The Women of Baker Street

by Michelle Birkby

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of him.’ I shrugged, hoping that neither John nor Mary would cry out Sherlock’s name across the room next time they visited. (I had no fear Mr Holmes himself would visit. He might be in the building, but he would never be so sentimental as to stand by my sick bed.) ‘I am just a . . .’ I started to say. Just a what? Who could I possibly be to justify a position in a private ward? ‘Just a retired nanny. I used to look after a mill-owner’s children, but now they’re all grown up. They don’t forget their old nanny though.’ That should do it. Old nannies were looked after, everyone knew that, but no one had any interest in anyone who came from trade.

  Flo lay back on her pillows, obviously disappointed.

  ‘You’ve upset her,’ Eleanor Langham said, her blue eyes gazing at me, as if she could detect me in the lie. I stared back, as innocently as I could. ‘Flo likes to collect famous people. She thought she had a prize in you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, smiling at Flo. She nodded at me, losing interest.

  ‘Now all she has is Emma Fordyce,’ Eleanor said, gesturing towards the woman in the bed between her and Flo, the elderly lady with the dyed blonde hair and sparkling brown eyes and a pink bed jacket. I had heard her singing to herself earlier, a ballad I had known as a child. She seemed only half aware of what was going on around her, but she also seemed happy, smiling and laughing to herself. Something about her fine-boned face did tug at a memory in me, but I couldn’t tell what.

  ‘She is famous?’ I asked.

  ‘When she was young,’ Flo explained eagerly. Her bed was covered in her usual dubious gossip papers – as well as the Illustrated Police News, which was not suitable reading for a lady. (Of course I read it. That’s how I know it wasn’t suitable.) ‘She was a great . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she searched for the right word.

  ‘Tart,’ Betty supplied.

  ‘Courtesan,’ Miranda Logan corrected her, not looking up from her paper.

  ‘Lover,’ Flo said, glancing at Emma. Whatever Emma was, Flo obviously had a great deal of affection for her. I wondered if they had known each other before, or whether they had simply been in this ward together a very long time.

  ‘I see,’ I said. I’m not good at drawing people out with conversation. It is normally Mary who chatters, seemingly artlessly, persuading people to tell her all kinds of things, whilst I watch their face and hands, and other people’s reactions. Left to my own devices, I had no idea how to get people to talk.

  Flo, however, just talked with or without encouragement.

  ‘She has some amazing stories, about kings and politicians and poets,’ Flo confided.

  ‘Stories or lies,’ Eleanor said sharply. I really did not like this woman. ‘When she can remember. She’s quite batty now, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Silly old cow,’ the elderly lady Emma said suddenly. I stifled a laugh – Flo giggled.

  ‘See what I mean?’ Eleanor said sharply. ‘She doesn’t have the faintest idea what’s going on.’

  But I suspected from the gleam in Emma Fordyce’s eyes that at that precise moment she was in a state of perfect clarity.

  ‘I don’t think we should be placed in a ward with such people,’ Betty Soland said, sniffing. ‘It’s not respectable.’

  ‘That’s not what you said the other night when she was telling us about the King of Bohemia,’ Flo said sharply. ‘I saw your eyes gleaming; you were hanging on every detail.’

  ‘The present king’s father,’ Emma said suddenly, sitting up and looking directly at me. Her voice was low and sweet. ‘I was a blonde. I understand the current King of Bohemia prefers clever brunette opera singers.’

  She smiled at me, a mischievous grin that was utterly enchanting. I could see more than a trace of the charms that could have ensnared princes. Her eyes were intelligent now, and bright. She must mean Irene Adler, of course – how had she guessed I knew her? She may have been losing her memory, but in her moments of lucidity she was obviously very sharp.

  The woman in the bed to my left cried out, then was silent again. She hadn’t joined in the conversation at all. She merely lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, her face drawn. She looked like a picture of an early Christian martyr – not peaceful, but agonized.

  ‘Sarah Malone,’ Flo said, staring at her. ‘She’s dying.’

  ‘She’s taking her time about it,’ Eleanor said harshly. ‘See her hands? See how they move on the sheets? She’s saying the rosary. She’s a Catholic.’ Her voice dripped with scorn.

