The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (40 page)

Aside from these ubiquitous announcements and the bemusing reveries they inspired, the Times was all the show I foresaw as I made my way through streets ringing with commerce, festooned with brushes, boots and baskets; a world of merchandise hung in ever-various array a stone's throw from my door.

My ears had but adjusted to the morning hubbub of carriages, cabriolets, strident children and distant steam engines when I heard a woman's voice call out, “John! John!”

When one's Christian name is as commonly handed about as is mine, those who wear the moniker take small notice of its use. Indeed, I was very little more likely to respond to “John” than I was to take heed of a cry of “William!” or “George!” Additionally, I knew that the only lady I cared to hear from had returned so recently from a brief sea voyage that she was unlikely to be seen upon the street.

“John! John!”

Briskly, I kept walking.

“John! Watson!”

I stopped short. The man close behind me, bearing over his shoulder a great staff from which hung the limp cadavers of dressed brown rabbits ready for market, stumbled into my person, and in his mongering bellow performed for the benefit of those men within shooting distance (and unfortunately audible to the ladies as well) a vehement and elaborate oath concerning my shabby pedestrian comportment.

So I was already speechless and red-faced when Madeline approached, saying, “John, my word, could you not hear me?”

She let go her hold on her simple blue baise walking skirt, which she had hiked crucial inches that she might make haste and run. Unladylike as that activity was, she did not intend to publicly
compound the error by allowing sight of her ankle-high boot-tops. Her face like mine was ripe with colour, but in her case from exertion rather than embarrassment. Beneath her ornate hat, strands of hair had dampened and come undone. Visibly she strained for breath, the whole region between her jacket's choker-like neck and her tightly cinched waist heaving mightily.

Do you remember? Corsets were so tightly laced when I was young that despite the myriad promised health benefits of such support, it seemed likely that at any moment Madeline would fall into a faint. Being a gentleman, it would be my pleasant duty to catch her in my arms. I'm not proud to say it, but for an instant I wished she would indeed swoon. My sole excuse is that I was young and never in my life immune to her loveliness.

Perhaps, Holmes, you don't see the beauty in her still, I wouldn't know. But I have looked at her longer, and for this knowledge I'm certain I could look at her forever.

So I nearly did as Madeline and I stepped aside from the foot traffic and paused for a time before a bric-a-brac shop, which specialized in distributing the homey goods and well-thumbed books of debtors. A commode set mirror caught my reflection, causing me to regret that I'd not put more efforts into the day's ablutions. Nor were my clothes the finest, though at the time I had no better. At last the girl seemed recovered enough to converse, and I, sufficiently collected now, spoke first.

“I am sorry I didn't stop. Really, Madeline, I could not imagine until you said ‘Watson' that it was you. I felt sure that due to your recent voyage, you would be full in the grip of ‘boat lag' at this time.”

She smiled. “But John, Jane and I did not sail. The family has experienced—ah—reverses . . .” She took in a deep, satisfying breath, then explained what she required of me: my presence only, but immediately. Protection for herself and her cousin Jane, from Randall, whose motives she did not trust.

I accompanied Madeline to Jane's house in a hansom, and all
the hurried way she alternated between explaining, and exacting promises. The promises she needed of me were vague and open-ended, that I not do anything without her calling on me specifically, that I simply remain nearby for her to help however she wished, which as you may know I'd agreed to in silence so many years before.

Most of what she told me on that ride I knew or had guessed, but here are some of the facts which led Madeline to hide me in a parlour wood-closet: Madeline's mother and mine were sisters, Emily and Natalie, gentle ladies both. Emily died giving birth to Madeline, an event which no doubt worsened the father's temper. More recently, Madeline's father had at last succumbed to liver troubles, stemming chiefly (I would say in hindsight) from intemperance, vileness of disposition and notable imprudence. Thereafter her father's brother had taken in Madeline as a companion for his unmarried daughter Jane, a confident and sought-after creature who greatly enjoyed the girl's attentions as a respite both from boorishly eager suitors and from her father's incessant plans to see her well wed. Only recently had certain financial problems come to light. Madeline suspected these were compounded if not caused by her own dead father, whose pathetic estate her uncle still attempted to manage. Clearly she felt herself at the root of all the misery and ruin. “I always make work for everyone,” she told me.

