As the two men left, I overheard Holmes tell Watson, ‘Matron talked of a Viennese doctor and his nurse. I’ll tell you this, Watson, if I have no idea who the chap is, but I am willing to give you long odds against the so-called Miss Freud not being this new thorn in my flesh, Miss Irene Adler.’
He and Watson took to going to the grand opening of shows, vaudevilles and plays in the West End. Harriet did not detest living in what might have become near prison conditions.
‘Irene,’ she told me one morning, ‘you remember that I refused to play “Clara de Foenix” because the part had been given to you first?’ Of course I did.
‘You must know what value I attach to friendship.’
‘My dear Harriet, I have always been aware of this.’
‘I’d do it again of course, I am fiercely loyal.’
‘I know that, Harriet, my dear,’ I replied, wondering why she felt it was necessary to remind me of this.
‘There is one thing. Don’t ask me to deprive myself of the favours of Coleridge.’ I immediately assured her that Cole and I were a thing of the past, and in any case, should a spark rekindle the dying embers, I wouldn’t mind sharing, would she? She grabbed me by the waist and gave me a hug. ‘Of course not, people don’t belong to each other.’ There is no real cure for Harriet’s condition. She told me about all the strategies that she had had recourse to. Meditation, starvation, prayers, cold baths, lengthy stretches on cold marble, self-flagellation, camphor pills, vegetarianism, bread, salt and water for a whole week, all to no avail. The Club members, including the Bishop volunteered to share her bed, and Harriet never had cause for complaint. She was clearly not going to spend the rest of her life cooped up in Water Lane. Little by little, we began venturing out, at first after dark, when we would take a brisk walk on Clapham Common. We progressed to late afternoon walks in the streets, visiting the new Penny Bazar which had recently opened in Brixton, Harriet wrapped in a big shawl and wearing an ungainly hat—which she still wore with great panache.
We knew that the day would come when she would declare an ambition to do something more daring, such as attending a grand première in the West End. With my inability to find any challenge too daunting, I set about finding a plan when she mentioned that she “needed” to go to the revival of The Pirates of Penzance at the Savoy. Clearly she was finding her favourite pastime of being closeted in her own bedroom with the man who had caught her fancy that week too dull. Yes, dear Harriet, we all said, we’ll arrange it for you. Traverson, with his artistic flair, and I with my theatrical training, spent a whole afternoon applying make-up and lines on her face, transforming her into an Italian noblewoman. We booked a box and four of us joined her at that invigorating operetta, with much enjoyment and no hitch.
It was this disguise which gave us our most daring idea. An afternoon’s work had been enough to change her appearance, albeit in conditions where no one was going to be scrutinising her face to face. To all challenges, a solution exists. Once again, it was Bartola who brought us the catalyst we wanted. Shortly after we had discussed the problem, she rushed in one day brandishing a copy of The Illustrated London News. Without greeting us let alone giving us the hug which had become a tradition with the Club, she exclaimed, ‘I have found the solution!’ She opened the magazine even before sitting herself down.
Sir Mortimer Starfry, the Egyptologist, who had recently returned from his excavation in Esna near Luxor revealed that he had discovered new hieroglyphics which clearly proved that Egyptian surgeons of antiquity had not only carried out trepanation, but had pioneered and performed operations whose purport was to change the appearance of one of the less comely of the Pharaoh’s daughter. This young lady, identified by Starfry as Neferpatra, had been born with a squint and too small a mouth. It was the practice in those days, quoth The News, to let the afflicted child die, sometimes with a little chemical assistance from the court physician. However, Pharaoh Ramses had become surprisingly enamoured of the newborn the moment he caught sight of her. He threatened instant execution of anybody who treated little Neferpatra with anything less than adoration. Immediately his trusted physician Sinuhe the Elder approached him and offered to treat the little baby. Ramses had warned the doctor. ‘Go ahead, but you know how I shall deal with you if you fail?’ Sinuhe had smiled, and said that he feared nothing. Sir Mortimer had explained the technique by drawings based on the hieroglyphics.
