My half-day began with ordering PC Zordan to the optometrist. He groused, poor fellow. When I handed him a late morning edition of the Star and asked him to read me the petty theft report, he sulked for a bit, and then shuffled off to comply. Lord knows why he’s been dragging his feet over it. The man is bald as a billiard ball, florid, nearly as short as I am, and with a voice like an asthmatic terrier. A pair of spectacles might lend the unfortunate creature some gravitas. They can’t possibly hurt matters, anyhow.
When I arrived at the small but impeccably neat offices of the Ladies’ Society Journal, I was greeted by a clerk with a damp, fussy manner and a waxed moustache. He introduced himself as Mr. Pemberry and enquired with nose wrinkling why a policeman should be interested in their publication.
“Oh, I am not, sir.” Shrugging, I tapped my fingers on the countertop. “But a number of your writers must be female, yes? Arrive here in person to drop off their manuscripts, I imagine, and to collect their cheques? It’s only that I’ve heard rumour of this street growing more dangerous. I’d hate to have to post a constable at your front door. That might give the more sensitive ladies an unfair impression of the place…”
Teeth visible in his smile, Mr. Pemberry urged me to ask anything I might wish.
“You keep accurate records of your advertising revenue?” I began.
“Of course, Mr. – I do beg your pardon – Inspector Lestrade. Our books are quite pristine.”
“I need to know everything you can tell me about the Common Correspondents’ Club.”
“Everything?” His eyelashes fluttered.
“Unless you want PC MacGregor for a new entryway statue. The man’s hairy as a bear and dead tired of walking rounds. Ready chap with a truncheon, too. I’m sure the womenfolk will feel much safer with him greeting them all at the door. I’ll just see when he’s available to—”
“Why don’t you accompany me to my private office, Inspector?” Mr. Pemberry turned on his heel, radiating displeasure. “I’m sure that I have nothing better to do than to gossip with you about one of our most loyal clients.”
When we’d reached a cramped, windowless box with a plain pine desk and every wall covered in filing cabinetry, Mr. Pemberry became marginally more agreeable. Either because he detested being put upon in front of the other staff, or because he wanted to be rid of me more expediently. Pulling a folder from a drawer, he invited me to peruse the documents.
“All related to the Common Correspondents’ Club – receipts monthly and annually, etc. Miss Hargrove is a long-time patron of the publication, Inspector. Our costs are not exorbitant by any means, but Miss Hargrove requires a weekly guarantee, prominent placement and ample space, all of which we are happy to provide.”
“And what can you tell me about this Miss Hargrove?”
The waxed ends of the appalling moustache quivered. “Miss Hope Hargrove, yes. She is a most distinguished woman, I assure you. On the occasions when she comes herself, we are always happy to see her, that fine profile, head held high, dressed all in grey. To tell the truth, Inspector, when we first viewed her in the flesh, we all imagined she must be a widow, for she is unmistakably a very handsome woman. But she never married, she says, and now in her later years takes what joy she can in brightening the monotony of others’ lives.”
“Very admirable. I take it that she advertises regarding her rather peculiar club, and you forward to her any replies, so as to keep her private address from being published in a weekly journal?”
“Precisely so, sir. Miss Hargrove is not in the business of running an agony column. Her preferences regarding clientele are stated quite clearly, as you may see for yourself.”
He pulled a fresh edition from a pile of papers and opened it to an elegantly lettered page of personal columns.
THE COMMON CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB
For the price of a single shilling to defer costs, ladies of
Respectable Character and Impeccable Breeding
WITH AN AFFINITY FOR LETTER WRITING
Are invited to submit their applications to be matched
with other Discreet and Like-Minded Individuals
SINGLE LADIES WITHOUT SURVIVING RELATIONS STRONGLY PREFERRED
APPLY TO MISS HOPE HARGROVE, OUR
CHIEF COMMON CORRESPONDENT
Listing interests, hobbies, affiliations, and
divertissements, care of this publication.
It was, to put matters mildly, a head-scratcher.
