Sir William Harcourt himself was a radical politician, Gladstone’s right hand man, a scholar and a reformer at heart, but once he set himself an aim, he had to achieve it by any means, often unscrupulous ones. He had accumulated power and wealth and this intimated to him that he was above the law. In any case he was in the position where he was the law. We had heard from Minahan how he protected evildoers like Mrs Jeffries. Our Irish friend further claimed that his own fall from grace was due to Harcourt committing perjury. He had declared under oath that he had studied his file very carefully and dismissed his sworn statements as fabrication. Minahan had proof that he had never even asked to see them. Further Stead had provided us with a full account of how he had presided over the corruption of the Metropolitan police without lifting a finger.
It had been the dearest hope of the couple to have a child, but for many years their efforts proved fruitless. After almost eight years Elizabeth unexpectedly found herself in the family way, and the joy of the couple knew no bounds. Sir William made sure that the best gynaecologist, Dr Charters-Connolly, and the most reputed midwives and nurses would attend to his wife. However, in spite of all the care in the world, the baby girl died in childbirth. Lady Elizabeth, unaware of anything went into a coma, and was only kept alive by the latest miraculous inventions of medical science. Sir William and the whole household were deeply aggrieved, but Loulou had come up with an idea.
The servants were sworn to secrecy and given a rise in wages. Dr Charters-Connolly was promised a knighthood and the news of the baby’s fate was kept secret.
Loulou, spoiled and indulged, had developed into a roistering rake known all over London for his excesses. He had friends in unsavoury circles, and one of them was Professor Moriarty. Need more be said? The woman in the blue house in Kensington, Henrietta Bewlish, to whom the baby was to be handed over was the sister of Nurse Clarissa Bewlish who was employed by Plantagenet House.
A more obvious strategy would have been substituting the dead baby by a foundling. God knows thousands of them are deposited outside churches round the country every year, but Loulou had been against introducing into his family someone of dubious blood. Their family’s pedigree had to be kept pure.
Although we now had all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, the problem was how to interlock them to make a full picture. We expected that Alice was being taken good care of, so Clarihoe urged patience on Emma and promised that her child was in the process of being returned to her.
The Club convened to discuss strategy and to define our objectives in the light of our findings. On top of the list was getting Alice back. Next we had to decide what to do with our two captives Noah and Barnaby. What retribution, if any, should we reserve for the untouchable Sir William? How to deal with Loulou?
We began by organising a surveillance of Loulou. Probert discovered that in one afternoon he visited both Mrs Jeffries’ and Mr Hammond’s Male bordello in Portland Street. That same night the Bishop saw him entering the illegal gambling dens of Wellington Place to which his father’s inspectors had given a clean bill of health. Artémise said that he spent the rest of the night in a Chinese opium den in Soho. Next day, Sunday, Bartola watched him as he went to mass in Westminster Cathedral, for when all’s said and done, he was very devout.
Vissarionovich and the Bishop knew exactly what to do. As Loulou left his London home in Belgravia that night, a hansom cab was waiting outside. The coachman, in a strong French accent and his mate in an Irish one, pointedly asked the young man to join them in their cab, jostling him none too gently to add a little coercion to the invitation. Loulou immediately perceived that he had no choice.
He was blindfolded and brought to us by a circuitous route, a ploy we employed to make it impossible for him to surmise later what our location might be. We kept him in the basement in a room next to where Noah and Barnaby were anxiously awaiting their fate at our hands. In the meantime Clarihoe visited Sherlock Holmes. Noah and Barnaby would tell him everything they knew about Moriarty, but first he would have to get Mycroft to arrange for the two men to be shipped to the Carolinas incognito, to protect them against Moriarty’s choler. Holmes gladly agreed to the bargain and was able to gather precious information which we later found helped him create a full dossier on his arch enemy which indirectly led to his downfall at the Reichenbach Falls. Mycroft was able to help the two villains escape a fate they probably deserved.
What followed contributed to the reputation I acquired as a ruthless woman. I believe that I am as compassionate as anybody, but when a strong action has to be taken, I shut my mind to pity and do what needs must.
