“He knows I’m not German,” I said with some asperity. “If you will saddle me with preposterous identities, do so before I suddenly find myself switching from fluent English to halting German!”
Holmes merely said he would set one of his street Arabs to watch Carrera’s movements. “When he left us so abruptly, it wasn’t to meet with other clients as he claimed, but to go into the little office in the back of the gallery. I think we can depend upon his visiting Fontana. I had best find Charlie before we go on to Kensington.”
We swung down to the river, to the docks where the boys Holmes often used could be found, scavenging among the detritus that the Thames casts along her banks. Holmes gave a peculiar whistle, and after some moments, there came an answering whistle, and one of his street urchins—his Baker Street Irregulars—appeared. While our jarvey waited, most reluctant to keep his cab standing in such a dubious spot, Holmes gave the lad a shilling and told him where to go and who to watch for.
To the driver’s relief, Holmes directed him next to Cadogan Gardens, a much more genteel location. We alighted at the corner of the gardens, where the street connects with Pavilion Road. To my astonishment, as Holmes paid the fare, the cab was hailed by none other than our client.
“Mr. Fontana,” Holmes cried, “I thought you were surely in your room at the Gloucester. You have had too much exertion for one with your recent injuries.”
Fontana stared at us angrily. “What I do is none of your business, after all, and it was essential that I call on my sister.”
“I thought your object was to keep your sister in ignorance of your injuries,” I said.
“It was,” he said, “but the attack on me was in the evening paper. That damned ineffectual manager Gryce, I suppose, although you’d think he wouldn’t want his hotel to be known as a place where guests’ bedchambers can be invaded in the middle of the night.”
He climbed into the cab and we heard him give the driver the Gloucester as his destination.
Holmes chuckled. “It was not Gryce but I who put that story about. I telegraphed a stop-press to the evening papers and both the Times and the Examiner picked it up.”
“But why?” I demanded.
“If the man injured himself, he is covering some shameful secret. Or he is protecting someone else’s secret. I hoped to prod him to action.”
As we approached the house at 26 Cadogan Gardens, we saw one of the housemaids in the area, talking to a shabbily dressed woman. I pointed her out to Holmes, for I thought she might be the beggar who had accosted Fontana outside the Baker Street flat earlier this evening.
Holmes looked at her with keen interest, but when we came up to the house, we both realized she was merely a charwoman looking for rough work. She bore neither the filthy rags nor the malodor of the beggar woman, and on coming up to her I saw she was altogether younger and smaller than the woman I’d seen earlier.
“They told me as how you was down a hand here,” we heard her say as we climbed the shallow steps to the front entrance, “And I got good references, sure I have. Clean the area stairs, empty slop buckets, nothing ain’t beneath me.”
I thought of the American woman we’d encountered at Carrera’s and her comment on the French woman’s painting, that it captured the fatigue women experience from their domestic labors. I wondered if I had ever considered the fatigues my own dear Mary subjected herself to in order to ensure my own domestic comfort, and found my thoughts so disquieting that I was glad when a manservant answered our ring.
My friend handed him a card. “Pray tell Mrs. Someringforth that Mr. Sherlock Holmes would like a word with Miss Fontana.”
The servant looked at us doubtfully. “Mrs. Someringforth is dressing and Miss Fontana is indisposed.”
“Ah,” Holmes said. “That is sad news indeed. We are employed by Mr. Fontana, however. Dr. Watson here is Mr. Fontana’s medical advisor, and if Miss Fontana’s indisposition is related to her brother’s recent visit, why Dr. Watson will be delighted to assist her, I’m sure.”
I produced my own card, bowing assent, much relieved that I didn’t have to impersonate a Russian serf or Sufi fire-walker to suit my friend’s whimsy.
The man bowed slightly and left us on the doorstep while he went to consult his mistress. The ill breeding shown by not inviting two gentlemen into the house annoyed me, but caused Holmes to knit his brow. “Something is upsetting this household. Perhaps the fact that they’re ‘down a hand,’ as the charwoman said. Or perhaps Miss Fontana is having an hysterical fit.”