‘And oo are we to approach to carry out this impossible intervention?’ asked Armande. ‘I suppose this Sinuhe fello is long dead, non?’ Artémise quietly turned his head to look at her in the eyes.
‘Moi!’
‘Mais Artémise, you are complitly dérangé.’
‘Ma chère Armande, did I never tell you that I did three years’ medical studies at La Salpétrière before, to my poor father’s despair, Minerve defeated Asclepius in an epic battle for my soul.’
‘This is a French way of saying that he abandoned medicine for art,’ the Bishop kindly explained.
We discussed changes and it was again Artémise who suggested that nothing changed a woman’s appearance more than the eyes. He saw clearly how to turn the fairly circular eyes of the subject into crystalline almonds. After studying her face from all angles, he declared that he would begin with her mouth. The artist explained that with the right dose of ether he would be able to carry out a near painless operation, consisting of just two minor cuts at the commissures of her lips to widen the mouth. Next, two needle holes at the extremity of each eye through which a thread would be introduced and then tied, after which Harriet would have eyes of the amandula forma. We naturally feared that Harriet might not be willing to submit to the ordeal, for clearly even with the ether, the cuts would still entail excruciating pain. We had clearly counted without her fascination with self-flagellating saints.
‘But that’s the best news I’ve ever heard!’ she exclaimed.
‘?’
‘?’
.
.
.
‘?’
‘How many times have I told you about my cold baths, my kneeling on sand, my hours spent on a cold marble floor...’ And she made a long list of those things. ‘I love pain!’ she exclaimed finally.
‘I promise you won’t feel a thing,’ Artémise whispered.
‘Now you’re spoiling it,’ Harriet said with that moue of hers which has begun to make me doubt my assertion that I have no Sapphic tendencies whatsoever.
The operation was a complete success and in a week all her scars had healed. The poor dear, who had lost a lot of her éclat in the last few months due to the uncertainties facing her, was successfully reclaiming her erstwhile luminosity.
We also got to hear of this woman who claimed to use a formula for dying hair black which was created by Galen in the first century. We got in touch with her, and when she had finished with Harriet, she looked like a Romany belle, which made us choose the Jewish name she now uses. I will of course not reveal it here for fear of compromising her anonymity.
We suspected that even her lynx-eyed sister Clarissa would not have known her if their paths crossed. Still we were not in a hurry to release her into the unforgiving world. We began venturing out more often, but her umbilical cord was moored to Water Lane.
After six months, we gathered that no one was interested in her any more. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson had stopped going to the theatre. To the Moncreiffes she was a burden and her disappearance was no doubt mourned but soon forgotten, with gratitude rather than chest beating. Her change of appearance had done nothing to alter the stunning effect she produced on all who met her.
We submitted her to the PQR test. Together we made our way to the Alhambra one fine day, and asked for an audience. Good manners not being his forte, he ignored me completely and stared at Harriet like a lovelorn teenager, stunned, but failing to recognise her.
‘Most certainly we always have a part for a young woman of your obvious talent. It’s only a formality but
I’ll need to see you in action first.’ I knew what he meant, but kept quiet.
Unsurprisingly he became besotted with her new persona and after a cursory five minute test, he invited her to join the repertory. To my amusement, Harriet said she would of course consider it, but the moment we were alone she confided to me that she never had the slightest intention of working with that man. She was only using him as a Litmus test. She easily found work in other theatres, gracing the London theatre scene with many a sterling performance and making a name for herself.
Sir Thomas tells everybody that his disgraced daughter lives in an asylum in Surrey and is in good health. Lord Mordaunt lost all interest in her and in his mid-forties, he remarried a parson’s daughter, the sixteen-year-old Louisa Cholmondeley, and formed another family.
Later when I got to know Sherlock Holmes well, he confided to me that he had discovered the truth about Harriet, but had chosen not to impart this intelligence to the seventh baronet of that ilk.
‘And why, dare I ask, Mr Holmes?’
