Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 23
BETWEEN ELEVEN AND TWELVE O’CLOCK last night, the well-known mathematics lecturer Dr Hamish Laidlaw was brutally slain in his own home by persons unknown.
Police are unwilling to release further detail on this terrible crime, but it is understood that the doctor was strangled in his bed while his wife lay sleeping beside him. The motive of the killer remains unknown, as no valuables are believed to have been stolen, nor was Dr Laidlaw known to have any enemies.
Dr Laidlaw is survived by his wife and two grown children.
Thankfully, Holmes took up the tale on the succeeding page.
25th February 1879
Hamilton and I arrived at Dr Laidlaw’s home at around ten in the morning, only to find the house locked up and deserted. A neighbour was kind enough to inform us that there had been a substantial police presence in the dead of night, and that Mrs Laidlaw had departed in the company of one of her sons not an hour previously. With no means of making further enquiries, we left, purchasing a newspaper on the way back to my rooms, a clipping from which I have attached overleaf.
Hamilton is not entirely without wits after all, I was pleased to see, and immediately grasped the import of this unexpected death. “This is Professor Moriarty’s doing, isn’t it?” he said as soon as he read the journalist’s report. “He’s found out about the letter somehow, and killed Laidlaw for writing it.” Panicked, he slapped his hands against his head and moaned the single word “mother” in despair, reminding me with this childish reaction that allowances must be made for his youth.
“Yes,” I said as kindly as I could, “but there is no reason to suspect that he has even heard your name, far less knows that you hold the instrument of his ruin in your hands. Or rather,” I concluded, for accuracy is of the utmost importance in all things, “in my hands, since I have the letter here in my pocket.”
If Hamilton took any consolation from my words, he gave no sign of it. “What do you intend to do with it now?” he asked miserably. “Hand it to the police? Send me home? Because if I have any say in the matter,” he continued, anger replacing misery in his voice, “I’d prefer it if you told the police I’m a dipper instead of forcing me back home. I’ll not spend another night under the same roof as my father!”
I had no particular interest in his home life or the conduct of his father, but in any case I had never intended either to send him home or give the letter to the police. I told him as much as we arrived back at my rooms.
“I believe there is good in you, Frederick, but it has been obscured by certain poor choices you have made and—” I held up a hand to forestall the objection I could see forming on his lips, “—perhaps an upbringing that was not ideal. With this in mind, I have a proposition to put to you.”
I explained my idea to him: that he should take Laidlaw’s letter and give it not to the police but to Professor Moriarty himself, delivering it as originally intended by its author, but not in quite the manner in which the late doctor had desired. Better by far to present the letter already opened to this larcenous (and, it seemed possible, murderous) professor. “Explain that you have come across this missive through your own enterprise,” I said, “and recognising the potential for harm it contained, you thought it best to present it to its intended recipient. Perhaps add a knowing word about poor Laidlaw, so tragically struck down, and even a hint that the letter came to you by less than honest means. Ingratiate yourself, Hamilton. Convince Moriarty that you are his man. Be the pilot fish to his shark and let me know what scraps he lets fall.”
At first he was not wholly enthusiastic. But in time I was able to convince Hamilton that this path offered his best chance of achieving something worthwhile with his life. No more a shiftless pickpocket or a despised son, but a man engaged in vital, honest work. Professor James Moriarty, whatever else he might turn out to be, was a character worth keeping an eye on, I felt, and Hamilton was just the man for the job.
I have sent him to rest in my bed while I make some minor arrangements for his first meeting with Moriarty. A nom de plume is required, so that I always know that it is he who contacts me (assuming that he ever in fact needs to do so). I think I will suggest Fred Porlock, in commemoration of the person from that village who interrupted Coleridge and thus caused him to lose the thread of his thoughts, much as Hamilton did when attempting to rob me of my wallet.
