by A S Croyle
I was wrong, of course. Such musings were hopelessly optimistic.
Even though railway surgeons were far more progressive than their typical colleagues, it would not be until the late 1890’s that a female surgeon would be hired by a railway. The appointment of Dr. Carrie Lieberg as a division surgeon for the Northern Pacific would send tidal waves across the medical community. It would not be until 1907, by which time I was in my fifties, that a railway hired a woman as chief surgeon.
I was considering my options and day-dreaming about what kind of life I might lead in the frontier if I mustered up the courage to travel to America just as the clock on the fireplace mantel rang out, reminding me that I was due to meet Oscar Wilde in a few minutes. I put away the journal and locked up my office.
As I hurried to meet Oscar at the restaurant, I thought back again to that horrible September night when the two trains collided near my home in the Broads. Sherlock had refused to help us tend to the injured; all he could think about was unearthing the details of the crash. It was the first time I had really witnessed how cold and calculating, how unfeeling he could force himself to be, but it was not the last. For that reason, and many others, soon after we parted on uneasy terms, but he had finally sought me out at Oscar’s poetry recital to try to make amends. And, for reasons that escape me, I sought him out a few weeks later.
6
On that hot afternoon in early July, just a few weeks after I’d run into Sherlock at Oscar’s recital, I went to the lab after having had lunch with my brother Michael. When I entered, Sherlock had spread before him an assortment of coloured plates, pipes and tobaccos. Of course, I had asked him what he was up to.
“I have recently revisited Friedrich Tiedmann’s Geschichte des Tabaks, published in the year of my birth, 1854. It spurred me on to take all the more seriously my research into the distinctive characteristics of ash.”
“And why is that relevant to your avocation as a consulting detective?”
“Vocation,” he said deliberately. “It is not a hobby, Dr. Stamford. And it is important because a person’s habits are part of his or her identity. For example, if the perpetrator of a crime left a note, I would compare handwriting. Or let’s say you were arrested and the only evidence against you was a footprint left at the scene. I would compare the size of your boots to the footprints left behind. Or what if you were accused of a crime and an eyewitness had described the criminal as a delicate flower, slender as a sapling, tiny in stature, with blonde hair, and as colourful as an Easter bonnet? I would immediately point out that you could not be the suspect.”
His words precisely painted an image of Effie, Oscar Wilde’s cousin, my best friend and my brother’s young wife, now deceased. I missed her terribly and for a moment, I looked down at the hat I held in my hands, the one she had made for me. It was made of bright blue fabric with a black lace ruffle around the narrow brim. It had a black feather plume and a short train of black tulle. I remembered she laughed and asked, “Doesn’t this have high society written all over it?”
“Poppy, are you listening?” Sherlock asked, bringing me sharply back into focus.
I blinked and looked at him. “I’m sorry. You were saying something about a witness identifying someone.”
“And that someone could not be you because you are tall and athletically built. You have dark hair, not blonde. And,” he added, “It is only on the rare occasion that your attire exceeds the bounds of dark blue, grey or beige. Unless, of course, your mother insists that you wear some new fashion she forces upon you.”
Unsure of how to take his apt description of me, I asked, “But what has that to do with ashes?”
“Oh, Poppy, use your brain - it’s slightly less ordinary than the average person’s! It’s about observation! One can identify the kind of cigar by the ash or butt left behind. For example, do you know what the ash of a bird’s eye looks like?”
“I don’t know what a bird’s eye is, Sherlock.”
He sighed. “Of course, you don’t. Because you have a limited knowledge of the habits of men. Victor did not smoke, did he?”
I winced at the reference to Victor Trevor. That was still - and I feared always would be - a wedge between us. Sherlock would always feel that he had betrayed Victor, his only friend, by caring for me, and I think he also felt he could not trust me because I had once been very close to Victor but turned my affection to Sherlock almost the instant I met him. No matter how many times I explained that Victor and I were not betrothed, that he had not asked my father for my hand, and there was no marriage contract, Sherlock felt he had come between us.
