Encounters of Sherlock Holmes Page 4

  She slumped in her seat. Her mouth worked silently for a moment. She whispered, “I wrapped it in a pillowcase and threw it into a coalbunker by the mews behind the hotel.”

  “Watson!” Holmes barked. “Leave immediately. Find it!”

  I stood, put my hand on Lady Burton’s arm, murmured, “He was, is, and shall always be regarded as a great man,” and departed.

  A fast hansom delivered me to the St James Hotel, and, within minutes, while the carriage waited, I’d located the coalbunker and discovered the package inside it. I returned to Baker Street. Holmes was alone, sitting in a haze of tobacco smoke.

  “A truly remarkable woman, Watson!” he declared. “Such loyalty is commendable, don’t you think?”

  I left chapter twenty-one on the table, crossed to the sideboard, and drank the brandy I’d poured the night before. “Even if it leads to misjudged actions, Holmes?”

  “Ha! She allowed her faith in her husband’s intellect to be adversely influenced by emotion.”

  “Her love for him?”

  “No. Her fear that she’d outlive him and have to endure alone the ruination of his good name.”

  I shook my head. “Poor woman. It must be exceedingly difficult to live in the shadow of such a giant.”

  My friend gave me a peculiar look. “Those who do, and who provide support and stability, are the very best of us all.”

  For the next few hours, I read and dozed while Holmes stared into space and filled the room with noxious tobacco fumes. Neither of us touched chapter twenty-one.

  At three o’clock, Algernon Swinburne arrived and Holmes handed the manuscript to him.

  The little poet leaped into the air and emitted a triumphant squeal. “How, Holmes? Who? Why? Avery?”

  “No, Mr Swinburne, the bookseller was not involved. I can say nothing more. Take the chapter and return it to Sir Richard. Inform him that it was my pleasure to assist him, and there is no fee.”

  “Thank you, Holmes! Thank you!”

  With that, Swinburne left us and, I would like to say, the affair of the missing chapter came to a satisfying conclusion. Except, it didn’t.

  One evening, nearly three years later, in July of 1891, I was dining alone in the Athenaeum. Sherlock Holmes was dead—or so I believed— having plunged with Professor Moriarty into the Reichenbach Falls, and I was still in the throes of a deep depression.

  I had just finished my meal when a man, uninvited, pulled out a chair and sat at my table.

  “My condolences, Dr Watson,” he said.

  “Mr Swinburne! It is good to see you!” I gripped the little poet’s hand, and, remembering that Sir Richard Francis Burton had passed away in Trieste nine months previously, added, “We have both suffered a terrible loss.”

  He nodded, swallowed, then bunched his fingers into a fist and slammed it down on the table, causing the cutlery and crockery to rattle. “Did you hear what she did?”

  “Yes.”

  It had been in all the newspapers. Burton had completed his translation, which he’d retitled The Scented Garden, but a heart attack had taken him before it could be published, and, in the wake of his death, Lady Burton had gathered together all his papers, correspondence, and journals, and made a bonfire of them. Into this, she threw her husband’s magnum opus.

  “It was his masterpiece,” Swinburne said. “And she destroyed it. I will never forgive her. I will never speak to her again.”

  We ordered coffee, and for many minutes sat in silence, contemplating, remembering, and mourning.

  Swinburne suddenly stated, “He was not an easy man to be with.”

  “Nor Sherlock Holmes,” said I.

  “He was bullish and provocative, argumentative and occasionally brutal in his choice of words. But here is the strange thing, Dr Watson: whenever I was in his company, no matter how awkward and frustrating a companion he may have been, I never felt so thoroughly engaged with the business of living.”

  I nodded. “Yes, Mr Swinburne. I know exactly what you mean.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mark Hodder is the author of the Philip K. Dick Award-winning series of Burton and Swinburne adventures, beginning with The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, in which the famous explorer and poet play Holmes and Watson-like roles in slightly twisted versions of true history. Hodder has also written A Red Sun Also Rises, an homage to the nineteenth-century novel and the planetary romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  Born in Southampton, Hodder worked for many years in London, including a five-year stint at the BBC, but now lives in Valencia, Spain, where he writes on a full-time basis. He collects and preserves Sexton Blake stories, and is a fan of the old ITC TV shows, such as The Persuaders, The Champions, Department S, and The Prisoner.

  SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE INDELICATE WIDOW

  BY MAGS L HALLIDAY

  It was the winter of 1894, and a pearlescent light was flooding my friend Holmes’ sitting room. The clouds that had cast their shadows over me for the three years Holmes had been presumed dead had lifted, and I was wont to finding myself, whenever an idle hour presented itself, sat in my old chair at Baker Street. On this morning, the rare clear air I had breathed walking from Paddington had swept away any lingering gloom, and I was feeling quite jovial.

  Naturally, the case that then presented itself was one that would cast the shadow of mortality over us once again.

  I was reading a surprisingly dull article about the medicinal use of kif when the front door bell rang and Mrs Hudson informed us there was a widow, a Mrs Stephen Perkins, to see us. The woman who was shown upstairs was indeed in secondary mourning of a dark grey dress trimmed black, a jet bead necklace—adorned with a jet rose rather than a crucifix or cross—and a grey hat. She was doughtily set, with a more weather-browned face than I would have expected of someone who must only have emerged from a mourning veil but recently.

  “Ah, Mrs Perkins,” Holmes greeted her, gesturing towards a chair, “and how was your journey from Woking? You must have been on the 08.23.”

  Like so many of our visitors before her, the woman was surprised by his insight. I, however, had noticed the traces of dried yellowish mud on her black fustian-trimmed skirts and congratulated myself on noting that she must have come from out of town.

  “It was right enough,” she said, “but I’m not ’ere to discuss the railway timetables. I’m ’ere because I’m concerned me Stephen is to lose his job when it ain’t his fault.”

  “Stephen?” I asked. “Is he your son?”

  “No, no. He’s me husband.”

  I must have shown my surprise at this pronouncement, as Sherlock barked a laugh and even Mrs Perkins’ mouth turned up in amusement.

  “Watson, my friend, your delicacy is much to be admired, but you’ve read the situation wrong. Mrs Perkins has come up this morning from Brookwood, where Londoners are sent to be buried, and where Mr Stephen Perkins works. I think perhaps Mrs Perkins also works there, hence having suitably sombre attire but the sun-dappled skin of someone who is often outside.”

  Our guest nodded, and folded her ungloved hands over her reticule. “You’ll be right, Mr Holmes. My husband is the stationmaster at the north station, where we take care of the nonconformists. I help by offering much-needed sustenance to both the bereaved and the workers.”

  Holmes smiled again. “You run the bar, do you not, Mrs Perkins? The calluses on your hands are suggestive of those generated from the regular pulling on bar taps.”

  She laughed this time, which I could not but help find shocking in someone dressed as she was. Her behaviour was at great odds with her appearance and with what one would expect of a widow.

  “I do, ’cept when we have some Quakers or other temperance-minded souls to lay to rest. They have lemonade and sandwiches.”

  “So what brings you to me?” Holmes asked. “How is your Stephen in trouble?”

  “That’s the rub of it, Mr Holmes, I don’t right know. We’ve been there for a couple of year now, w
ith the Company most happy with the way we runs things. Never a complaint, not like that Mr Kitching at the south station. He’s been fined for refusing to serve someone who was more’n half cut, but we don’t get any trouble like that. But three times in the last two months, we’ve had unexpected visits from the Company. Going through our papers, inspecting our rooms. And I keep ’em spotless. No one, not even some of the heathen types we have come through, likes to say their final farewells in a room that ain’t been swept.”

  I could not see how this case would interest Holmes. It sounded like a petty tangle of jealousy or pilfering. After all, we had only Mrs Perkins’ word that her husband was honest and she herself was falsely dressed in mourning. She had fallen silent and was looking earnestly at my friend.

