A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (6 page)

Outside 221B Baker Street, he stared up at the lean, dark silhouette in the window. For a moment, he thought about entering the Detective’s residence, telling him everything – the man was as cold as a confessor anyway. Lestrade felt sick of lies and deceptions both those he shared with others and those he saved for himself. Holmes’s questing gaze would scour him of his secrets. Lay him bare for all to see.

In that moment, he understood the Detective’s addiction. To swim in the arms of Morpheus’ embrace until needed. To escape the injustices of the world…

But such was not for Lestrade. Instead, he hailed a cab and headed home. He would have to live with the ghosts for a while longer.

Watson, newly reinstalled as a roommate on Baker Street, accompanies Holmes on a case of the disappearance of a young woman. A possible kidnapping or worse, this case finds Holmes at his deductive best and delivers an unexpected side to his ideas about crime and justice. Raynes subtly shows the depth of the connection between Holmes and Watson in this tale. Interesting revelations are not only to be found in the details of the case in this adventure

by Katie Raynes

The first thing I noticed upon entering our sitting room, some weeks after I had moved back into Baker Street, was that my arm-chair was on fire.

I immediately went for the carafe of water on our sideboard but before I reached it, Holmes, who had been sitting unnoticed on the floor in front of the chair, called out for me to stop.

“I am conducting a very delicate experiment, Watson,” he said. “Pray do nothing to compromise it.” I approached the chair, upon the seat of which was a patch of smouldering ashes surrounded by some slimy wet substance. The ashes smoked quite strongly, but the embers themselves were feeble.

“You will observe that the upholstery has not yet caught.” He returned his attention to the miniature fire as if some question of dire importance rested upon it. I looked from his earnest, focused face to the small pile of ashes and back again.

“The compound is meant for furniture, where fires from pipe or cigar ash are most likely to start. As to why I chose yours…I suppose I have been without a roommate so long that it simply didn’t occur to me.” I could not tell whether the barb was intended or I only imagined the brittleness in his voice.

“I wonder what sort of trouble the official force has got itself into now. It’s from Lestrade,” he said, and handed the slip back to me. “He requests my assistance in the investigation of a kidnapping.”

Holmes reached behind him for the ash pan and swept the still-smoking cinders off my armchair’s seat. “There, all tidied up,” he said. “Mrs Hudson did suggest that I might strive to keep things a bit more manageable these days, and I suppose I owe her that much.” He stood up and dusted off his hands while I stared dismally at the still sticky and now ash-smudged seat of my chair. He was turned away from me, getting his coat from the stand, when he asked: “Are you busy this afternoon, Watson?”

The tone of his voice made me look up – there was a curious tentativeness in it, masked by the off-hand way in which he asked but discernible to me, who knew him so well. What on earth could I be busy with, having sold my practice? It was strange to hear him ask rather than demand or assume. Even when Holmes requested my company during my marriage, he had rarely gone so far as to enquire whether I was free, and then only when he showed up unannounced at the house where my late wife Mary and I lived. I never once refused in those years; I can’t imagine why he thought I might now.

“Very good,” Holmes said with a quick smile over his shoulder. “Get your hat; we’re meeting Lestrade at Marylebone in ten minutes.”

The little official was already waiting for us on the platform, and although he looked glad enough to see us, his frustration was evident.

“I’ll be grateful for your opinion on this, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said once we were seated in a car. “I remember you telling me on numerous occasions that it’s the cases that look simplest that are actually the most complicated. This one seemed cut and dried at first, but the parents are giving me no help and the only obvious lead is taking me nowhere.”

“You’ll have to follow the unobvious ones, then,” Holmes said, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Tell me about it.”

“Early Monday morning,” Lestrade began, “Mr and Mrs George Braddon, of Clapham, discovered that their seventeen-year-old daughter Alice was missing from her bedroom. No one had seen her since teatime on Sunday, but as it’s habit for the family to spend the day reading scripture in their own rooms, nobody thought anything of it. They found the door locked but soon located a key and entered to find the window open, a glass from the washstand smashed on the floor, and no trace of the daughter.”

“Just a moment,” Holmes interrupted. “It’s Wednesday. Why didn’t you come to me earlier? There will be little for me to find in the girl’s room now if Scotland Yard’s been tramping through it for three days.”

“Because, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said with a weary sigh, “the Braddons didn’t notify the police until this morning. I told you they’re not very cooperative, and I meant it.”

“What reason did they give for this?” Holmes asked with an unimpressed edge to his voice.

“Well, they were very circumspect about it, but they said they’d intended to gather the ransom money on their own, and they ran into some trouble procuring the funds. They grew desperate enough today to call us in.”

“I cannot see how wanting to collect the money themselves required refraining from notifying in the police,” I said.

“They seem desperate to avoid a scandal,” Lestrade answered. “Mr Braddon made some reference to being recently promoted at his firm, and indicated that any scandal could be disastrous to his position.” Beside me, Holmes gave a throaty snort of disapproval and motioned the inspector to go on. “Aside from the glass and the open window, the bed had been slept in, and there’s a stain on the rug beneath the sill that could be blood, but it’s hard to tell as the rug itself is red. Aside from all that the only real clue we’ve got is the ransom note.”

“There’s a ransom note? That is indeed something.”