  ‘She doesn’t have any beads,’ I said.

  ‘A good Catholic doesn’t need the beads,’ Miranda told me. ‘The hands remember. The words come, the hands move, the mind supplies the beads.’

  ‘She seems in pain,’ I said to her. Miranda looked over at the thin grey woman, her white and brown hair scattered over the pillow.

  ‘They give her morphine,’ Flo told me, as if defending the nurses.

  ‘It is not pain of the body,’ Miranda told me. There it was again. Her voice, her accent, her grammar was all perfectly English, but there was a slight hesitation, as if she had to form her speech in her mind before she spoke.

  I looked across at the empty bed.

  ‘Who was she?’ I asked. The others stirred. Perhaps it was not the done thing to ask about the dead. We were all too close to death ourselves.

  Eventually, Eleanor answered. ‘She was only here two days. She wasn’t very ill.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Flo pointed out.

  ‘It happens that way sometimes,’ Betty said. ‘Very suddenly.’

  ‘Very suddenly,’ Emma repeated softly. We were all silent, each with her own morbid thoughts.

  But you never have time to be silent and still in a hospital. There is always something going on. I heard a rattle, and everyone brightened up as the tea trolley, pushed by a nervous young girl with squeaky shoes, entered.

  I had questions. I tried to remember them for when Mary came round – it was so frustrating to not be at home! I could have gone to the library, or Mr Holmes’ collection of newspapers in the garret. Or sent Billy up there, or wherever I needed him to go. I was worried I would have forgotten the questions by the time Mary came round again.

  Who was Emma Fordyce, and what exactly had she done in her scandalous past?

  Who was Sarah Malone, and why did she suffer so?

  Emma Fordyce would be easy to research, due to her notorious past, but a woman called Sarah Malone would be far harder to track down. All I knew was that she was Catholic, and I deduced given that, and her name, she was probably Irish. All of us here were special patients, friends of the Friends of St Bartholomew’s, or staff here. That meant someone had made an effort to place her here – maybe that would be a lead.

  The last question wasn’t one Mary could answer. I’d have to find an answer myself. I sat and sipped my tea and thought about it. Why, exactly, did Miranda Logan watch Emma Fordyce so hard? Because I had seen her. She read her newspapers, yet every time Emma moved, or spoke, Miranda looked up, and didn’t take her eyes off her until Emma was quiet again. She paid no one else the same attention. In fact, she barely spoke to us. She had briefly shown a spark of interest in me, when the ward had discussed if I was ‘the Mrs Hudson’ but that had faded. She occasionally looked at Sarah Malone, but given what Miranda Logan had said, I felt that was no more than a fellow feeling for another Catholic.

  I felt sure that Miranda Logan was not ill. She claimed to be tired, but her eyes were bright, and she moved freely, almost impatiently around the ward. John had set me to watch and learn, and this was my first lesson. Miranda Logan was here to watch Emma Fordyce, whether for good or ill.

  A LITTLE BIT OF SCANDAL

  Another restless night. It is impossible to sleep in a hospital. Someone is always groaning, someone else talking. There are always footsteps in the corridor outside, even up and down the ward. Sounds are magnified so the scratching of a pen on the page becomes an intolerable racket. Oth
er people breathe and snore and toss and turn and keep you awake until you are trembling with rage at their noise. Sarah Malone muttered. Betty Soland knitted (she was apparently proud of her ability to do so in the dark), and it is amazing how loud knitting needles are at 3 a.m. Flo Bryson got up six times in the night to use the conveniences. By the time 6 a.m. arrived, and the first medicines were dispensed, I was more exhausted than I had been the previous evening. I also fully understood how people in crowded rooms could snap and kill each other. I spent a good hour that morning planning how to destroy Betty’s knitting needles.

  Therefore, I dozed all morning, only half aware of Emma telling Flo a series of scandalous stories that only got more so as Betty tutted. Flo was Emma’s main audience, and she lapped up every word, punctuating every tale with oohs and aahs and expressions of shocked, but delighted, disbelief. They were good stories. Emma had quite a past, and a gift for telling a tale. She told of politicians running hotfoot to her home after late-night sittings at the House, and gamblers ruining themselves for her, and peers of the realm setting her up in absolute luxury. Then she had run away from all that, and travelled, first through Europe and then Russia, adding kings and emperors to her conquests.