The Bishop, Hugh Probert and Vissarionovich accompanied me to the basement, the latter carrying a wood block Armande used for mincing meat (“my pize are as good as the minceur of my hâchée”). It was waist- high and its base had been made perfectly horizontal so it could stand upright and firm on the floor of the kitchen. I had a small axe. Loulou who was kept securely tied to a chair, writhed and squirmed as he saw us coming in, in no doubt about our less than friendly intent towards him.
‘Loulou,’ I said, ‘you have acted with great cruelty in arranging for a mother to lose her child. You need to pay dearly for that. If there was any justice in the country you’d go to prison for years for your action. We are sending a message to your father and we need a little incentive.’ He began to blubber and beg. There was really no need for anything drastic as his father would commit treason to the monarchy if that was the price demanded for his safe return, but we agreed that a punishment was called for.
‘Are you left-handed?’ He shook his head.
‘Then we’re going to chop off the little finger off your left hand.’ The stunned young villain opened his mouth. Ivan and the Bishop grabbed his left hand, untied it and placed it on the chopping block whilst Probert held him tight by the shoulders. I wasted no time and brought the raised axe down with force and severed the first falange. I will not dwell upon the blood spurts or his screaming, the reader must use his or her imagination here. Bartola wasted no time applying a tincture to the wound to stop it bleeding and bandaged it. The cut out section was immediately wrapped in cotton, placed in an envelope with the demand carefully written out by Lord Clarihoe. Ebenezer was given precise instructions to deliver it to Belgravia Road. One paragraph of the note was to the effect that more fingers will be chopped off unless Alice was returned forthwith. We knew that there would be no need for more butchery, but there are times when we love to be nasty. That was only step one.
Loulou would only be released, the note continued, after Sir William had appointed an independent commission to review Jeremiah Minahan’s complaints against Labalmondière, to be presided by a figure among three names Algernon had chosen after consulting with W.T. Stead.
As we suspected, the moment the message was given to Sir William, who was in conference with Mr Gladstone, he immediately excused himself, set forth by train to Plantagenet House in Derby, and ordered the immediate return of Alice to Putney. Further, within a day Sir William duly announced that after seriously poring over all the documents concerning Minahan’s complaints, he had instructed Sir Brereton Topcross to head a commission of enquiry into the Irishman’s grievances.
Deeming our conditions to have been met, we blindfolded Loulou, and Vissarionovich took him to Hyde Park shortly after sunset the same day and released him.
We seemed to have struck a blow for justice, but it was only a partial victory. Two weeks later, Sir Brereton submitted his report but before it was made public, the Government Gazette announced that he had been appointed Ambassador to Paraguay and was setting sail in three days. We have yet to decide on a new course of action concerning Minahan’s grievances.
ust be French,’ Lord Clarihoe said almost to himself. It was early autumn one Wednesday evening, and we, the Club, were seated round a nice log fire in the front room in Water Lane, as was our wont, enjoying its glow. Togetherness was a much-valued notion in our circle. Often we nee
ded no words to communicate. We were au complet for once. Bartola was playing Solitaire on a neatly varnished mahogany slab that Coleridge had designed and made especially for that purpose, it fitting perfectly over the arms of her plush armchair. Next to her the Bishop was reading the Bible. Having reneged on his faith, his new hobby was finding discrepancies in the holy book. Armande was knitting socks, Christmas presents for her nieces in Nantes (“Don’t you sink that mekkin presents for lurved ones yourself makes more sens than buying bagatelles et babioles at Selfridges?”) There were a couple of tables with savouries, bonbons and drinks which we indulged in to our hearts’ content as the evening wore on.
‘Martial Bourdin,’ Algernon said, this time looking at all of us in turn. He had seen that we had failed to respond to his previous utterance. ‘Must be French.’
‘Could be Belgian,’ said Coleridge negligently.
‘Or Swiss,’ chipped in Anatole pointedly. He has suggested that people usually believed that neutrality was synonymous with insignificance.
