Jewel of the Thames (A Portia Adams Adventure)

by Misri, Angela

  Mrs. Dawes sat up straighter at this responsibility and agreed to be of whatever help she could. They arranged a short-term plan wherein I would eat some of my meals with the Dawes as I became accustomed to a new city, but my guardian made it clear that attendance was not mandatory, and was entirely up to me.

  There was nothing left to do but to show me to my rooms. I followed Mrs. Dawes up the stairs to a second landing, where she opened the door to a medium-sized sitting room with a lovely brick fireplace. The wallpaper was thankfully muted, a pale gold background with brown fleur-de-lis accents, and the comfortable furniture also seemed to match the mood of the room, in various shades of brown. The wooden floors looked polished and well maintained, and the tiny kitchen was of a reasonable size for a single person. Everything seemed to be in a decent state, though a little old-fashioned and decidedly male when compared to my mother’s sitting room back in Toronto. No doilies or throw pillows, no small pieces of cross-stitch over the backs of chairs. But it was very clean, even the fireplace showing minimal soot, making me wonder if the chimney had been sealed up and the bricks were now a façade rather than a working fireplace.

  I will admit to feeling not a little hurt and cross at the seeming ease with which my guardian had passed me off. This was an odd reaction since I enjoyed being in charge of my own life, which living by myself would grant me. But I forgot all about that when I saw the bookshelves in the sitting room. There were five of these massive dark wooden bookshelves, filled with volumes and reaching from floor to ceiling, their dominance of the north wall interrupted only by the curtains of the two windows.

  A glutton for the printed word, I gasped at the treasure before me, barely hearing Mrs. Dawes as she led Mrs. Jones to the bedroom and directed Brian to deliver my meager belongings up here.

  I don’t know how long I stood there. At some point Brian said from over my shoulder, “I thought it best to bring these back out of storage. You should be the one to decide where they go.”

  “I should?” I answered, my eyes still locked on the precious tomes, though I could feel how close Brian was, and my stomach fluttered at it.

  “Why, yes,” he said. “They passed to you the same as this house. And not a few of them were in fact written by your grandfather himself.”

  I finally tore my gaze from the spines of the books. “My grandfather? These are his books?”

  Nodding, he selected a brown journal from the bookshelf and handed it to me. “See?”

  I read the cover page — The Adventures of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, June-August 1852 — and my eyes traveled down to the author’s signature: “As faithfully recorded by Dr. John H. Watson.”

  “Dr. John Watson,” I murmured, connecting the dots with a certainty that at once elated and shocked me.

  “Your grandfather,” corrected Brian with another friendly smile, and he wandered away to speak to his mother.

  My mind was humming now, grasping at any story I could remember about the world-famous detective and his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson — my own grandfather! How could this be? How could I have never known this? I pressed a hand to my forehead, thinking back to the few times my grandmother had been coaxed into speaking of her life here in London. I shook my head. No, there had been no clues to lead me to this startling place, no unfollowed leads. It was just a secret my grandmother had been determined to keep.

  Mrs. Jones returned to my side, the Dawes having left us on our own. She stood beside me, quietly surveying the books, running her manicured hand lightly over the spines.

  “He did love to write down every little exploit.” Her fingers paused on one book, and then continued their journey. “Holmes didn’t give the good doctor credit for it while he was alive, but I know he appreciated all the attention.”

  I sat down on one of the comfortable wing chairs. “My grandfather was Dr. Watson, the famous partner to the even-more-famous Sherlock Holmes? My grandmother never told anyone! My mother had no idea…”

  “Yes, little one,” Mrs. Jones said kindly, but with a slightly sardonic smile. “Your grandparents were married barely a year, just enough time for your mother to be born before they divorced, he staying in England, your grandmother emigrating to the States. Your grandfather remarried several times after that, and he bought 221 Baker Street when the old landlord, Mrs. Hudson, died, at which point I believe the Dawes family moved in.”

  “And it passed to my mother?”

  “Two years ago, when John died,” she answered. “His other children have their own estates, two of them being doctors, the other being rather a useless sort, so your grandfather must have thought to leave something to his first child. According to Mrs. Dawes, they never met, corresponding only by letter, and your mother’s instructions were to continue running the townhouse as her father did. She wanted as little to do with the place as possible.”

  I nodded, understanding at once why this inheritance had been left unspoken — to hide it from my selfish former stepfather.

  “But then, when John Watson died, and my mother inherited this place, she finally knew who her father was!” I said, the truth obvious now. “She never told me,” I added, tears threatening anew, this time from hurt. I looked down at the book in my hands. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  Mrs. Jones, her eyes sympathetic and soft, gave a tiny shrug before saying, “I don’t know, Portia; as I have told you, your mother and I had not spoken in almost twenty years.”

  “Fine,” I declared, getting angry now, “then why did you not tell me about this, Mrs. Jones? You knew the truth — why not tell me right away?” I pushed the book back into its place on the shelf.