  It sounded dazzling, at first. But then I thought of Irene Adler, also conquering kings, and giving it all up to marry a country solicitor for love. Emma never spoke of love. She spoke of passion, and lust, and greed, and desire, but never love. Now, at the end of it all, she seemed content, but still, she was alone.

  But then again, she seemed perfectly happy. Very happy, in fact. She didn’t seem to have missed love, in fact, she had done very well without it. I suppose love can be dangerous, especially for women. Especially women alone in the world.

  Forgive me. Hospitals, I have discovered, make me introspective and maudlin. I shook the feeling away, and settled down to read Frankenstein until Mary came.

  As soon as visiting hours started she was through the door, bearing cake. It was good to see her, to see someone I could talk to without having to check everything I said for clues to my identity, or revealing too much of what I was thinking, or even just plain rudeness.

  ‘What awful clothes. Those poor girls,’ Mary observed, glancing towards Betty’s daughters, lined up at the foot of the bed.

  ‘She makes them herself,’ I told her.

  ‘Can’t someone stop her?’

  ‘I have thought of throwing her workbag on the stove,’ I admitted. ‘Mary, have you found out about Emma Fordyce?’

  ‘Yes, I looked her up in Sherlock’s books,’ Mary said eagerly, sitting close to me on the bed. ‘He cut and pasted all of Patrick West’s columns about her. You remember, that gossip columnist, the one who’s been writing for years. West wrote about her a lot, she seems to have been some sort of muse for him. Apparently she was a great courtesan.’

  ‘Well, that’s the kindest word I’ve heard for it,’ I remarked dryly.

  ‘A long list of lovers, only the very best,’ Mary said, glancing over her shoulder. Emma was still speaking eagerly to Flo in a very loud voice. Mary whispered, ‘Kept all the secrets, though. And there were plenty of secrets. She was right there with all the influential men of her time. The Duke of Wellington, half the royal sons . . .’

  ‘Was there a courtesan who didn’t sleep with royalty, back then?’

  ‘But she was supposed to have the truth about all those secret marriages and bastard children! But she never told, not a soul, though she was offered thousands by writers and lawyers and all kinds of people.’

  ‘She’s talking now,’ I said, nodding towards her. ‘I wonder if she’s planning to tell her stories to anyone else.’

  ‘Like an author? Someone to write all her stories down, finally? There are rumours that there is a bit of a bidding war for the rights to her memoirs. Do you remember when I was doing all that research into society scandals, back in April, in the newspapers?’

  I nodded. Of course. That was when we were trying to track down the blackmail victims.

  ‘I came across her name a few times. Oh, it was all fifty years ago, or more, but people still remember. She was right in the heart of things – her lovers were the most powerful men of her day. Battles were planned in her rooms – not just military ones. She’d have these glittering salons and invite all the great thinkers. She was right there when they devised parliamentary bills and poems and scandals – and she’s kept quiet about everything!’

  ‘Quite the grand courtesan, then,’ I remarked.

  ‘One of the greatest,’ Mary agreed. ‘And the only one who hasn’t published.’

  ‘Yet. Her visitors look like publishers. Or possibly lawyers.’ I leaned over to whisper to Mary. ‘That woman next to me, Miranda Logan,’ I said, in the lowest of voices, ‘she watched Emma all day, and she isn’t ill. I wonder if she’s here to stop Emma telling her life story?’

  ‘Or protect her. I bet a lot of people would like to keep her quiet, even now.’

  We smiled in joint mischief. We didn’t really mean it. It was joking, just a game to play to keep my mind busy whilst I was in here. Emma’s secrets were from so long ago I doubted anyone cared. Miranda Logan could be sicker than she looked, and here perfectly legitimately. It was all just a way to pass the time.

  Sarah Malone, on the other hand, was a woman in true anguish. I turned to look at her. She was silent for once, still staring up at the ceiling.

  ‘Who is she?’ Mary asked, following my gaze.

  ‘Sarah Malone, apparently,’ I told her. ‘She moans all night.’