I should also record here that I have proven a better man than Coleridge, for a comment of Gilham’s had knocked a thought ajar in my head. “No gold in Whitechapel, only copper and paper,” he’d said, and though it had meant nothing to me at the time, the phrase would not remove itself until, with a start, I remembered the arson attacks and the vanished engineer with which I had been absorbed at the beginning of this whole affair.
Obviously it is incorrect to say that there is no gold in London. Indeed, there can be few cities on earth that contain more of that precious metal. But almost all of it is locked away, safe from criminal intent. Banknotes are another matter, however. The Bank of England produces new notes constantly. Crucially, however, the paper the notes are printed on is the only thing that the Bank does not manufacture itself, but instead buys from a supplier. A quick glance through the report on the arson attacks confirmed that the first fire – the one that looked very like an accident – had burned down the offices of the self same paper manufacturer. But what if that fire had been exactly as first suspected? I could readily picture the elderly cracksman Nathaniel Ward carelessly knocking his lantern to the ground as he opened a safe in the dark. And a fortuitous fire would neatly cover the fact that certain documents concerning the constitution of Bank of England banknote paper had been stolen. So long as the fire was thought to be an unfortunate accident, that is.
Once the police had reason to suspect something else, however, a cunning man might think it better to encourage those suspicions by carrying out a series of random arson attacks, thereby allowing the significance of the first fire to be lost in the mass. Perhaps – though this is the merest conjecture which I would not repeat in public – Ward was killed for his mistake and his placement in the ashes of the final fire was merely a neat tying up of two loose ends.
So much for Nathaniel Ward, but what of the missing engineer, Matthew Clute? A visit to his widow, ostensibly to offer my condolences, swiftly revealed that Clute had recently been engaged on a prestigious and confidential new commission – to work in a team designing new forms of security for Bank of England banknotes!
Obviously, there is more to be learned than this, but it is a starting point for further investigation. The struggle of the Bank to stay one step ahead of the criminal fraternity is well-known and still causes suspicion of “paper money” amongst many of the older generation. Though I cannot yet identify the exact use to which they will be put, ownership of the means to manufacture the correct paper stock and knowledge of upcoming security measures provide an obvious advantage to whoever is behind these crimes.
It is a clever plan, I must admit, requiring both the loyalty of a large gang and an ability to plan for the long term, which is rarely seen in the common criminal. Could there be a dark mastermind at work in London? If so, I hope one day to test myself against him.
At this horribly ironic point, the diary ended completely. There were no more pages to be read. All that remained was a smaller notebook in which Holmes had entered the name Porlock followed by a column of figures, obviously a record of such small payments as he had made to Hamilton over the years. It was only then that I recalled hearing the name before, in an earlier case involving the late Professor Moriarty, and recalled Holmes claiming to have had no knowledge of his spy’s real name or even how he came to be called Porlock in the first place. Nothing was ever as it seemed with Holmes, I mused as I crossed to the open door and, passing through, pulled it sadly closed behind me.
THE CASE OF THE SCENTED LADY
Nik Vincent
Everyone knows Mrs Hudson. But the truth is that Conan Doyle seems hardly to have kno
wn her at all. He gave her no first name, no physical description, and only occasional appearances in his stories.
We know Mrs Hudson, chiefly, from the screen. Una Stubbs has become many people’s idea of who Mrs Hudson is, but she has also been portrayed as the young widow of a pilot, an alcoholic ex-exotic dancer, and transgender.
I wanted to find my “real” Mrs Hudson, and this story gave me the opportunity to do that.
As far as possible, I wanted to follow Doyle’s lead, such as it is, but I hope I gave my Mrs Hudson a little fire in her belly.
If Watson’s description of her in “The Adventure of the Dying Detective” is to be believed, she must have been quite an extraordinary woman, and nobody’s fool.
—Nik Vincent
It was the very best time to enter the rooms of the great man, take possession of them for an hour or two, and create some order in the chaos that was left in dear Mr Holmes’s wake.