  “There’s more to your story, though, is there not?” Holmes asked her. She nodded, and her face, which till then had been serene, grew agitated.

  “It’s the noises at night, Mr Holmes, that really bother me.”

  “That seems quite natural,” I remarked, “Given you live by a graveyard.”

  “It’s not a graveyard, Mr Watson, it’s a cemetery. Built within these last forty years to hold the dead of London. That don’t bother me, as I used to live by Russell Court graveyard. And it ain’t the sounds of the countryside at night neither, though the quiet did bother me at first. No, it’s a creaking, and voices, and the sound of people trying to be silent.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, we walked over to the offices of the London Necropolis Railway. Their premises were purpose built hard by the London and South Western Railway’s viaduct at Waterloo, onto which their trains ran. When I had more time for my practice, I had a good proportion of patients who, once I could relieve their suffering no more, had chosen to be transported from the city in which they lived to the green fields of Surrey. Their families had assured me, as I signed the death certificate needed to book a journey upon that sorrowful train, that the service provided was excellently run and the resting places most charming. This was, however, my first visit to their premises and I looked around with not a little curiosity.

  An archway of handsome red brick and Portland stone provided access for hearses and mourners from Westminster Bridge Road with a dog-legged tunnel leading out under the viaduct ensuring the vehicles could be unloaded and moved on without any unseemly manoeuvring back out. At ground level were the Company’s offices and waiting rooms reserved for the lowest class of funeral. For there were three classes, mirroring the distinctions of the regular railway. Along the passageway, the windows were brightly furnished with winter-blossoming flowers and it was lit through a glass roof several storeys above us, at track level.

  We were greeted by a clerk, who was calm, quiet and respectful. He led us up a wide stone staircase onto the second-class floor, where there was a room set aside for displaying the Company’s range of coffins, and began providing us with the advantages of each design.

  “This is one of our most popular designs for the second-class funeral, in simple elm coffin and shell. Many customers wish to have something refined to demonstrate the level of respect due to their beloved relative. We are also able to provide the ‘earth-to-earth’ papier-mâché design, for people who wish to eschew the gaudy displays of life in favour of a natural burial. Unless, sirs, you are looking on behalf of a parish, perhaps? We have a simple box wood design, not available for viewing here, which enables us to offer most reasonable terms...”

  “Alas, sir,” said Holmes, “You have mistaken us for possible customers, perhaps misled by my friend’s profession. I need to see one of your directors.” He held up a thin finger before the startled man could speak. “One of the Company directors, not a funereal one.”

  As the clerk rushed off, I remonstrated with Holmes. “You should not have allowed him to continue in his misunderstanding.”

  “On the contrary, Watson, he has given us a great deal of information about the company and its practices without any awareness that he was doing so. I am also desirous of seeing these designs.”

  I looked around the room. Each coffin was held on a trestle and presented as it would be in a chapel of rest, although no religious symbols were visible. I tried to suppress a shudder looking at these promises of the future. Mortality is part of my job, and I have seen a great many deaths on the battlefield besides. Yet undertakers, and their work, made me uncomfortable in a way that those moments of death did not. I think perhaps it is the idea that they make their money by disposing of the dead with distraught relatives as customers. I tried to express this disquiet to Holmes.

  “Really, Watson, is it so different to you charging a fee for seeing someone in pain? Your own customers, your patients as you call them, are themselves not always in the most rational of states.”

  “Nor yet are yours,” I retorted.

  One of the Company directors entered the room before we could continue, and Holmes turned his focus on him. He was approaching his middle years gracefully, without the ruddy complexion of so many of my more well-heeled patients. His greying hair was neat, and his salt-and-pepper beard trimmed. He gave every appearance of a man in full control of his world.

  “Mr Holmes? I am Mr James Arrowsmith, one of the three directors of the London Necropolis Company. I cannot pretend not to know your name, nor your occupation. I can assure you we will be happy to assist you in an investigation, within the limits of both the law and discretion. I presume that you are investigating the death of someone whose mortal remains we have laid to rest?”