“Well, if that’s everything?” Mr. Pemberry made rather a spectacle of checking his pocket watch. “As you can see, it is a singularly edifying entertainment, and Miss Hargrove a benefactress of the friendless woman of educated background—”
“Just a moment.” Tapping my pencil against my lips in thought, I produced my notebook. “I’ll have the address of this Miss Hargrove, if you please.”
“Really, sir!” Mr. Pemberry exclaimed. “Out of the question!”
“It’s nothing of the kind. Hand it over.”
“You go very far, sir!” he huffed, jotting a note and passing it to me disdainfully. “The entire point of her advertising through us is to maintain a modicum of privacy.”
“How exactly does this arrangement work?” I pressed. “How popular would you say this club has become, and who passes the applications on to Miss Hargrove?”
Mr. Pemberry, with severely ill grace, explained that women who expressed an interest in the organisation were then sent a questionnaire. Completed questionnaires were then collected – five to ten a month, at his estimation – by Miss Hargrove at the Ladies’ Society Journal, in person, every fortnight.
“That’s what the nominal shilling fee goes towards, I take it?” I asked shrewdly. “You charge Miss Hargrove to advertise, and then on top of that, a processing fee?”
He spluttered, moustache quivering. “I am a man of business! I’ve every right—”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you do. Tell me everything you can about Miss Hope Hargrove, at once.”
Miss Hargrove was, as Mr. Pemberry had already indicated, a very prepossessing individual, with deep chestnut locks streaked with silver, and pale blue eyes. She was the picture of refinement – and to some extent, of hopes left to wither on the vine. She had ample means, but no family of any kind, and there was some rumour of a love lost when she was young and impressionable. A woman of deep sensitivity and chronic poor health, she had never passed out of half mourning. But one happy day, frustrated by her struggles whiling away the weary hours when too indisposed for social calls or charitable work, she realised that she could hardly be the only woman with such a set of woes. She founded the Common Correspondents’ Club at once and took out an advertisement.
“Are you aware that a woman has gone missing?” I pressed when he fell dourly silent. “A woman who took part in the Common Correspondents’ Club?”
“Certainly not! And I don’t know what you think you’re implying. I’ve important connections within the press, Inspector Lestrade, and if you think you can bully me into admitting any impropriety whatsoever—”
“Her name is Miss Wilhemina Sparks. I’ve every reason to suspect that something unpleasant has befallen her.”
“It’s none of my affair what you suspect! I’ve nothing to do with the wretched matter.”
My heart pounded against my ribs. “When you collect these applications for Miss Hargrove, where do you keep them?”
“What the devil can that have to do with anything?”
“They’re placed in a strongbox or a safe of some kind, yes? I’m sure a chap of your thoroughness and professionalism wouldn’t leave such sensitive materials lying about for anyone to rummage through? Belonging as they do to such an assailable group of women?”
Mr. Pemberry gaped at me like an upended beetle. Then he sat down.
“I keep them in a stack, in that filing cabinet.”
“It doesn’t have a lock, does it?”
“No,” he whispered, paling. “Why should anyone—”<
br />
I didn’t wait for him to finish. I didn’t even say goodbye. I snatched up the copy of the Ladies’ Society Journal he’d shown me and hurtled out into the street, shouting for a cab.
I don’t recall how long it took me to get to Baker Street. The gaslights leered at me as they passed in a blur, fizzing and spitting. The driver encountered a dray with a broken axle at the corner of Marylebone Road; I stumbled out, not heeding as he shrieked at me, my boots sloshing in the snow. If he wanted to call for a constable, I’d happily agree that I’d shirked the fare. I’ve arrived at that blasted doorstep more times than I can count, and I’ve never before seen Mrs. Hudson’s hand at her throat as I abused her doorbell, never ignored her startled remonstrations, never been gladdened at the strident whine of a violin.
When I crashed into their familiar sitting room, Mr. Holmes was lounging in a purple dressing gown in his armchair while somehow bowing at his fiddle (though no one in his right mind could have mistaken it for music), and Dr. Watson was in the act of gripping their fireplace poker in alarm.
“Good heavens!” the doctor exclaimed. “Are you all right, Inspector?”