‘And what ’as that French, Swiss or Belgian fello done again?’ asked Armande, ‘ ’as ee robbed a banque or somsing?’ Algie folded his Reynolds’ News in four, moved it away a bit as he was slightly hypermetropic and read us an account of how a certain Martial Bourdin had blown himself outside the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park the day before yesterday and died half an hour later at the Seamen’s Hospital.
‘That man gives anarchy a bad name,’ said Ivan Vissarionovich indignantly, in his baritone bass voice. ‘He should be blowing up rotten institutions and not himself.’ That started us off on a discussion on bomb-making, anarchy, Belgians, and a variety of unrelated topics. When someone mentioned bank-robbery, Clarihoe, holding the paper demanded our attention and spoke again. ‘Listen to this,’ and he read an article about how the recent spate of attacks on banks had damaged the reputation of the financial institutions of the country.
If the day came when one’s money was no longer as safe as in a bank, the author of the article wrote, quoting William Stanley Jevons, then capitalism itself, on which the well-being of the Empire itself rests, would collapse like a house of cards. Mr Sherlock Holmes, Algie paraphrased, after having gained plaudits for apprehending the arch-villain Vincent Spaulding, the creator of the fictitious Red-Headed League, who had planned to break into and rob the City & Suburban Bank in Saxe-Coburg Square, had been recruited to evaluate the impregnability of the Royal Mersey Bank of Lombard Street. After an extensive study of the locking systems, the iron bars in the windows, and after studying a report of a geological survey of the rock and soil in an appropriately large area around the building, which the proprietors had commissioned at the detective’s behest, he had pronounced it unassailable, even if the presence of the Lombard Street Police Station fifty yards away was not taken into account. That, in his estimate, increased security by a factor of two. I cannot recall how, but the conversation somehow led to the owners of the aforesaid bank. Although slavery had been abolished more than half a century earlier, the Bishop never ceased talking about it as the greatest blot on the human landscape, suggesting that it would take centuries before the nation’s soul would be cleansed of the ignominy. None of us could forget the stories that Coleridge had told us about what his own forbears had gone through. Vissarionovich had vociferously advocated the confiscation of the wealth gained by the practitioners of that obscene trade, but of course nothing of the sort had been envisaged. The shameless heirs of those spoliators of human dignity continued to flaunt their extravagant mansions, their manicured gardens and their six-horse carriages.
The Royal Mersey, Anatole informed us, was a consortium created by Sir Thomas Golightly, once Lord Mayor of Liverpool, a man whose fortunes had sprouted from and flourished on indignity and human misery, with his fellow slave-traders John Williamson and William Davenport. These three men had done everything in their power to sully the good name of god-fearing men like Wilberforce and Roscoe who were the spirit behind the Abolition Act, and who had tirelessly campaigned to rid the world of this inhuman practice. The Royal Mersey was now under the management of Mr William Golightly, the son of the founder, a shrewd and sprightly nonagenarian, who had also worn the Liverpool mayoral chain.
‘Martial Bourdin,’ I shouted, to the consternation of all my friends.
‘That’s ’ow we started, ma chère,’ said Armande in a pretend hectoring manner. ‘We’ve moved on now, Ee-reine, or ’adn’t you noticed?’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but—’
‘Irene,’ admonished Algernon Clarihoe, ‘you’re not thinking of blowing up the bank?’
‘And why not?’ exclaimed Bartola merrily.
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I am thinking of breaking into it just the same. After all we’re getting short of funds, aren’t we, Anatole?’ Frunk, the renegade financial wizard who was our treasurer pursed his lips and nodded gravely. Everybody agreed. I was much heartened when nobody expressed any reservations as a result of the bank having been pronounced impregnable by the man from Baker Street.
In those days, the reader might remember, unbeknownst to Holmes, I had infiltrated his Baker Street home and was masquerading as his housekeeper under the name of Mrs Hudson. As such, I had a good chance of reading the whole of the confidential report that he had produced for William Golightly and his associates, that the newspaper had unwisely printed a summary of.
