The Curse of Christmas (4 page)

Coincidentally, a few years ago
an old meeting hall was converted to a Unitarian church just across
the way, meaning Redcross Way, a narrow alley that bypasses the
cemetery and cuts under the railway viaduct to Southwark Street.
There is a lay preacher there who goes by the title of vicar. There
is also a lay deacon. They may be able to assist you but bear in
mind this business is top secret.

Do not share anything you have
heard tonight with anyone. If Dr Gregory decides to come on board
it can be solely in the capacity of helping with the Crossbones
business, not anything to do with the Prince Regent.”

Dr Watson’s spirit appeared to
sag. The top secret burden was already beginning to weigh heavily
on his weary shoulders.

The Countess was still grasping
eagerly at the nettle. “What exactly is it that you expect of us?
What is it that you want us to achieve, Uncle Mycroft?”

“I would like you to find out
the identity of our unknown protagonist. If you happen to solve the
ghostly goings-on in Crossbones well and good, but that is simply
your cover, your first duty is to the heir to the throne. I don’t
need to remind you that Queen Victoria has been ruling England
wisely and un-sensationally since 1837. Alas, her days as monarch
are sadly numbered. A smooth transition from one monarch to the
next would be beneficial for all concerned. As Her Majesty’s time
grows shorter, the risk of something going badly wrong grows
greater. England’s enemies are waiting in the wings. After you
leave here tonight I must ask you not to make contact with the
Diogenes Club again until this business has been completed. If you
need to contact me leave a message inside the book titled
Templar Lore
written by Professor Robertus Pargetter in the
Temple Library. I will reply with promptitude in like manner.
Admittance to the temple Library is restricted. Here is my card –
one for each of you. It will get you through the door, no questions
asked.”

“Even though one of us is
female?”

“Yes.”

Everything felt a bit nebulous
and vague. They had been charged with discovering the identity of a
person they knew nothing about, who could be anyone: male or
female, rich or poor; profession and nationality unknown,
description impossible to say – anyone in London, in fact. It could
even be Mycroft Holmes!

Dr Watson and Countess
Volodymyrovna (still in the guise of Sherlock) left the Diogenes
Club together, hailed a hansom, and wondered what the deuce they
had got themselves into as the carriage rumbled along the fog-bound
streets, firstly in the direction of Mayfair Mews and later to
Baker Street.

“How should we proceed?” asked
Dr Watson in a lowered tone so that the cabbie would not overhear,
such was the invidious position they had been put in, unable to
trust anyone.

The Countess gazed meditatively
at the dark wet road unfurling like a black ribbon from the
undercarriage, alternatingly shiny and dull depending on the
topazolite glow of the intermittent gas-lamps, one moment as smooth
as black silk, the next as thickly textured as black velvet. “I
cannot answer that for the time being. I will need to sleep on it.
I feel as if we have been asked to provide a description of an
unborn baby who will commit a crime at some future date in time.
What colour hair will it have? What colour eyes? Will it be a boy
or a girl? When will the crime take place? Where will it take
place? What method will it use? My head feels full of fluff. Why
don’t you join me for breakfast tomorrow at nine o’clock? We can
discuss it then.”

“No, no, that will never do. You
heard Mycroft. This business calls for the strictest secrecy. You
will have servants coming and going in and out of the dining room.
Anyone will be able to overhear our conversation. You had better
come to Baker Street.”

They didn’t speak for the
remainder of the journey except to say goodbye.

“Good-morning, Mrs Hudson.”

Mrs Hudson instantly recognized
the ‘foreign lady’ though they had met but briefly, just the once,
several months ago. The young lady had one of those faces that
remind you of someone else but you can never think who.

“Dr Watson is expecting you,”
she responded shortly, ushering the Countess into the fusty narrow
hall papered with old-fashioned, scrolling, acanthus leaves that
made it look as inviting as a gloomy tube tunnel over-greened with
trailing ivy, “one egg or two?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Will you be having one fried
egg with your sausages and bacon or two?”

“One egg, yolk slightly runny,
no sausages, crispy bacon, toast lightly bronzed - thank you, Mrs
Hudson.”