So now my cousin Madeline and I rode en route to
her
cousin (who was by blood no cousin to me) to forestall some ill-stated but apparent man-menace sort of doom. I made promises I did not understand, but she said I would. “You will soon see everything,” Madeline promised.

Like any man who is no fool, I rode into battle quietly, but in the pit of my stomach I felt afraid.

I
t was an unusual structure, the wood-closet. Beside the ruddy and honey-hued stone hearth, it finished out the narrow parlour wall
with the same solid masonry. Like the fireplace, it ran tall, wide and shallow. Most of the fuel logs had been considerately removed (some were stacked before the fire), but therein remained an odour of pitch and sap, and not a little debris—splinters, cobwebbing, birch bark.

I'm not a big man, and was less so as a student. Certainly in those days I was nimble, and eager to prove myself. (Even more so because, to my chagrin, Madeline had paid the driver with her own coin.) As I inspected this aperture, Maddy brought out a long green damask curtain of indeterminate age, which she hung deftly by means of some nails at top within that could not be seen. As if entreating to a waltz, hand to hand I helped the graceful girl down from the tiny footstool on which she'd been standing. She fitted it into the closet. Then smiling, she kept the curtain aside with a hand, elegantly gestured to me with the other and performed a half curtsy as if to say, “Your seat, sir.”

Though not wholly surprised, I may well have looked alarmed at this strategy. If I were to act as a bodyguard, wasn't the principle to be a visible deterrent? If, however, due to an exaggerated faith in me, I'm expected to function as a sort of Trojan Horse (or the secreted contents of a poison ring), I had no wish to be revealed to the enemy whilst crouched on a microscopic stool in a cupboard, caught with both my side and my back flush against the wall.

Maddy looked at me, the stool, then did a terribly female thing. She rushed to the divan, snatched a fat fringed oval cushion, and set it atop the stool.
“Et voilà!”
she cried. “A throne fit for a king and a hero!”

Before I could stop laughing and enumerate my objections, a dog outside began barking and Jane called downstairs to us, “Maddy, you'd best be ready before he is here!”

Of Maddy I enquired, “She knows I am present?”

“Oh, she knew when I asked her for the curtain. It's Randall that she means.”

“Randall is coming here now?”

She nodded. This was a problem. The young earl wasn't a man one would wish his daughters alone with. Or his cousins.

“Where's your uncle?” I asked, for I hadn't seen anyone about the house, or heard any movement's but Jane's.

“He's on a business errand. It's important, truly.”

“Servants?”

She shook her head.

“Housekeeper?”

“We've been doing for ourselves since—”

A loud rap resounded on the door.

“Well, then, let me answer the door. You can be sure I know how to tell a man his presence is not required.”

“Please.” She looked at me with those pale eyes. “We've invited him. In secret. He's agreed to forgive part of a debt if we'd meet like this. Jane thinks—”

Another rap at the door. Then another.

Jane called, “I'm going to the door now!”

I said, “I can't say I like this, Madeline.”

“No,” she said, motioning me into the closet. “But I need you now, please, I'm scared!”

I wedged myself into the closet and sat down sideways, the only way I fit. “I said I'd do this and I will,” I told her.

Social voices approached us.

“Don't forget your promise!” she implored.

I certainly recalled what she'd made me vow in the hansom: to stay put no matter what in the world occurred, even death. I was to listen, to watch if I could, but under
no
circumstance must I leave or call attention to my hiding place—not unless Madeline or Jane cried out the very words “John Watson!”

Plainly, nothing good could come of this.

I heard Jane's footsteps, and heavier ones beside her. Madeline dropped the curtain over my face.

Darkness.

Utter darkness.

Something was being said, in a man's low voice. It might have been, “Good day, Madeline,” but I wasn't sure. A murmur came in reply.