  She hesitated, but then said, “Honestly, I wasn’t trying to hide him from you, I just didn’t know what you knew. And then when you shared with me that your grandmother had adamantly kept all information about John from you, I thought it best to get to know you better. Tell me, if I had told you John’s full name the first time we talked about him, what would you have thought? Would you have known he was the same John Watson?”

  I shook my head. “Possibly not, but his name, in addition to inheriting 221 Baker Street, would certainly have been enough, Mrs. Jones. You should have trusted me with the full information.”

  “I see that now, my dear, and I do apologize. I just want you to be introduced to your London connections gently,” she said, grasping my hands. “I don’t want you to have the reaction your grandmother did, cutting herself off from everyone in this city.”

  “I barely knew my father, he was taken from us so young. He was an orphan,” I explained, my eyes still pointed downwards. “I deserve the truth about my own family.

  “No more lies, Mrs. Jones,” I declared, getting myself back under control as I turned back toward the bookshelves, pulling out a medical textbook. “No one needs to be careful around me anymore. Just give me all the data, and I promise you, I will deal with it.”

  Mrs. Jones seemed to take a moment to absorb this, pulling out her monogrammed kerchief to pat at her eyes before speaking again.

  “You do not have any predilections towards medicine, do you, Portia?” Mrs. Jones asked.

  I shook my head at the sudden change of subject. “No, I have not. As I told you on the ship, ever since I was a little girl I had thought of law as a career that interested me, though I had no means with which to pursue my studies in that.”

  “Somerville College offers studies in law,” she mused. “And I suppose those are the two compulsions in your blood — medicine and an overwhelming moral drive towards justice.”

  She snorted at the end of this sentence, and then, catching my eye, added, “Oh, not that I am laughing at the dead, my dear, but your grandparents were just so earnest about right and wrong. You really must correct that in yourself if it turns out to be an inherited trait. Most unappealing.”

  I laughed aloud, and after a moment, she joined me.

  Chapter Four

  I spent the next three weeks learning all I could about
my famous grandfather, filling my lonely hours with this new family member. I knew of course that this was a very emotional reaction to the loss of my mother and the hurt at her keeping this secret from me. Over and over I asked myself why she had felt the need to keep her father’s name hidden from me. I knew how much it had frustrated her that her own mother was so secretive about it, so it would seem logical that she would want to spare her own child that frustration. Were other truths being kept from me? Other family secrets that I deserved to know? I was alone in the world, with no real purpose, and no one to come home to. Keeping myself busy learning about my newly discovered relations meant less time spent sadly staring out the window missing my old life. I would fill my empty heart with as much data as I could about Dr. John Watson.

  To do so, I read every one of his handwritten journals cover-to-cover, one right after another in chronological order. I paused only long enough to walk the streets and get to know my new city (maps were a favorite subject of mine, and I pinned several to the walls of my new apartment with small brass thumbtacks).

  The map next to my front door was one of the subways and inner streets of the downtown core and was posted on a corkboard I had brought with me from Toronto. It allowed me to stick pins in the places I had been and mark the places I wanted to investigate next.

  Upon reading the journal that included the casebook entitled “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”, I set out to see the west-end restaurant where Holmes had been attacked: the Café Royal. The French restaurant was everything I imagined it would be from Watson’s description, situated on Regent Street and flanked by private members’ clubs and other fine restaurants. I stood on the sidewalk looking in, imagining the scene described in the journal, rubbing my hands together in the March cold.

  The map of southern England was more for reference than actual travel, and that I pinned to the wall behind my bed for the same reason my mother had hoarded all those travel brochures — as a little expression of ambition toward travel. Now that I was here, I might as well explore my new home country.

  To read the journals, though, was as much an education on Dr. Watson as it was on Sherlock Holmes. The depth of trust and friendship between these two men was obvious and warmed my heart even as the hearth we had all shared in different centuries warmed my body.

  I digested case after case voraciously and searched for corroborating material in the textbooks and written notes on the shelves. The number of mysteries these two had solved in their seventeen years together was amazing: everything from murders to grand theft, and working for royalty and chimney sweeps alike.

  It was no longer a consideration to sell the townhouse at Baker Street. Quite on the contrary, this discovery had given me new purpose — learning about my famous family — and a new source of income that I could not overlook. I met with Mrs. Jones’ accountant to work out a reasonable budget for myself and discovered that with my guardian covering my tuition costs, the income from my downstairs tenants would be more than enough to cover my small expenses. I owned the townhouse outright as passed down through my family, so my expenses were a very short list.

  Being surrounded by the writings of my grandfather somehow made the loneliness more bearable. It connected me to my heritage despite being thousands of miles away from my homeland. Slowly I was starting to forgive my mother for hiding this from me. I might never know all her reasons, but my faith in her love for me meant that I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

  One morning I found myself staring off into space, rubbing my silver cross, and I came to a simple conclusion: this family here in England had caused my mother pain. I wasn’t sure how, or why, but it made the most sense based on the evidence. Perhaps she felt rejected. Or perhaps her mother had managed to pass on her adamant denials of this relationship. Whatever the underlying psyche, the discovery of John Watson as her hitherto unknown father did not bring her joy. She would have shared joy. She would have hidden pain.