Mrs H banged the front door
harder than necessary, causing the brass knocker to take fright.
She hoped the doctor wasn’t going to make a habit of inviting his
foreign lady-friend to breakfast! Lightly bronzed! Well, really!
Now she’d heard it all! Mrs Pordage, the char, would laugh her head
off!

The Countess counted off the
stairs to see if there really were seventeen or if it was merely a
fictional conceit…fifteen, sixteen, seventeen! Well, that confirmed
it! She pushed open the door to the little sitting room. Dr Watson,
wearing a faded tartan dressing gown, was seated at a small table
set for two with bone china featuring little blue flowers. A teapot
wearing a tartan tea-cosy was poised for pouring.

“Please excuse my state of
undress. I overslept,” he mumbled thickly through his moustache
while suppressing a yawn, “cup of tea?”

“Yes, please. I hardly slept at
all. I’ve been awake since six o’clock.”

She didn’t look at all
sleep-deprived. In fact she looked the epitome of effortless
elegance in a swish oyster-grey wool costume with matching
accoutrements, including pert winter chapeau with a fanfare of
freckled grey feathers and a matching grey silk umbrella. A
silver-grey fox fur cape completed the ensemble.

Dr Watson replaced the teapot
and remembered to rake some fingers through his discombobulated
hair. “When I said ‘overslept’ I meant I didn’t actually fall
asleep
until
six o’clock. This business is hopeless every
way I look at it. I think we should just tell Mycroft we’re not up
for it. He can rope in someone else.”

She took a seat across from him
and removed her oyster grey suede gloves before taking up her
teacup which he had taken the liberty of sugaring. “Let’s not be
too hasty. We should at least pay a visit to Southwark. We need to
make a survey before coming to any firm decision. The Crossbones
Cemetery and the Unitarian church should be looked at for starters.
We can get a feel for the place and have a chat with the
self-styled vicar and lay deacon. Some grave-diggers might be there
as well.”

“And then what? We will still
have no idea how to proceed.”

“We can play it by ear. And it’s
not entirely true to say we will have no idea how to proceed. We’re
occult detectives, remember? We will simply concentrate on the
ghostly goings-on while keeping our eyes peeled. That’s a mystery
in itself that I wouldn’t mind getting to the bottom of. The
protagonist will reveal himself in his own good time. We just have
to be there when he does.”

Mrs H arrived with a full
English breakfast and they ate heartily, fortifying themselves for
the morning ahead. When Dr Watson excused himself to perform his
ablutions and dress, the Countess checked out the gilt-edged
invitations lining the mantelpiece and played some Paganini on the
Stradivarius. Six invitations were for New Year’s Eve parties to
celebrate the fin de siècle and usher in the new century. The
violin was woefully out of tune.

A hansom transported them across
London Bridge to the other side of the river. They intended to
visit St Saviour Church first and then go the rest of the way on
foot. They read the noble names on the tombs and lit a candle for
the dead. Two nuns were admiring the magnificent carvings of the
twelve life-sized figures behind the altar.

“There is a rumour floating
around the convent that St Saviour’s will soon be re-consecrated as
the Southwark Cathedral,” said one.

The other nodded as she passed
in front of the altar and crossed herself. “This used to be a
convent. There was a commune of nuns here as far back as the
7
^th
century.”

“You refer to the Winchester
geese?”

“No, dear, Winchester geese are
prostitutes.”

“Oh, dear, I always get it wrong
- the same with St Mary’s Overy and Mary’s Ovarie. I get so
confused, or should that be Mary’s ovaries! Oh, dear!”

Next door to the church was the
Borough Market and from there it was only two blocks to Crossbones
if you followed Redcross Way. But no sooner had our two sleuths set
off on foot than they realized they’d made a grave error of
judgment in
not
summoning a hackney cab. Once they entered
the stream of human squalor that made up Southwark the world became
a dangerous place full of ale taverns and gin palaces, gambling
houses and opium dens, brothels and shocking poverty.