  ‘She’s in pain?’

  ‘Of the mind as much as the body, I think.’ I turned back to Mary. ‘Could you find out more about her?’

  She grimaced. ‘It’s a common name,’ she said.

  ‘I know, I’m asking a lot.’

  ‘There’ll be a home address in the hospital administration files. That’s a start.’

  ‘Don’t do anything illegal,’ I insisted. She merely smiled, and asked me why I wanted to know.

  Well, why? Because I was bored, and needed the distraction? Because I was used to living in a house of intrigue and mystery and needed it everywhere I went? Because I had nearly died, still could, and I wanted to assert my sense of being alive? Because wrapping myself in other people’s pain stopped my own? Because she was in genuine pain, and I wanted to help?

  ‘Because I’m nosy,’ I said, and Mary smiled secretly. It was a vice she shared. ‘Now, tell me what’s bothering you.’

  Mary’s smile faded.

  ‘It’s nothing. I don’t want to bother you . . .’

  ‘You said you’d tell me,’ I insisted. I was worried now.

  ‘It was something more I heard from Wiggins, via Billy,’ she said softly.

  ‘What about? Are they all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, he’s fine,’ she insisted. ‘But he’s worried. There are boys disappearing . . . from the streets of London. It’s been going on for years, and no one has noticed.’

  MARY’S CASE

  ‘What boys?’ I asked.

  ‘Billy wasn’t breaking a confidence. I don’t think Wiggins is quite comfortable telling me things yet, and this was his way round it.’

  ‘He doesn’t know you well enough,’ I reassured her. I wasn’t sure that was the answer. Wiggins had built some sort of fragile trust with Mary back in April, when we were hunting down the blackmailer. But Mary had been reckless, and put us both in danger, and I don’t think Wiggins forgave her for that.

  ‘Is it Wiggins’ boys who are disappearing?’ I asked. Wiggins ran the Baker Street Irregulars. He kept his rag-tag army of boys safe and fed, and in return, they carried out errands for Sherlock Holmes and me and various other people that I probably didn’t want to know about.

  ‘No, his boys are safe,’ Mary told me. ‘It’s other boys, not just from the street, but all over London.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, sitting up in bed. The mild speculation about Emma suddenly see
med quite dull.

  ‘Wiggins noticed a crossing sweeper who wasn’t there one day,’ Mary explained. ‘A few days later, another boy, who had a home and a mother, disappeared. She was a drunk and may not have noticed him leave, but he never came back.’

  ‘That’s just two,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but no one knew where they went. No one. Not the police, not the workhouse, no one. Wiggins set his contacts looking for them, and they weren’t anywhere to be found. It’s unusual, two boys to just fall off the face of the Earth like that.’

  It was unusual. Wiggins had an extensive list of contacts all over London, and skills refined by Mr Holmes himself. Wiggins could find anyone.

  ‘Go on,’ I told her. She glanced around to see if anyone was listening. Miranda Logan was chatting calmly to Betty’s children, Flo and Emma were absorbed in a newspaper together, and Sarah Malone heard no one. Only Eleanor Langham sat silent, and surely she couldn’t hear us from over there.

  ‘So Wiggins did a little digging,’ Mary continued. ‘He asked for rumours and stories, things that people had no proof about, but just had a suspicion. He went all over London, Whitechapel, the Docks, even down to Mayfair.’

  ‘He found something,’ I said, judging by the light in Mary’s eyes.

  ‘He did,’ she confirmed. ‘Stories about boys disappearing, just snatched off the street. Some taken right from the workhouse door. Just poor boys.’

  ‘No one’s ever said anything; surely there’d be an outcry?’ I objected.

  ‘Well, they weren’t all taken at once. And not from the same place. No one cares about poor boys, or street boys or runaways. There’s all kinds of charities to save the street girls, but no one notices the boys. It’s assumed they can look after themselves.’

  ‘Maybe you should look at that advert in The Times again.’

  ‘Oh, I did,’ Mary said, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. ‘It’s just some madcap professor with advanced educational theories. He’s quite wrong, but as it turns out, quite kind.’

  ‘But still – how many boys have gone missing?’