into the house without consent, Aunt Susan hurriedly looked for someone else. Sherlock had persuaded Martha to give him a key to the servants’ door to let himself in as part of an elaborate ruse to catch out the British Museum murderer. She was tangled in one of Sherlock’s spidery webs and, ultimately, his plan had served to free my uncle from gaol and send the real killer to the gallows. But no amount of persuasion on his part, nor mine, would dissuade Aunt Susan from terminating Martha. The servants were permitted no visitors without permission; certainly no one was allowed to have a key to the house, not even Sherlock Holmes.

  I stayed up long after Aunt Susan retired to wait for my uncle. I lit a fire, gathered an array of gas lamps, sipped port, and passed the time reading Effie’s journal, the one she had entrusted to her cousin Oscar Wilde to give to me when he saw fit. He’d done so a year after she passed away giving birth to my nephew. I had never been able to read all of it. I read it in fits and starts because so often the memories pressing into my heart were as painful as a bird savagely pierced against a long, sharp thorn. I turned now to an entry in what she called the Last Diary of Euphemia O’Flahertie Stamford. She’d made it early in her pregnancy.

  6 October 1876

  “I am puzzled - and frightened - by a dream I had last night. I was wading in the river... in Victoria Park, I believe. I was encircled by swans. So beautiful. White like those we would find in the shady woodlands and hedgerows near your parents’ home. They reminded me of enchanted nightshade - you know the ones with the little white flowers and the soft, downy feathers. Their wings were like that.

  “Then, all at once, the swans surrounded me; their wings flapped violently and then they pounced upon me and one began biting me from the base of my neck to further down my spine. Savagely pushing me down further and further into the water though I tried desperately to get to the shore. Down, down. And suddenly my head went beneath the water. I would rise, gasp, make a mewing sound as the swan pushed me back down, beating me with its wings. But then another swan came, challenging my attacker. She was almost airborne as she attacked m
y assailant full from the rear, biting and beating him with her wings. Again and again with feet and wings and bill. I realized it was you, you who was saving me, circling around and around me to protect me like a warrior-maiden.

  “But it was too late. I went limp and sunk down, deep, deep into the dark water. I saw faces. Hundreds of faces and dead eyes. No bodies, Poppy. Just heads, bodiless heads, bobbing about.

  “I don’t know what it means.”

  I shut the journal. Often Effie’s dreams manifested themselves in some kind of terrible and real event. Obviously, she had, in her own strange way, foreseen my involvement with the swan case that we were investigating. But there was more to it than that. These heads, these faces... I could not help but wonder if the swans were in some way connected to this dismembered body Wiggins had dug up.

  It was close to midnight when Uncle came home. I heard him come in, latch the door, and call out to Aunt Susan. I shouted to him and he came to the library door. Though he was now in his early fifties, Uncle was still a very handsome man. He was athletic, fair-haired, but now sported a grizzled moustache and beard. Like Sherlock, Uncle had curious ways and eerie tricks of spotting details that others missed.

  “Uncle Ormond, you’re very late. Aunt Susan is asleep.”

  “He sighed. Very busy day. And night. A young woman came into the hospital just as I was leaving. She had tried to abort her child. She botched it and the uterus prolapsed. I was unable to save her.”

  “I’m so sorry. Are you alright?”

  “I am a surgeon. I suppose I should be used to it by now. But one never gets used to it. So, may I join you?”

  “Of course.” I rose, poured some port into a glass and handed it to him. We sat down in the wing chairs that flanked the fireplace.

  He swirled the wine so hard it almost splashed out of his glass. “I ran into two young men of your acquaintance today.”

  “Who might they be?” I asked, knowing full well the answer.