“No,” I said. “Victor does not smoke. Well, he may now that he is in India. I don’t know.”
“So, well, bird’s eye,” Sherlock continued, “is a tobacco in which the mid-rib, which is slightly woody, is fermented along with the lamina, whereas in most tobaccos the mid-rib is removed before fermentation. When you smoke it, it produces a pattern of circular dots and its ash is like a white fluff.”
He showed me another ash. “This one is called honeydew.”
“Surely it is not made from honey.”
“No, but honey, like rum or whiskey, can be added to tobacco after it is cured. Perhaps in my twilight years, I shall oversee a tobacco farm and raise bees and experiment with adding fresh honey to various tobaccos.” His eyes were a vacant stare, as if at the age of twenty-four, he was actually pondering retirement.
“Honeydew. Sherlock you were saying-”
“Oh, yes, quite. Honey gives tobacco a different flavor and prevents it from drying out. Now, our friend Oscar was kind enough to give me this opium ash,” he said, pointing to one of the coloured plates. “I also have some opium for smoking in a water pipe. It looks like chopped spinach. And this is a true opium pipe,” he added, taking some odd-looking implements from beneath the counter. “It is designed for vaporization and inhalation. In other words, it allows the opium to be vaporized while being heated over a special oil lamp. Like this one,” he said, pointing.
I picked up the pipe. It had a long stem, a ceramic bowl and a metal fitting called, Sherlock told me, a ‘saddle’ through which the pipe bowl plugs into the pipe stem.
“Why is the bowl detached from the stem?”
“One must scrape the insides clean of opium ash after several smoking episodes.”
“Is it made of bamboo, the stem?”
“Good eye, Dr. Stamford. Yes, it is. But they often come in ivory, silver and jade. Generally, however, bowls are fashioned by combining yixing clay and blue and white porcelain.”
“Yixing?”
“A type of clay found only in certain areas of China. Mr. Brown has an interest in Chinese artefacts and I’ve seen him smoking a pipe very similar to this one.”
I was slightly acquainted with Mr. Brown, one of St. Bart’s apothecaries, because he was often deep in conversation with my uncle when I visited Uncle Ormond at the hospital. He was an odd little man who kept an array of trinkets in his little pharmaceutical area. He had completed medical school, but he had never passed his examinations. He seemed more interested in studying birds than in mixing medicines, and Uncle often said he was surprised the man hadn’t been sacked.
I put the pipe down. “I do not like to think of poppies this way,” I said. “I like flowers, particularly those given to me on special occasions.”
Our eyes met, both of us remembering the early morning hours after we’d spent the night together; Sherlock had gathered wildflowers and left them for me to wake up to the scent and the dizzying colours.
“And I don’t like my nickname linked to a drug.”
“It’s a harmless substance, Poppy.”
“I disagree.”
“It simply opens the mind a bit and lets one escape from the dull routine of living,” he insisted.
“Tha
t’s not how you felt that time when we went looking for Oscar in that opium den, Sherlock. And living isn’t dull. It needn’t be.”
He thought a moment. “You are too harsh. After all, opium, cocaine, morphine, laudanum... they are all legal.”
“They have side effects. We have seen them. People use them as a panacea for everything from toothaches to labour pains, I know, but it can lead to a kind of drug mania, a narcotic addiction. Promise me you will not indulge.”
“I am a practical man, Poppy. I would indulge in nothing that would interfere with my work or cloud by judgment. Nothing,” he said again for emphasis.
“Now, here,” he said, stepping to the end of the counter. “We have a collection of pipes.”
“You will have quite the abundance of choices when you encounter a three-pipe problem, won’t you?”
“Quite so. This one is rather old. A clay pipe. Here is one made of brier and this one is made of cherry wood. The type of pipe that one smokes has some effect on the remaining ash, I believe.”