We hadn’t long to wait, however, before we were invited to step into a salon on the first floor. We followed the man up a flight of carpeted steps into a small room where the newly hired charwoman was hastily building a fire.
“So Fontana was ushered up to his sister’s room,” Holmes observed, “not treated as a common visitor.”
The manservant oversaw the charwoman’s fire making, ensuring she cleared the hearth of any stray ashes or kindling, then bustled her out of the theater. Shortly after, Mrs. Someringforth appeared, dressed for the theater in a low-cut gown of gold silk. The diamond drops which hung from her ears were no more lustrous than her dark eyes; she held out both hands to Holmes and, with a delightful smile, begged his pardon for keeping him waiting.
“My maid has contracted the influenza, and the housemaid filling in for her is so fearful of making a mistake that she spends twice the necessary labor on the simple job of making a middle-aged woman appear half her age.”
“If she has succeeded marvelously, it can only be because she had such excellent raw materials to work with.” My friend bowed over her hands. “We had come to call on your houseguest, however, and beg you not to let us keep you from your evening engagement.”
“Ah, poor Beatrice!” Mrs. Someringforth cried. “I fear it’s from her that my maid acquired her illness; she dressed Beatrice last night, when the poor girl was already ill. I should never have permitted her to go with me to Lady Darnley’s ball, but I thought she was merely fatigued; it wasn’t until our return that I realized how feverish she was.”
“She saw her brother when he called?”
Mrs. Someringforth shook her head so vigorously that the diamond drops swung like pendulums. “I wouldn’t permit it. He is an excitable young man, and she is so very feverish that I feared a visit from him would only make her worse, especially since he presents such a horrible vision, swathed as he is in those bandages.”
“If she is indeed seriously ill, as my friend, Dr. Watson, is already here, it would be prudent to allow him to—”
“Oh, please, Mr. Holmes, just because I am going to the theater you must not think me heartless or lacking in appropriate care for my charge. My own doctor saw Beatrice this morning. He left various draughts for her, as well as for my maid, and will return this evening. Now you must not let me detain you.”
She rang the bell; the manservant must have been hovering nearby, for he came at once to usher us down the stairs, handing us our hats and coats so quickly that we barely had time to assume them before he had the front door open once again.
“They’re expecting another visitor,” was my friend’s comment. “Or concealing something they don’t want us to see.”
We retreated to Pavilion Road, where Holmes flagged down a passing cab, instructing the jarvey to wait. While we watched 26 Cadogan Gardens, the charwoman left the house by the rear door. She looked up at the cab, as if puzzled by why we stood there, and we shrank back in our seats so as not to be visible from the sidewalk. The woman hurried on up Pavilion Road toward Hyde Park.
After a few minutes more, Mrs. Someringforth’s carriage pulled up in front of her house; a footman helped her inside and her carriage bowled past us, heading north. Holmes told the cabman to follow her, and she led us directly to the Siddons Theatre in the Strand. Holmes proposed following her into the theater, but I pled my long day and asked the cab to return me to Baker Street.
Back at my old lodgings, I f
ell instantly into a deep sleep, from which I was roused a little past one in the morning by Charlie, the lad Holmes had set to watch Carrera. He had banged on the street door until the noise finally roused Mrs. Hudson, who was much incensed by his visit.
“He shoved his way past me, the little wretch.” She was panting from her efforts to catch the boy before he could make it to Holmes’s door.
“Never mind that, missus,” Charlie said. “Is Mr. Holmes about? There’s been a terrible accident, to the swell that he set me to watch, beat up, he was, on his way from his shop to wherever he was next a-heading.”
I came fully awake. “How is he? Where is he?”
“I whistled up my squad and they run for help, brung a constable, which took some doing, I can tell you that: None of you boys is going to be making game of I, he says to Freddie, and Freddie has to practically swear his soul to the devil before the constable come. I stayed close by till I saw him brung into some lady’s house, and then come back here to tell it all to Mr. Holmes.”
Just as I was saying that Holmes had not yet returned, we heard his step on the landing. Mrs. Hudson broke into further excuses and laments about the wretched lad, but Holmes cut her short and demanded a full accounting from Charlie.