“I can’t learn much from it, unfortunately, but perhaps you can.” Lestrade handed a torn piece of paper across to Holmes, who scrutinized it for a few moments before passing it to me. In a formal and deliberate hand, it ran thus:

£20,000 will return your daughter to you. Further word will be sent as to time and place. If you refuse or involve the authorities, she will be done like Bill Chapman.

“Who is Bill Chapman?” Holmes asked. Lestrade shrugged.

“We haven’t been able to find anybody by that exact name, but there’s a young lad working under the stable master whose name is Bob Chapman. The Braddons suspect him strongly, since they say he’s been giving improper attentions to their daughter.”

“Reciprocated?”

“Certainly not,” Lestrade replied, with the air of a man quoting something he’d heard before. “Alice would never, et cetera et cetera.”

When we reached Clapham, a constable met us at the door and Lestrade showed us up to the missing girl’s bedroom. We were told that Mr Braddon was out on business and would return by one o’clock; Mrs Braddon was taking care of her correspondence in the morning room and could be called if we desired to speak with her.

Holmes surveyed the room from its centre for a few moments before pulling out his lens and moving over to the windowsill to examine it. Alice’s bedroom was furnished modestly. A bed at one end with its rumpled clothes thrown aside, a writing desk and chair of old-fashioned heavy dark wood, and a plain washstand made up the entirety of its furniture. The washstand stood near to the window, and on the floor in front of it was the shattered glass Lestrade had described. The washstand itself held various articles of toiletry, among which was a bowl of water. Holmes bent over the bowl and dipped his fingers in, scooping up some of the soap shavings that floated on the surface. He sniffed them, made a small noise of interest, and flicked them back into the water. Wiping his fingers on his handkerchief, Holmes moved to the writing desk. A small stack of books, topped by the Bible, sat on the corner beside one open volume. Holmes briefly flipped through each and spent a longer while studying a slim leather-bound journal that lay by itself on the other side. All the while, Lestrade watched him with a mixture of scepticism and hope.

“Well, Mr Holmes?” he asked. Holmes was now crouched down on the rug near the window, peering at the place where the wall met the floor.

“This does not seem quite as obscure as you would have us believe,” he said absently, “but some points are still unclear to me. Is this the stain you spoke about?”

“That’s it,” the inspector said. “You can understand the difficulty we’ve had in identifying it.” Indeed, the stain was small – a series of spatters the size of coins – and was of a deeper colour than the rug.

“How closely have you examined this stain?” Holmes asked.

“Closely enough,” Lestrade said, sounding a trifle defensive.

“I fear not. If you had taken the liberty of smelling it, my dear Lestrade, the question of whether or not it is blood would have been settled.” He stood up suddenly, causing Lestrade to step back looking like a ruffled cat. “I would like to speak with Mrs Braddon now, if I may,” Holmes said.

Lestrade sent the constable down, and he returned some minutes later with the mistress of the house. Mrs Braddon was a tall, stately, brown-haired lady with the graceful bearing of a woman who is used to complete control over her domain. Worry over her daughter’s welfare was not evident in her face; instead, the strongest impression I received from her was one of indignation at the inconvenience of having intruders in her home, mixed with a suppressed impatience. Her manner of dress matched Alice’s room more than it did the rest of the house, which I had glimpsed on our way upstairs. While the furnishings downstairs had been tastefully matched to the station of a family such as the Braddons, Mrs Braddon wore clothing that was, while made of the best materials, plain almost to the point of prudishness.

“This is Mr Sherlock Holmes and his colleague, Dr Watson,” Lestrade said. “I have great hopes that they will quickly discover the whereabouts of your daughter.”

She removed her glove and we shook hands. “I hope the inspector underestimates neither your talent nor your swiftness,” she said to Holmes.

“It would help my investigation greatly, Madam,” said he, “if you would be so good as to answer a few questions.” Mrs Braddon inclined her head. “First of all, does your family buy much imported fruit?”

I heard a stifled snort from Lestrade, and Mrs Braddon drew herself up with an offended intake of breath. “Most certainly not, Mr Holmes. Mr Braddon and I do not allow such frivolities as unwholesome food.”

“Of course not,” Holmes responded smoothly.

I must admit that I could not follow his reasoning for asking such a question, but I had long ago learned that he always had reasoning, no matter how abstruse it seemed to me.

“I suppose, if foreign fruit is too frivolous for your household, so too would be poetry?”

Mrs Braddon frowned as if Holmes had just suggested that her home might be infested with bedbugs. “What makes you ask me these things, Mr Holmes?”

“Only because there is a book of classical Greek poetry open on your daughter’s desk.”

The lady made a small sound of frustration. “Miss Henderson.” She moved toward the desk, but Lestrade blocked her with an apologetic smile.

“I’m afraid we cannot allow you to move anything, Mrs Braddon.” The look she gave him could have put a skim of ice over the water on the washstand.

“Did you say something about a Miss Henderson?” Holmes asked.

“We have been most unfortunate that one of Alice’s teachers at school in Chelmsford has introduced her to poetry,” Mrs Braddon said. “We have repeatedly told Alice that she is not to give credence to any of this woman’s suggestions, but she is…too diligent a student to put aside anything her teacher believes to be of value. Alice has even invited the woman to visit several times, in spite of our protestations, but what can one say?”