That lesson in ashes and pipes continued for most of the afternoon, but still, I could not tear myself away from him. I never could.
7
I put memories of that lesson in ashes and thoughts of Sherlock aside as I entered the Café Restaurant Nicols, later known as the Café Royal, on Regent Street. This was a favourite of Oscar Wilde’s when he was in London. I looked forward to a nice meal with my unorthodox and jovial friend. I went inside and saw him waiting for me at a table in the corner, reading the newspaper. He wore emerald green silk stockings and breeches, a braided coat with a sunflower in the lapel, and a large, green tie. Eccentric attire was his way of telling the world he was an artist and ‘not like other men.’ He had told me once that revolutionizing dress was far more important than religious reformation and that “Luther’s neckties must have been deplorable.”
I gave him a peck on the cheek and sat down next to him. Clutching his hand, I asked, “How is my famous friend?”
“Not very famous yet, but I am working on notorious,” he laughed.
I squeezed his hand. “You will be famous, Oscar. As a poet or a writer or both.”
He smiled. “Or a dramatist. I am going to write a play in which Sarah Bernhardt shall be the star.”
“The actress who sleeps in a coffin?”
“The same. She is wonderful. I’ve met her, you know.”
“Really? Where?”
“I was there when she stepped ashore. I threw lilies to her feet.”
“As only you could do. You’ve ingratiated yourself to her already then?”
“I believe I have. And I’ve just seen her at the Comédie Française. They performed the fifth act of Othello. Monsieur Mounet-Sully was Othello and she was Desdemona. It was... inspiring. I do fear, however, that idiotic censorship may destroy the play I am working on, or at the very least spoil it,” he added.
He took my hand in his again. “It’s good to see you.”
“You as well. So what were you reading? You looked intensely interested. Was it about a new play or something?”
“A murder actually. One that occurred far too close to home. Your home, in a manner of speaking.”
“Pardon?”
“The account in the newspaper recounted a death, possibly - no, probably a murder - near the British Museum, just around the corner from your office.”
“Really? I have heard nothing about it.”
“Nor had I. But a reporter from The Times happened to be on his way into the museum to cover some new exhibit when the police arrived. A crime had been reported. They found the corpse of a young man behind the museum and the circumstances of his death seem quite suspicious. A small Buddha statue and a dead bird were left at the scene. I understand it is not the first time.”
I shuddered. I’d forgotten to read the article as Sherlock requested, but instinct told me it was the same one of which Oscar spoke and that it was, perhaps, related to the reason he’d asked me to come to Bart’s after witnessing the hanging.
“Do you remember the essay I wrote for the Irish Monthly last year?” Oscar asked. “The one about the tomb of Keats? Do you remember the rhyme contained within the article?”
I nodded.
Oscar put the paper aside and closed his eyes. “Rid of the world’s injustice and its pain, He rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue; Taken from life while life and love were new.” He sighed. “Perhaps it is not such a tragedy to leave this world of pain and sorrow behind.”
“You also said that Keats died before his time, Oscar,” I reminded him. “As did, I am sure, the young man who was murdered.”
“And as did my dear cousin Effie,” he said. He froze for a moment, as if he had just heard a voice from the past. Though his silence filled the air like the crisp stillness of a winter night, a film of perspiration glazed his forehead. His eyes became hard, like agates. The expression on his face reminded me of an animal pinned against a wall in fear, terrified of some invidious predator.
Then he slapped his palm on the table with a great thump and twisted his lips into a smile. He drank some water and said, “I like to think of our Effie in Tir-nãn-Og, where age and death shall never find her. But I have been thinking about spirits lately, of ghosts and saints who live in a state intermediary between this world and the next. I think something holds them here. Some earthly longing or affection, a duty unfulfilled, or anger against the living. Perhaps they gather all around us in hurt silence, and it is that which casts off the sudden chill in a room that people say they feel when a ghostly presence is nigh.