Not only could I not see my hand before my face, I could not hear what transpired beyond the curtain. My luck worsened by the second, no doubt spoiling theirs. This tiny closet was no vantage point. Perhaps I should stand? Was that possible with this accursed stool in with me? Could I stand astride or atop it? And if so, could this be done soundlessly, or would the motion bring on discovery and discovery bring on attack? My heart pounded. Swiftly I commenced to experience a rather panicky sort of regret, the basic identifying emotion of Man in a Trap.

Yet, unless Randall, animal that I was told he was, could smell misery, I remained for the moment a less than public exhibit.

Then, like the dawn, I could see! Not well, but I could. My eyes drank in and adjusted to what illumination there was. I saw my knobbly hands resting on my dark trousers, and a definite pattern of light coming through the textured curtain. At the same time, I could hear even Maddy's soft, soft footsteps, and then the three arranging themselves on the divan facing the fire, facing me. Now that Maddy no longer stood before my cupboard with her back to it, matters had changed indeed.

“Well, Randall,” said Jane, playing the proper hostess. “So good of you to come.”

“Not so very good of me,” Randall replied waggishly. “But here I am.”

I leaned forward. Where the curtain ended, I could peer out and see the three of them on a worn divan long ago upholstered in crimson velvet. Jane, a dark-haired beauty, sat bolt upright in the middle, feigning to work on her stitchery, and in essence acting as the largest possible wall betwixt Madeline and Randall. I found that aspect agreeable.

The young Earl of Norris was the sort of man women liked and I didn't.

Although seated, Randall looked tall and proud. I saw at once he enjoyed to be looked at. He was clean-shaven, and meticulously combed, with the fair dimpled face and pursed rosy lips of a spoiled girl-child.

It was not simply his height, though, but his strapping girth which concerned me. While my complexion sallowed and my body dwindled from endless indoor study to someday save a life, Randall plainly spent mornings out in the fresh air, riding horseback in the shade of the forest, using an old musket against fox, beaver, pheasant and rabbit. Though larger than his typical prey, even altogether we three cousins made a poor match for his vigour.

“Yes, yes,” Jane murmured, smiling. “Here you are; we're agreed on that.” She performed a single stitch. “And you've arranged the favour we discussed?”

“You'd be surprised, my dear!”

“Do tell, Randall,” Jane prompted. “How does this work?”

Randall made a show of examining his gold pocket watch. “When a half an hour has passed, Jane, your father will be shown into my office, outside which he waits even now. My trusted man Laurence will tell him I cannot see him today to take his mortgage payment, but will present him with a sealed envelope marked in my own hand with his Christian name.

“Within, he will find a receipt for today's payment, though no moneys will be accepted. For this I get two things, do I not?” He eyed the two women like a snake looking at a mouse.

“Two? I think not.” Jane faced her cousin. “Maddy, give Randall the medicament we promised.”

Madeline opened a paisley drawstring purse and brought to light a small cobalt glass bottle, ridged to denote poison.

Of a sudden, bright light fell on my face. For a split-second I feared I'd been discovered, but saw only an enormous scar-faced torn, switching its striped tail back and forth along the curtain, revealing me at intervals.

I leaned back and moved the curtain around the animal, which
promptly jumped onto my lap. That torn weighed four stone if he weighed a feather.

Fortunately Randall was still transfixed by the poison bottle and snatched it from Madeline's hands. Ignoring the young lady's apparent shock, he demanded, “What is it? Will it work fast?”

Jane said, “I shouldn't expect you to ask if it's cruel or safe.”

Randall waited.

“Although,” Jane allowed, “any drug secretly administered which snuffs out an infant in the womb would be cruel.”

Good God, I thought, what toxin are they providing him? Strychnine? Something more hideous? My questioning thoughts were drowned out by Randall's.

“But will it work? What is it? How long will it take? By what method is it given?”

Jane shook her head. “Our young physician friend said only to get this into her soon as can be. Injection is the most dependable method but—”