“I need you,” I gasped to the detective.
To his credit, he was already on his feet, violin abandoned, dressing gown shed, worming his way into his frock coat. “Speak of the devil! Watson will inform you that just twenty minutes ago I—”
Slapping the Ladies’ Society Journal into his lean chest, I tried to get my wind back. “The editor collects these applications on behalf of a Miss Hope Hargrove. He keeps them in an unlocked filing cabinet.”
Mr. Holmes took all of four seconds to grasp the significance of the advertisement before his eyes flew to mine in alarm.
Dr. Watson had by now dropped the poker and stood with his hand on his friend’s back, reading over his shoulder. “My dear fellow, is this the case you were telling me about? Miss Sparks, was it, and her missing sister?”
“The listing is meant explicitly to connect ladies without family or friends of their own!” I cried, pacing. “This idiotic Mr. Pemberry kept all their information in a drawer! Any employee of the Ladies’ Society Journal could have rifled through it, stolen a questionnaire, stolen half a dozen of them for God’s sake, and then who knows what dark machinations could have followed? I don’t even know how to begin to narrow such a thing down! One of the journalists? A clerk with a twisted mind? The cleaning staff, a guard… And even if he’d been pilfering these documents in secret for years, how am I to prove it?”
“You think that some ruffian has been forging letters to defenceless spinsters?” the doctor clarified.
“I have not a doubt of it!”
“Let’s be off at once, then.” Dr. Watson donned his hat and wrapped a muffler about his thick neck. “Holmes! Surely you can find some indication after we’ve questioned everyone with access to these files? There may even be some physical clue Lestrade failed to… I beg your pardon, Inspector, I never meant to insinuate—”
“No, no, I only pray there was something I missed! Are you coming back to the offices with me?” I demanded when Mr. Holmes remained motionless.
The detective pressed his lips into a line. He carefully folded the paper. The simplest way you can tell that Sherlock Holmes is deeply distressed about something is that he stops performing. You aren’t an audience member any longer. He stops flicking sly looks, tossing his head, making minute finger gestures he knows are eye-catching simply because they’re so subtle. When something has upset him, you stop seeing Sherlock Holmes the genius. You can see Sherlock Holmes the person.
Dr. Watson said nothing, clearly having witnessed this before. I wondered what it would mean for Sherlock Holmes to lose a friend like that. And I concluded that nothing, not hell or fire or flood, would keep me away from the doctor’s wedding.
“My dear Lestrade, we aren’t going to the offices,” Mr. Holmes said softly.
My heart was in my throat. “You think it’s already too late?”
“I don’t know.” With a grim expression, he allowed Dr. Watson to pass him his overcoat. “I only wonder. I wonder why any woman, no matter how naïve or sheltered or well-intentioned, would write such a dangerous advertisement. I wonder why she might wish to disguise her own address, and to create such a careful system for the screening of applicants. I wonder at the fact we both noticed that Miss Sparks’s love letters owned a distinctly romantic – not to say feminine – turn of phrase. I wonder why any such correspondent would purport to be a dairy farmer. Not the sort of life that an actual working man would think to brag about, mind, the manure and the sweat and the callouses – but perhaps the sort of biography that would appeal to an avid reader of pastoral fiction. And I wonder very much, Lestrade, why I imagined that blockish handwriting implied a lack of education. I’ve been a great fool. You’d be well within your rights to toss me in a cell as a warning to the arrogant.”
“I don’t understand,” I pleaded. Though I was beginning to.
“Call us a cab, my dear fellow.” Dr. Watson nodded, ducking down the stairs as Sherlock Holmes took me by the elbow. “Lestrade, we are going to ascertain the reason why Miss Hope Hargrove entered into a disguised exchange of love letters with Miss Sparks. Because I very much fear that it cannot possibly be for anyone’s good.”
Entry in the diary of Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade
Saturday, 12 January 1889 (con’t.)
I must have drifted off before my fire. It’s gone cold.
My eyes ache something terrible. Dr. Watson mixed me a powder before I left, begging me to get some rest.
I don’t know how I’ll ever rest again.