“I think some shades take the form of insects,” he added. “Butterflies. I can see our beloved Effie as a butterfly, can’t you?”
I felt a tear stinging at my eye. “Yes. The most beautiful of butterflies.”
“Yes. And she would be unique.”
“Like a Swallowtail.”
“A what?” he asked.
“Swallowtail. It’s a kind of butterfly found in the wetlands near my parents’ home in the Norfolk Broads. They have large creamy yellow wings with black stripes near the edges. The hindwings have two long black extensions, which look similar to the tail of a swallow’s, and they also have two large red dots which are known as ‘false red eyes.’”
He laughed. “Perfect. Effie would definitely be a Swallowtail. Certainly she had those false eyes... another set of them at least... the ones that saw into the future. I have never known anyone like her who could make predictions with such accuracy.”
I looked down. I missed her so much and her death had shattered my brother.
“And how is her darling little boy, Poppy? I have not seen him in months.”
“Alexander is wonderful. He looks more like Effie every day.”
We sipped wine and finally ordered a meal. We were quiet a long time.
“I’ve been making new friends here in London, Poppy. I’ve even cultivated a friendship with Lillie Langtry.”
Like Miss Bernhardt, Lillie was the toast of the stage.
“I do have some competition, though,” Oscar said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Surely you have heard. Lillie is involved with Bertie.”
I stared at him, puzzled.
“The Prince of Wales? Albert Edward.”
I had certainly heard the rumours. “But the prince is married with children.”
“Such a state has never stopped a man from longing for a woman like Lillie. She is beautiful, bold, and intelligent. The Prince likes to show off Miss Langtry, but he also is building a place where they can be alone. The house is not finished - the masons’ strike, you know - so they apparently use rooms at Lord Derby’s mansion nearby. But he has purchased land near Bournemouth’s East Cliff and told Miss Langtry she can design the
home for them. A romantic love nest. Lillie told me that Bertie’s chamber will be filled with original paintings and the fireplace is to be made of carved oak and hand-painted tiles with scenes from Shakespeare in blue and white enamel and gold leaf. She says in the minstrel’s gallery, she will place a statement, one that says ‘What say they? Let them say.’ There will be stained glass windows that depict swans in a loving embrace. Lillie has even had special curtain tie-back hooks made which reflect the prince’s own emblem. It sounds marvelous; I wish I could avail myself of it.”
I almost laughed. Oscar could be wonderfully malicious and exuberant in repeating gossip, while looking down at gossipers. But in this particular venture, I feared for him.
“Oscar, do take care. If she is the prince’s mistress and he is building her such a home, he must be deeply infatuated with her. Surely you do not wish to incur the wrath of the future King of England! Besides, what about Florence?”
His face clouded over in such a way as I had not seen since Effie’s funeral.
“Oscar? I asked what about Florence, the young lady to whom you were going to propose?”
“That is another matter,” he said sharply.
I sighed. “All right, then. Aside from Florence, how was your recent trip to Ireland after your classes ended?”
“Well, I visited relatives, of course. I went riding and hunting. I attended a shooting party at Ashford Castle in County Mayo, which was quite grand.”
I had never been to County Mayo, but just before I’d entered nursing school, I’d joined Effie and her family on a short excursion to Ireland to visit their relatives there. It was a lovely country. Before returning to England from Dublin, Effie, her father and I had travelled north to see other relations in Crossmaglen. I would never forget the sun beating down on the undulating hill and dale, the small, oblong berries of scarlet on the haw shrubs, the turquoise turnip fields, the showy purple irises that flagged in the breeze, and the thick, white mist of the bogs, like clouds hovering low to the ground. The streams of sunlight fell through branches that hung over the road, turning the trees into Gothic windows, like those in a great cathedral, with traceries through which golden beams and rose rays danced.