It is perfectly possible to divine the condition of Mr Holmes’s faculties from the manner of his leaving. A slow, measured stride, the murmur of the door swinging open, and the considered click of the lock re-engaging on its closing suggest a calm, possibly reflective humour. On that day, at that hour, I heard a stampede, succeeded by a bang of the door, and the judder of the house resettling in the aftermath signalled a mind at full-tilt and heaving with purpose.
Note, gentle reader, that I am constant in my regard for my lodger, whom I hold in high esteem, however mercurial his humours might seem to those who know him less well. He saves much of his glee and not a little of his opprobrium for his long-suffering and venerable colleague, Dr Watson, of course, but I am privy to a measure of his bountiful spirit in my turn.
Mr Holmes is apt to eschew routine in favour of spontaneity. Great demands are made on both his time and his deductive capabilities, and housekeeping is scarcely worth his attention. I attend; it is my function, as far as I have any significance in his sphere.
On his ferocious departure on some grave new exploit, I donned an apron, and took up my bucket and duster. Mr Holmes might not clean for himself, but domestic necessities must be seen to.
The furious flurry of his leaving was precisely echoed in the pandemonium of his rooms, as if a maelstrom had been trapped within. I had seen his rooms in this condition many times before, and was unperturbed by the results.
The sitting room was gloomy, the curtains tightly shut. The great man had, quite clearly, been at his cogitations through the night. His bed had probably not been slept in. I allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then made my way to the window. First, in all endeavours, there must be light.
When I drew the curtains, the light was as dismal as I’d expected. Great, grey clouds loomed, and the rain came down in sheets at a most improbable angle. Mr Holmes must have been in the most dreadful hurry, for I had not heard the clatter of an umbrella being taken from the hallstand as he departed.
I checked the curtains, as I always do. Blood is better removed before it dries. I have administered salt-paste and carbolic to curtains, carpets and upholstery on a number of occasions when clients have arrived bleeding, or when some regrettable altercation has taken place. On this day I found no blood, but the motion of opening them disturbed the air, wafting a sweet scent into the stale atmosphere, unlike Mr Holmes’s usual aroma of strong tobacco.
A woman had been in the room. Her perfume was concentrated around the window, so she must have sat in the armchair close by. Perhaps she had stood and clutched at a curtain. There was no doubt that she must be a lady. The scent remained strong and clear, redolent of satin and velvet, of fine hats and good grooming. No lady that might wear such a perfume would venture to a single gentleman’s rooms at night, or else, she must be very desperate to do so. Perhaps her plight had resulted in Mr Holmes’s urgency. And yet, surely he would have seen the woman to her carriage?
No, indeed. No carriage had drawn up to the house while I was around to hear it, either last night or this morning. The lady had come very late in the evening or during the night, after I had retired. The urgency had surely come from Mr Holmes’s nocturnal cogitations.
She was a lady. The perfume indicated as much, and she was desperate to have come to Mr Holmes at night, but the cushion had been straightened on the chair she had sat in, so she was both meticulous and not above tidying after herself. Who could such a woman be? And how might she come to require the services of Mr Holmes?
I put such nonsense from my thoughts, for neither Mr Holmes nor his client had need of my idle reveries. I turned to the work at hand. There was only so much I could do. Mr Holmes was ever particular about his belongings, so there were areas of the sitting room that I could flick a duster at, but heaven forbid I should interfere with anything. I noted that his violin had not been moved. It was on the same shelf where it had been the day before, the bow lying undisturbed beside it. So, the woman, whoever she was, must have arrived in the evening, at about the time Mr Holmes might have been expected to take up his instrument. I certainly didn’t remember hearing him play. Mr Holmes had not slept, therefore he must have spent much of the night giving consideration to whatever case the lady had brought him. I glanced at the log basket, and, just as I thought, it was empty. I held a hand to the grate, and it was long cold, but there was a greater quantity of ash than on a regular morning. Mr Holmes’s work had kept him up until dawn, and he had become so intent on the matter at hand that when the fuel for his fire was used up, he had allowed the room to grow cold rather than disturb his process by collecting more wood.