“How many assailants?”
“Just two, but they was powerful strong, they was carrying clubs or somepin’ like ’em. They swung ’em at me when I tried to stop ’em but when I whistled up my lads, then they took to their heels fast enough. We sent Freddie for the constable and Oliver went for to bring a doctor, who wouldn’t come at all, not for street rabble, and we would have been done for except this lady come along. She says to the constable, just help him into my carriage and I’ll see that he gets proper care.”
I looked at Holmes, startled. “Good God! Was it Mrs. Someringforth?”
“It couldn’t have been,” Holmes said. “I sat in the box adjacent to hers; she stayed through the entire performance and then continued to a party at Stoggett House.”
“The town home of the Duke of Hoovering,” I said, trying to remember where I had recently heard the name.
“Yes. Her Grace’s grand ball, one of the high points of the London season. I gained admittance through the servant’s entrance by passing myself off as Lady Naseby’s footman, and spent the evening watching our friend. At one point she disappeared up a rear staircase, but she reappeared within a few minutes. She can’t have been the person who bore off Signor Carrera. Charlie, do you have any notion where they went?”
“‘Course I do, governor, like you taught me I got up behind the lady’s carriage and rode with them down to the river, over Chelsea way. Ann Lane they went to.”
“Excellent.” Holmes gave the boy a shilling for himself and a handful of sixpenny pieces for his “squad.”
When the boy had gone, shooed down the stairs at high speed by the incensed Mrs. Hudson—”Giving him money like that will just encourage him, Mr. Holmes,” she’d warned, to which my friend replied, “Precisely, my dear Mrs. Hudson,”—Holmes paced up and down restlessly.
“Who could have taken him in? A good Samaritan or an accomplice? It’s past two now, but she’s close to the river; she could smuggle him and a valuable painting away at a moment’s notice.”
He rummaged through the papers for the table of tides. “Yes, the tide will turn at four-oh-nine this morning. I think, yes, I think I’d best be on my way to Chelsea.”
“But she rescued him from armed assailants, Holmes,” I protested, by no means willing to leave my bed after a scant four hours’ sleep.
“She came along mighty promptly, whoever she is. What if the assailants are in her pay, or vice versa, and by looking like a good Samaritan, she is able to worm the Titian away from him? This must be a painting of uncommon value.” He rubbed his thin hands in front of the grate. “No, I must go to Ann Lane.”
I retired to my room to change once more into day clothes, half sorry my friend had been roused from his torpor: I had forgotten how exhausting it was to keep up with his fevered pace.
We reached Ann Lane easily, the streets being virtually empty at such an hour. The cab deposited us on Cheyne Walk and I was glad I had chosen to accompany my friend, for the pre-dawn denizens of the Embankment were rats and human scavengers, some hunting for easy prey among homebound revelers.
The house where Charlie had seen Signor Carrera deposited was in the middle of a row of elegant townhouses and flats. On inspection of the entryway, Holmes saw that there were three flats in the building. We assumed our quarry was on the first floor, for it alone among the buildings on the street still had a light burning.
While Holmes and I stood on the doorstep, carrying on a soft conversation about the best vantage point for watching front and rear entrances, we were surprised by the opening of the front door. Holmes had his hand in his pocket, but it was a woman at the top of the stairs, carrying a lamp.
“No need to shoot me, Mr. Holmes, and no need to fuss about keeping an eye on things, either, for I can let you come in and see the poor beat-up signor for yourself.”
It was the American woman we had encountered at Carrera’s gallery last evening. I was too astonished for words, but cast a glance at Holmes. His face betrayed no surprise, but a muscle was quivering in his temple as we followed the lady into the house.
She led us up the stairs to the first floor and into a drawing room that overlooked Ann Lane. One of the blinds was half drawn at a lopsided angle and our hostess excused us while she went to straighten it. She untied a single black thread from the cord.
“I worried about someone surprising me here, Mr. Holmes, so I tied a length of embroidery silk to the blind and across the railing outside. Anyone passing through it would break it at once, the thread’s so fragile, and the blind would come down to alert me.”