  Holmes raised an eyebrow. “That’s possible, of course, but not the prime reason we are here. Would you be willing to accept my presence if my investigations turn out not to be in the best interests of the company?”

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Arrowsmith paced the room twice, with his hands clasped behind his back and his head bowed. When he reached the mantelpiece, he looked upwards at the discreet clock before turning back to face us.

  “It is possible,” he said so quietly I strained to hear, “that our thoughts bend to the same subject. I, too, have been investigating something that concerns me greatly.”

  “Something that concerns what is happening in Surrey?” Holmes asked.

  “Quite, quite. There are... irregularities. I’ve had a clerk looking at what is happening here in London, and have myself travelled to Brookwood three times to go over the books at both stations. There are too many people, Mr Holmes.”

  “I don’t quite follow, Mr Arrowsmith.”

  “Perhaps I am explaining it ill. One of the clerks, an excellent lad with a head for numbers, noticed that the number of people travelling on the returning train on Tuesdays was greater than the number of tickets out.”

  “Local people are using the trains to get to London?” I asked.

  “That’s what I suspect, and it would be most unfortunate if it is true. Our lease of the line from the London and South Western Railway depends upon us only serving funeral parties and mourners visiting their beloveds’ resting places. The Railway could terminate our contract if we were found in breach of it.”

  “And your relationship with the Railway has always been a little... strained, I believe?” asked Holmes.

  “Quite. Even if they did not choose to tear up our lease, they could make it more difficult for us to run the professional and calm service we take pride in. We’ve had to ask them to ensure the train crews who run our engines can be discreet, after one driver was drunk and nearly overran the buffers at the cemetery. The relationship between the two companies cannot take additional strains.”

  “On which of the station masters does your suspicion fall?”

  “On both. Kitching in the south station has already been reprimanded for his behaviour towards a customer, but the north station is closer to the village. I have not, as yet, been able to find any clear evidence on either of them. Neither has access to ticket rolls, but both take monies over the bar. Their books are all accurate.”

&
nbsp; “Is there a pattern to the additional passengers?”

  “There is not, though it is always on a day when we are running pauper funerals, so on a Tuesday or a Thursday”

  Holmes brought his hands together and tapped his lips with his fingers, a sure sign that he was thinking through the possible reasons for both the numerical disparity and the vague fears of Mrs Perkins.

  “Very well, Mr Arrowsmith, I would be happy to take up the investigation on your behalf. I, like your Company, pride myself on a discrete service that will not draw unwelcome attention on the people involved. If I can, I shall report my findings to yourself to take action. Unless, that is, laws are being broken when I may have no option but to call in the authorities.”

  Mr Arrowsmith looked alarmed at the idea of the police, and the possibility of his Company appearing in the press. Given the nature of their work, any such story would likely be taken up with prurient enthusiasm by the gutter press eager to tell sensational stories. I was not alone, after all, in my disquiet about undertakers. The one before us, however, nodded slowly.

  “Tell me what else you need,” he said.

  * * *

  Thus it was that the following Tuesday, Holmes and I found ourselves dressed in our mourning attire watching a coffin being loaded onto a train in Waterloo.

  Mr Arrowsmith had fixed for us to travel upon the train by recording us as the mourners of one Mrs Langhurst, a widow of some six-and-fifty years who had no family or friends to accompany her. Her solicitor had arranged for her to have a second-class funeral and we had duly been shown to a private room on the middle floor of the Railway’s building, where Mrs Langhurst was already in situ, arrayed in an elm coffin with simple details. I found I could not look upon this poor widow, whose laying to rest we were using for our own ends. Holmes, for his part, glanced at her dismissively and began inspecting the room.

  His air of distraction, which I soon realised was being assumed, increased when we were invited up to the platform to watch the coffin, now securely closed, be loaded into a compartment of a hearse van. A small card carrying the name of the occupant was on the outside of the hearse van. Matching cards was also inserted into the compartment doors of the passenger coach, so that each funeral party travelled in seclusion.