‘In the exercise of my profession, my dear Miss Adler,’ he said, looking over my head, ‘I have come across people with varying degrees of insanity, and had come to an early conclusion about Harriet Mordaunt’s state of mind.
had read the vitriolic article “The Lost Arctic Voyagers” in which Mr Charles Dickens rather extraordinarily refuted Mr John Rae’s claim that he had found incontrovertible evidence of Sir John Franklin, who led a failed expedition to find the Northwest Passage, and his men, having indulged in cannibalism, in a desperate fight against starvation when they got lost in the snowy wastes of Canada. The Scottish explorer was the first man to discover the Passage. En route he had come across the grisly remains of members of the previous expedition led by the English aristocrat Franklin, including human bones, in their cooking kettles. The famous writer had based his assertion on his unshakeable belief that no Englishman worth his salt would stoop so low. A Scotsman like Rae, on the other hand, might well not hesitate to tell lies and spread slander. I did not think my Scottish Mam, bless her soul, would have liked to hear that. Later that night, while we were celebrating the birthday of my erstwhile lover Coleridge, having partaken of more alcohol than usual, I was vociferous in my attacks on the novelist. I was surprised when the Bishop said that eating the youngest crew member was a common practice among folks of the sea, English or otherwise, as the only alternative to slow starvation.
We were not too surprised when only a few days later we read in The Times the strange tale of how the German barque Moctezuma, carrying a cargo of nitrate, had sailed into Falmouth harbour with three shipwrecked men it had picked up fifteen hundred miles from the Cape of Good Hope, drifting in a wooden dinghy, dehydrated and starving.
The Captain told the newspaper that the three men had been on the point of death but fortunately had quickly recovered after coming on board. The men, Captain Bromwich, his first mate Mr Hawkins and Waters, seaman, told Sergeant Laverty of a cabin boy by the name of Richard Bowles who had drowned when their yacht La Chouette had floundered in a gale.
Laverty began by questioning the men. They were not under arrest, the Times explained, but the police needed a statement from them since a death had occurred. Later it would transpire that the astute policeman had found some discrepancies and contradictions in their statements, but his superior officer had urged him to drop the case as an investigation would serve no purpose. The men were released and the Moctezuma was allowed to sail to Hamburg.
We forgot all about Mr Dickens’ vitriolic attack on Mr Rae, as we had a new topic of conversation: the curious shipwreck. I was rather pleased when one morning, sitting alone in my Dai Lernière disguise, a distraught woman came knocking at the door of my Warren Street office.
‘Mr Lernière?’ she asked. I showed her to a chair opposite my desk.
‘Are you expensive?’ she asked the moment she sat down.
‘Ma’am,’ I said more earnestly than I had intended, ‘I am always affordable. I charge my clients what I think are the most reasonable rates in our trade. It is related to their financial condition. Rich people pay the normal fee, poor folks less, often nothing at all.’
‘Oh, no, no, sir, I can pay, but...’
‘I’ll charge you expenses.’ I interrupted. ‘First tell me who you are and what I can do for you.’ For a while she just stayed on her chair, head bent down, as if in prayer. I realised that she was crying into her handkerchief. I gave her time to regain her composure and when she had, she continued.
‘No doubt sir you are acquainted with the story of the sinking of the yacht La Chouette and the three survivors picked up at sea.’
She was Meg Bowles, the mother of the unfortunate cabin boy who had met with his sad fate after the shipwreck. She did not believe the official version of events and began recounting to me details of the case no newspapers had published.
‘I ain’t saying this, sir, coz he’s my son, sir, but anybody in our neighbourhood would tell you the same thing. My Richard was too good for this world. I tell you, sir, when he came into a room it is as if someone had lit a candle. When he smiled it was like someone had lit two candles.’ I could not see how that might have been incompatible with his having fallen overboard, but I kept my counsel to myself. She rambled on for a bit about her son’s virtues and I didn’t have the heart to tell her to come to the point.