Rows of cheap, ugly,
soot-stained, brick houses thrown up by shonky property developers
had been transformed into noxious tenements crammed full of
dirt-poor families whose members spent their waking hours in
manufactories. They were the fortunate few. Even in broad daylight,
homeless match girls, some as young as eight or nine, sickly and
thin, riddled with weeping sores, solicited custom from among the
scrawny red-necked sailors who still had a few jangly pence in
their pockets and a precious few hours of shore leave left.

Starving dogs fought for scraps
of rancid slop and one diseased cur with a hideous canker
protruding from its neck was making a meal of some steaming hot
excrement. The Countess put a scented handkerchief over her mouth
and tried not to be physically sick. She was determined to give
every barefoot urchin who crossed her path a shilling but the
doctor warned her against it.

“Don’t even dream of it,” he
said sternly. “They’ll fish our bodies out of the Thames and not
even Mycroft will be able to recognize our bloated features.”

They passed under the shadow of
the railway viaduct where gin-soaked louts slept in puddles of
their own puke and by some miracle came out the other side
unmolested, although, Dr Watson had been called upon to wield his
walking cane like a weapon while the Countess had made good use of
her new umbrella in warding off pickpockets.

Pausing to take stock and draw
breath, they surveyed through the wrought iron fence the grim
waste-land known as Crossbones Cemetery. To the east stood a high,
brick, windowless wall. South and west was bounded by the spiky
fence. North was a railway track that sat above ground level on
large brick pillars, hence the viaduct that cut underneath,
allowing human traffic to pass without being affected by the
train.

Most English graveyards conjured
up poetic images of Grey’s elegy and the heavenly ever-after. Most
were places of solitude and quiet contemplation, dotted with a
scattering of sculptural archangels and stone crosses that were
works of art worthy of great parks, usually adjoining a Saxon or
Norman church nestled in the shadow of a sacred Yew recalling
Tennyson at his elegiac best.

There was nothing elegiac about
the Crossbones Cemetery. It was bleak and grim, imbued with pity
rather than sorrow, an ugly patch of heaven in the midst of hell
with nothing to contemplate but a Hobbesian nightmare:
solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish and short
.

They heard a pernicious cough
and were alerted to a pair of grave-diggers leaning on their
shovels staring straight at them, agog with curiosity and
suspicion, like two moles pausing to check the human interlopers
about to invade their patch of garden.

“Let’s introduce ourselves,”
suggested the Countess optimistically, pushing open the creaky gate
with one hand and lifting her skirts with the other, though why she
bothered who could say; the soiled gimp hem was beyond
redemption.

Dr Watson cautioned against
hurrying. “Let us walk on for a bit to Union Street and around the
block before...”

She cut him off. “No time like
the present.”

Nasty, brutish and short: Hobbes
had aptly summed up not only general humanity but the two
grave-diggers specifically. One of the men was thick-necked and
dumpy. He had hobgoblin eyes, wild red hair and a grizzled
flame-red beard. He was using a grimy neckerchief to wipe his
sweaty face, smearing soot across his low-hanging brow. The other
looked like a troll. He was tall in comparison to the goblin, with
grey skin and greasy grey hair. His arms were too long for his body
and his barrel-chested body was too short for his legs. Both men
wore several layers of clothes they could peel off or put on
according to the core temperature of their bodies, and because poor
people tended to wear at any given time every item of clothing they
possessed. Their hands were leathery and calloused from constant
labouring; their fingernails were black and bitten to the quick.
Their hobnail boots were caked in noxious mud.

“Hello,” said the Countess,
valiantly ignoring the overpowering odour of raw poverty in
proximity with privilege. “I am a reporter with
The
Quotidienne
. You have no doubt heard of it. I am here to
investigate the ghostly goings-on here in Crossbones which have
recently come to the attention of my editor. A story in
The
Strand Magazine
written by Mr Langdale Pike, also known as
Agrippa, has beaten me to the scoop, but I intend to trump my rival
with a follow-up article. I am willing to pay generously for any
information, especially any detail which may add colour to my
article. The whole of London is riveted to this topic. Yes,
riveted.”