She placidly wound the thread around a spool and placed it in an outsize workbasket.
“Madam,” Holmes said, “You have the advantage of us. I am certainly Sherlock Holmes and this is Dr. Watson, but—”
“My land, how rude of me, Mr. Holmes. The day has been so filled with excitement that I’ve forgotten my manners. I’m Amelia Butterworth of Buffalo, New York, and how I came to be involved in your adventure is quite a long story. May I make you a pot of tea, or perhaps a whisky? I believe the friend whose flat this is has one or two decanters, although I myself don’t indulge.”
“Tea would be welcome,” I confessed, although my friend, impatient for an explanation, looked at me in annoyance.
Miss Butterworth went to the doorway and called out and a young servant, very quiet and well behaved, appeared. She reported that Signor Carrera was sleeping comfortably, and that she felt able to leave him for five minutes to bring us some tea.
“Now, you’ll be wanting to know who I am, and how I came by this.”
She walked over to a pianoforte and opened a massive volume whose cover proclaimed, “The Ring Cycle, scored for Pianoforte and voices.” This turned out not to be a musical score, but a hollowed-out book. Recessed within it lay a painting of a woman, whose auburn hair, floating around a swan-like neck, seemed so burnished, so real, that one wished to touch it.
The servant returned with a tray, which Miss Butterworth laid on a low table. “Yes, that’s the Titian, or so we’re led to believe,” she said as she poured out cups for me and herself.
“Now, Beatrice Fontana, she’s the daughter of my good friend Alice Ellerby, who married Mr. Fontana. I don’t know what the man calling himself Frances Fontana may have told you, but Mr. Fontana is a banker. He used to be in a good way of business in Buffalo, but times have been bad with the recent slump. This painting has been in the Fontana family for centuries; they say the lady was his great-grandmother’s great-grandmother and a mistress of one of those doges in Venice.
“Be that as it may, Mr. Fontana wants to prove the picture’s value, for if it is by this Titian, then it will pay for a dowry for Beatrice and keep Mrs. Fontana in comfort besides
. So when we learned about this Signor Carrera being a leading authority on Renaissance painters, Mr. Fontana decided he should come over and show the painting to the signor, get an opinion and a valuation. But he couldn’t leave Buffalo with his business in such a bad way, so young Beatrice said she’d undertake the commission, and, as she’s my goddaughter, and I enjoy foreign travel, I fixed to come with her.
“Another old friend of ours was quite a beauty when we were all young together. She married an English gentleman and her daughter is the lady you’ve been following tonight, Chloë Someringforth. Chloë is a bit older than Beatrice, maybe ten years, and quite the society lady. When she learned from Mrs. Fontana that Beatrice was coming over, she offered to provide her a room and an introduction to society. That sounded good to Alice—Beatrice’s ma. I have another old friend here in London who’s away this winter; she offered the use of this pleasant flat.”
Holmes, impatient with all the chatter about who was married, who was whose friend, and so on, demanded coldly. “How came you to have the Titian?”
“Well, Mr. Holmes, I’m coming to that, and not a pretty story it makes, either. I got my goddaughter settled at Chloë Someringforth’s, but when I went to call on her a few days later, I found her in some distress. It seems that while Mr. Someringforth has been serving his country in Egypt, his lady has been entertaining a young gentleman from the Hoovering family. And it didn’t take a doctor’s eye to notice that Chloë will be presenting her husband with an interesting event on his return.”
I was so startled that I dropped my tea cup, but when I bent to try to mop up the spill, Miss Butterworth told me not to mind it, that she would get to it after we left. “I can clean the area stairs, empty slop buckets, nothing ain’t beneath me,” she said.
“Yes,” she laughed, seeing our amazement, “I was the charwoman looking for to help out at Someringforth’s last evening, and I’d best get back there soon to light the morning fires and try to remove my poor Beatrice from their clutches, for it really is no laughing matter. And your help will be most welcome, Mr. Holmes, most welcome indeed.”
In the Company of Sherlock Holmes Page 4