When she was good and ready she told me how excited Richard had been when he came home one afternoon. Ma, he said, I’ve finally got a job. It had been his ambition since childhood to go to sea. God knows how hard the poor boy had been trying to get his foot on the ladder and onto the deck of a ship. A rich Australian barrister who also had a sheep farm had ordered a yacht from an English ship chandler and Richard had secured a berth on board as cabin boy to the crew engaged in delivering the craft halfway round the world to the Antipodes. He was going to be away for at least six months.
La Chouette set sail from Tilbury. It was plain sailing until they reached the Cape of Good Hope, when it became obvious that the frail cockpit might have difficulty surviving the relentless gales which prevailed in that part of the ocean. When they were over one thousand miles from the African coast, the Chouette suddenly went down in a minor storm, almost without warning. It was far from seaworthy and one must wonder how it had acquired a licence to sail. The four men scrambled on board a small wooden dinghy, but it was so precipitous that they didn’t have time to gather food or water, apart from a few tins of turnips and water in a pail, half of which spilled out in the melée.
Bromwich had told how they survived the long days without food. They caught a porpoise which fed them for less than a week. Their hope that the sea would somehow provide food turned out to be a mirage. To begin with, they had very little resources to help them catch any fish. They ate the turnips, rationed the fresh water and all the time the cruel sun shone its punishing rays upon them. Soon there was not one drop of water left. Young Bowles was weak and delirious from drinking sea water, the three survivors had recounted. Before anyone could stop him, he had, without warning thrown himself into the sea in front of their very eyes and drowned. Lucky boy, Captain Bromwich had declared at the time. After an ordeal lasting nineteen days, they were fortunate enough to be picked by Captain Simonsohn of the German barque Moctezuma bound for Hamburg with a cargo of nitrate.
‘So in what manner can I help you, Mrs Bowles?’
‘I told you, I don’t believe that this was what happened. I know my boy is gone forever, but he was too good to die like they said. He was young and strong. I cannot believe what they told the police. All I want is the truth.’ I was stuck for words.
‘But there is no proof that the men were lying.’ I ventured, which seemed to inflame my visitor.
‘What can you mean?’ she cried indignantly. ‘No proof! Why would the survivors who were older and less fit than my boy keep a cool head but not my healthy and strong lad? No, that cannot be the truth.’ Mrs Bowles had a point.
I smiled apologetically and offered to make her a cup of tea, which cheered her up. It took all of fifteen minutes to boil the water over the Primus stove. I have always marvelled at the power of the cup of tea to mend damaged souls and egos. Especially if it is served in conjunction with home-made galettes baked by a French expert, Armande in this case.
‘I went to see Mr Sherlock Holmes,’ she began, now much soothed. ‘I was told he is the best.’ I did not mind her faux pas, in the knowledge that I was just a beginner.
Holmes had listened to her very attentively, nodding his agreement all the time. When she had intimated that she would like him to look into the matter and find the truth about what happened to Richard, the detective had been deep in thought. Then the housekeeper came in to announce that a Mr Mycroft needed to consult him urgently. Holmes had very courteously asked Mrs Bowles if she minded waiting for just a few minutes, explaining that his visitor was a very busy man and would not stay long. He had then retired into the library next door. She was not one for eavesdropping, she assured me, but without meaning to, she heard the name of Richard mentioned. This prompted her to tiptoe towards the door so she might listen more carefully. She heard them mention La Chouette as well as the names of the crew, but she was unable to catch their drift. She heard Mr Mycroft say, ‘I know you will do your best to safeguard the good name of our seagoing nation.’
Mrs Bowles told me of her alarm when Mr Holmes came back and she found that his whole attitude towards her had changed. She would have sworn on the Bible that before the inopportune arrival of the brother, he was on the point of assuring her that he was going to look into the matter thoroughly. Now he seemed to have had a change of heart. She was shocked by what he had to say now. It was a shame that her poor boy had perished at sea, a tragedy of course, but it served no purpose for the public to cast aspersions at members of a distinguished class of Englishmen: seafarers.
The Memoirs of Irene Adler: The Irene Adler Trilogy Page 18