  Mrs. Jones flitted in and out of the apartment delivering clothes one day, bouquets the next, never staying long enough to answer a question unless she demanded my company at dinners and parties, where I was one of many guests.

  At one such party, held at a home that was more marble than brick, I allowed Mrs. Jones to introduce me to the hosts and then quickly excused myself to find refreshments. Mrs. Jones gave me a look that conveyed her displeasure without a word, but I ignored it, making a beeline to the silver-laden buffet table. Waiters in smart white uniforms stood ready to serve out tiny bite-sized hors d'œuvres onto fine china. I shook my head at the waiter offering something gray on a cracker, pasting a smile on my lips and looking over at Mrs. Jones. Seeing that her back was turned, I scampered away from the table to the window, where I could stand casually hidden by the velvet curtains. It was here that I spent most of these large engagements, regardless of the venue, watching the upper class toast each other and make merry. Only when I would see my guardian start looking around for me with her gray eyebrows knit in what I knew to be annoyance would I rejoin the party, so that she would find me smiling and enjoying myself with someone I had introduced myself to minutes before. I will admit that I didn’t try very hard to mingle amongst these people. Not only was I uncomfortable with the number of questions they invariably asked me, but I much preferred observation to socialization. Mrs. Jones never said a word about my activities, though, so I continued my efforts to hide even as she continued her efforts to show.

  I was unrelenting in my efforts to quiz the older lady about our relationship, about her relationship with my grandparents, asking question after question to try to wrest even the smallest clue from which to unravel the secret that was Irene Jones. But she was deft in her artifice and skilled at turning the subject toward one more to her liking.

  Brian Dawes was as well read on the case studies as I. He had spent weeks after my grandfather’s death organizing the papers and books that had lain in disrepair for years in this upper apartment. We delighted in comparing our thoughts on the many cases we had both read and supplemented our readings with his stories from Scotland Yard, where he was in the last few months of training to become a constable.

  “Have you come across the two cases written by Holmes?” Brian asked me on one of his upstairs visits as he uncovered the small plate of biscuits sent up by his mother. He was wearing a collared shirt with an old brown vest over top, and his hair was shorter today, probably cut in the style of his fellow constables. I could tell that he had been at the shooting range earlier despite the wet hair that signaled a recent shower. The trousers and vest were fresh but the collared shirt still bore signs of gun grease and the smell of powder.

  I took one of the biscuits with a smile. “Indeed, ‘The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane’ and ‘The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier’, I believe they are called.” I strode over to the bookshelf, taking a bite of the biscuit as I did so, the smells and taste of ginger flooding my senses. I choked slightly on the extreme flavor, and to my embarrassment, Brian clapped me on the back a few times before I could take a breath and thank him, my cheeks red.

  “They are … very good,” I managed to squeak out as he quickly retrieved a small rag from my kitchenette.

  “I call them Glaringly Ginger Biscuits, but we could rename them Garroting Ginger … or Great Scott Ginger — what do you think would be a fairer warning to the unprepared?” he asked, his dimples deep and his smile wide. I had knelt down to retrieve biscuit bits from the floor and took the rag with thanks before rising to return to the bookshelf for the journal we had been discussing. I pulled it out and handed it to him as I carried the rag back to the dustbin. “I think a good start is to tell your hapless victim any of those names before they take a bite, Mr. Dawes.”

  His grin grew wider, if possible. “But what fun would that be, Miss Adams?”

  I rolled my eyes, returning to our original topic. “Holmes may have been the superior detective of the pair, but I believe my grandfather far exceeded him in
storytelling prowess,” I said, trying to regain my composure.

  I shook the rag out over the dustbin and turned back toward Brian, who had opened the journal. “I entirely agree, Miss Adams,” said he, looking up from the book to nod, his wide-set eyes wrinkling at the corners as they did when he was amused. “I miss your grandfather’s voice in these cases.”

  I folded and unfolded the rag as he continued to skim the journal, unsure where to take this conversation next. Before he had come upstairs I had been quite busy looking over the list of textbooks recommended by Somerville College and had been annoyed by the knock at the door. But now I was looking for reasons for Brian to stay, which I found strangely odd and unsettling.

  For the first time in my life, I was developing a friendship — something my mother had constantly talked about, especially in the last few months of her life. From the time I was a small child I could remember being alone, even when in a crowd of children my age. My quiet nature and inquisitive observations seemed to put people on edge, and it became common for me to carry a few books everywhere we went, because even when my mother was laughing and talking with her friends, their children seemed to want nothing to do with me. As I grew older, I began to avoid social gatherings, both so that my introverted nature would not be obvious and because I found new people distracting and couldn’t help staring at them. My poor mother eventually gave up trying to find friends for me and allowed me my strange habits.

  All this made it doubly odd that Brian Dawes and I seemed to get along so well so quickly. We bonded over the cases he brought home and the documented ones I was painstakingly going over in my own apartments, his own profession making me jealous and at the same time appreciative that he was so open and sharing. I felt a little sad that my mother wasn’t here to witness this development, knowing how happy it would have made her.