‘Do we really need to make a bomb?’ asked Probert, rubbing his hands in glee, a mischievous glint emanating from his eyes.
I was biding my time and as I was serving him his cocoa one evening less than a week later, Mr Holmes informed me that he was catching the thirteen past seven express from Paddington in the morning, bound for Exeter. The moment he closed the door behind him I rushed to his desk and had no difficulty in opening the drawer. I had honed many useful if questionable skills since we formed the Club. I found the report and settled down in his swivelling armchair to study it. It confirmed much of the press story and provided useful details of rock analysis and such things. Besides, there were informations of a confidential nature which I found very useful. For instance that there was only one entrance to the premises. This unicity, according to Holmes, was the single most important factor in ensuring the one hundred percent security of the building, rating it higher than the presence of the Police Station less than fifty yards away. The front door is of massive seasoned oak six inches thick, with two separate rim locks. This was further shielded by an iron grill, itself fitted with an American steel lock supplied and made by Mr Allan Pinkerton himself. The entrance is therefore impossible to breach unless one had all three keys, or a large quantity of dynamite, the use of which we would consider inelegant. Holmes expresses his admiration for the practice of using three keys, but suggests the introduction of decoys as a refinement. His idea was to involve six senior clerks instead of three. They would all crowd the exit while carrying out the locking, after which, the keys would be surreptitiously attributed among them, according to a rota chosen by Mr Golightly in the afternoon. The six senior employees then going in different directions would make it extremely difficult for a putative gang to organise an ambush with a view to gaining possession of all three means of entry. My boss also indicated approval of the Strongroom being protected by another iron grill, and of the safes being fitted with Pinkerton-commended and Pittsburgh manufactured locks. He thought that the keys being entrusted unto the care of the Police Station at closing time. was very sensible. Spread the keys around in the same manner as you would keep your eggs in several baskets, he had added in his report. He agreed that the Chubb safes in the Strongroom were the best available in the world, and were well-nigh crack-proof. He had summarised it thus: To break into the bank, a potential gang would have first to ambush the six trusted employees as well as attack and overpower the police at the station.
Was I overwhelmed by this seemingly impossible task? At the risk of being thought insufferably vain, I will own to a feeling of exhilarat
ion. To me here was a real conundrum, and I have never in my born life been able to resist a challenge. When the problem ahead is an easy one, finding an answer is trivial, but as it becomes more difficult, the resolution becomes more interesting, therefore, irresistible. I never doubted for one minute that I would rise to the occasion.
We began by organising surveillance. A time-table was drawn, whereby each one of us had a role to play in determining the routines of the bank. Armande and Coleridge, disguised as an actress and an African prince began by walking into the Parasol Tea Rooms at the corner of Lombard and King William Streets, sat in a corner which afforded a full view of the entrance to the bank through its vast glass window, and over an enjoyable breakfast, they observed the va et vient—as Armande put it— of the employees and clients of the bank. Artémise’s task was to walk into the bank to transact some business, in this case, changing one hundred pounds into Swiss Francs. Next day Anatole, our financial wizard went to change back the Swiss francs into Sterling, resulting in a small loss which we considered an unavoidable expenditure.
Vissarionovich’s mission was probably the most delicate, but surprisingly the excitable Russian is well able to turn himself into an urbane and cool-headed operator when the occasion demands. It involved him going in the Royal Mersey to enquire about the availability of gold ingots. He was discreetly invited into the manager’s office to see the governor.
The shifty man sitting behind the desk with an improbably luxurious mane displayed a face of pasty complexion and of rare melancholy ugliness. He was so endowed in matters follicular that a pair of thick bushy eyebrows not being enough to dispose of his available stock of hair, a non-negligible amount of it had found an outlet through the nostrils of his spud-nose. On the wall behind the banker’s large desk, a portrait of an extraordinary man, looking like Moses’ older brother, in a flowing white beard, exuding serenity and respectability caught the visitor’s attention.
The Memoirs of Irene Adler: The Irene Adler Trilogy Page 9