Miss Hope Hargrove is every bit as elegant as Mr. Pemberry indicated. Noble jaw, porcelain skin. Streaks of grey in all that dark hair, shining like sheet metal. Like knives. And eggshell-blue eyes with a fan of wrinkles at their edges. She stood there in the drawing room of that beautiful townhouse, lips quizzical, mystified at having been knocked awake at such an hour. Sweet as an angel she looked, offering us drinks. Urging us to sit down. Wondering what she could do for us.
Mad as a hatter, of course. Stark smiling mad.
Mr. Holmes did the talking. Asked her all about the Common Correspondents’ Club. How it came to be. He was gentle in that way he can affect, his voice all honey, no trace of a sting. He said that we had a friend, a maiden aunt. She was lonesome and desperate and had taken to laudanum. Could Miss Hargrove offer any hope of a recovery? Of having something to look forward to in the post every week?
“I was orphaned when I was very young and raised by heaven knows how many relations.” Miss Hargrove sipped the tea for which she’d rung. “They were quite cold, Mr. Holmes. Well-intentioned, Lord knows, but I lacked for the affection that a kindred spirit can provide. Or even a motherly figure to help guide my first steps into society. For a time, I took what comfort I could from travel, from various causes, but none of it ever touched me the way exchanging letters did. It was a bit like having a novel all my own – one which I could help shape, and affect, and guide even as I savoured the words. I could relate to people whose lives were quite different, feel that I shared in their adventures, tell them of mine, and all from many miles away. Sometimes sharing an imaginary adventure can be more thrilling than having one, don’t you find?”
“I entirely understand.” A shard of ice had slipped into his tone. “What I cannot conceive is what purpose it could possibly serve to prey on gullible women and convince them you were their suitor. Were you always playing the role of paramour, or did you expand your repertoire? Invalid grandmother, perhaps? Exotic heiress? Long-lost uncle?”
Her jaw spasmed. A hint of stone in the soft exterior. Something that had hardened a very long time ago.
Then she shrugged. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Holmes. But now you have been sitting with me for a little while, I believe I recognise you. You’re some sort of would-be sleuth for hire, is that it? I imagine that my
Common Correspondents’ Club is peculiar enough to sound strange to a self-made man of the world. But I have certainly never preyed on anyone, nor has anyone accused me of such an outrageous thing.”
“Yes, you made certain of that,” I growled. “Hence the outrageous selection process – only the isolated, you made sure of that, probably rejected dozens of applicants, and Miss Sparks would have been just another jilted woman, except she had an estranged sister, and that sister returned. What in hell have you done with Miss Willie Sparks, Miss Hargrove?”
She laughed – a pretty peal of a sound.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Inspector. I haven’t done a thing with her. Willie was a sweet enough amusement at first, but let’s just say that the game escalated too quickly for my liking. Constant demands to meet in person, increasingly lurid prose. I couldn’t possibly have let it continue, could I? She went to meet… I regret to say that she met absolutely no one. Dear Willie ought to be back any day now. She’ll forget all about this episode, and her sister will be greatly relieved, and I can’t imagine how you could prove any of it.”
Seconds passed in silence.
“Handwriting analysis,” Mr. Holmes ticked off on his fingers, seething. “Paper type, ink chemistry, pen nib, postal forwarding to disguise your actual London address, the offices and employees of the Ladies’ Society Journal – that’s just to begin with, before I set my mind to it.”
“Perhaps.” Miss Hargrove stood gracefully. “But why bother? Anyway, what is there to prove? I wrote a lonely woman letters. Her life was brightened considerably thanks to me, if you stop to consider. No crime has been committed, no money exchanged. Only words. It was at worst a few harmless pranks, and at best a service to my sisters in solitude.”
It’s not that I’ve never heard of such a thing. Cads inventing tales of land and titles to ensnare rich heiresses, all the brutal possibilities Mr. Holmes railed about when he barged into my office with that ridiculous little book about marriage.
But for no reason? Other than amusement?
“That’s the cruellest thing I’ve ever heard, Miss Hargrove,” Dr. Watson bit out. His hand gripped his knee fiercely.
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