I brushed out the grate, filling the dustpan twice, my bucket brimming as I came to the final layer of fine ash. As I swept the hearth clean, something rang against the dustpan, some small metal object. I took the poker up, and moved its end gently in the ash. When I lifted it out, a ring slid down its length, almost into my hand. I dropped it into my apron and rubbed gently with a thumb and forefinger to dislodge the worst of the soot.
The ring was made for a man, a large signet with a bold and very beautiful piece of lapis lazuli filling the mount. I did not recognise it as belonging to my lodger, or to Dr Watson. It must have been brought here by the lady, and yet it could not have been worn by her. Was it simply lost, or had she discarded it? Thrown it in the flames in an act of desperation, or in a fit of pique? This was a mystery, indeed. No doubt Mr Holmes was hard on the heels of some new discovery that would neatly solve the case.
The inside of the ring remained black with soot, so I twisted the corner of my apron around my finger, and wiped the worst of it away. After a turn or two more around my shrouded finger, I examined the ring more closely, and found an inscription on the inside. I had some education as a child, but girls were not instructed in Latin in my day, so I could not fathom what it said.
I dropped the ring into my apron pocket for safekeeping, and went to the desk, picking up a smoking jacket and closing the lid on a tobacco jar, before removing Mr Holmes’s Prince Alberts, propping the slippers against the hearth-rail ready for them to be warmed ahead of his return. The embroidered monogram on the tops of the slippers reminded me of the signet ring in my pocket. I took it out and rubbed the blue stone, but when I looked at it, I could see that it had not been engraved. It was a gentleman’s ring, so why did it not bear his crest or monogram? And yet it was engraved within the band. How very strange.
I wondered at my own curiosity, for it was none of my concern. I could not help but tut at my musings, and I dropped the ring back into my pocket and continued with my tasks. I pulled the cushion from Mr Holmes’s customary chair, and dropped it on its end onto the floor, to ruffle the feathers within and plump it up. I turned it and dropped it again, on its side, and repeated the process until it had returned to a pleasing shape. As I settled it back in place, I spotted a slip of paper on the rug that must have fallen from the cushion. It was just a corner of a piece of good writing paper, the rest having been torn away. Perhaps the remainder had found its way into the fire.
I flicked the duster over the bookcase and noticed that several volumes had been removed. A considerable pile of them was tucked beside Mr Holmes’s chair. Several were closed, and I flicked through them to make sure that no pages had been marked, before returning them to their rightful places on the shelves. Two, one on top of the other, lay open. I marked the pages, closed them and put them on the corner of Mr Holmes’s desk. Two of the closed books had markers in them, so they went on the pile, too. I glanced at the titles: a political treatise on East India, a biography of a Lancashire cotton magnate, an almanac and a romance novel. What could any of these things have to do with the lady who had written the note in violet ink? For surely none but a lady would use such a feminine style. The romance novel, perhaps, but what of the other references that Mr Holmes had marked so diligently?
Green, white and violet!
I had it. My mind had done its work, while my hands were busy, without my even noticing. These were the colours of the suffragettes. Green, white and violet: Votes for Women.
Had Mr Holmes’s visitor been a suffragette? That band of irrepressible women who not only espoused the cause, but who put themselves in peril fighting for it? Of course, given my position, I could not possibly demonstrate my own political bias. I must remain discreet. But that others campaigned was of singular interest to me, and I applauded them.
I also applauded Mr Holmes for taking a case brought to him by a suffragette. Mr Holmes was not known for his political awareness. Dr Watson might tell you that he hadn’t a political bone in his body, that Mr Holmes took little interest in philosophy, politics or social thought. I bow to his better judgement in such things.