The House at Baker Street Read online

  For Claire, in eternal gratitude.

  Dear Reader,

  I got my first Sherlock Holmes book when I was thirteen. It was a beautiful collection of all the short stories, complete with the iconic Sidney Paget illustrations. I read it straight through.

  At about the same time, Granada TV did their excellent adaptations of the stories, starring Jeremy Brett. The look of it was based on those Paget illustrations, and Brett’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes was exactly how I imagined him. Between the stories and the TV series (and the occasional Basil Rathbone film) I was hooked. I loved this wonderful, gas-lit, atmospheric world of crime and adventure, where the mystery was solved not with guns and violence, but a brilliant mind using cool logic (and occasionally Watson’s gun, I admit). I loved the way Holmes brought order to chaos, and made sure wrongs were always righted – even if that meant slightly cheating the law occasionally.

  I never lost my fascination for the world of Sherlock Holmes, and over the years saw many TV and film and, occasionally, stage versions. But I always returned to the written stories.

  A few years ago, I was sat, curled up in the corner of the sofa, reading The Empty House for about the twentieth time. In this story, Holmes places a wax head of himself in the window of 221b to tempt a sniper. It’s so dangerous that John is not allowed to go into the room. To make it look lifelike, the head is moved from time to time – by Mrs Hudson. Mr Holmes happily sends his housekeeper – on her hands and knees – into this room where if she is spotted, she could be shot; and she does this quite calmly.

  I’d never really thought about Mrs Hudson before, but I suddenly noticed her. Sometimes when you read a story twenty times, something new strikes you on the twenty-first, and that was what happened to me with Mrs Hudson. It is as if a blurred figure in the background suddenly came into focus. There’s more to this woman than meets the eye, I thought. I read the stories again, looking for her. If you believe, as I and many do, that she is the Martha from His Last Bow, it is clear that she is so much more than just a housekeeper.

  There isn’t really much about the background of Mrs Hudson in the books, so I felt free to give her a history, and a maiden name and a personality straight out of my own imagination. Arthur Conan Doyle had given me just enough to spark my interest in her, and left enough unsaid to let my imagination roam. I imagined an intelligent woman, calm in a crisis, living in the same house as Sherlock Holmes, meeting all those people tramping up the stairs to him, from prime ministers to the very worst villains. Surely she couldn’t help but take an interest. Surely she had to get involved. And maybe, if she did get involved, she might want to give detecting a try for herself . . .

  But every detective needs a partner, and where Sherlock Holmes had his Watson, Mrs Hudson could have her Watson too.

  I’d always been intrigued by Mary Watson. She was described by Holmes himself as charming, useful, and with a decided genius. He noted her organization, and intelligence. It seemed unfair to me that she should play such a large role in The Sign of Four – and impress Holmes himself – and then be relegated to a rarely seen figure in the background, always being abandoned by her husband so he could run off on another adventure with Holmes. Who could blame her for wanting an adventure of her own?

  The women of the Holmes stories are often brave, clever, resourceful and daring. It’s clear that while Sherlock Holmes has no great opinion of women, being a decided misogynist at the beginning of the stories, he is surrounded by remarkable women, not least those closest to him. I felt Martha Hudson and Mary Watson had their own stories to tell. It’s time for them to step out of the shadows.

  Michelle Birkby

  CONTENTS

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  PROLOGUE

  FAREWELLS AND GREETINGS

  HOW IT ALL BEGAN

  A CIRCLE OF FOUR

  THE BOYS OF BAKER STREET

  THE FRIENDSHIP OF BILLY AND WIGGINS

  DEATH AT THE DOCKS

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE WHITECHAPEL LADY

  SCANDALS AND SECRETS

  THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGE REQUEST

  A GOOD NIGHT’S WORK

  THE GREAT ESCAPE

  THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MISS ADLER

  THE GAME CHANGES

  THE HOUSE OF SECRETS

  THE CORNERS OF WHITECHAPEL

  CLUES AND TRAPS AND PATTERNS

  PUTTING TOGETHER THE PIECES

  FOLLOWING THE CLUES

  STEPPING OUT OF THE SHADOWS

  THE FINAL ACT

  THE SUSPICION OF LESTRADE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  RESEARCH MATERIALS

  AUTHOR Q&A WITH MICHELLE BIRKBY

  READING GROUP QUESTIONS FOR THE HOUSE AT BAKER STREET

  Mrs Martha Hudson – housekeeper to Sherlock Holmes, the Great Detective, landlady of 221b Baker Street

  Mary Watson – friend to Martha Hudson, married to Dr John Watson

  Sherlock Holmes – the Great Detective

  Dr John Watson – Sherlock Holmes’ friend and biographer

  Billy – page-boy at 221b Baker Street

  Wiggins – head of the Baker Street Irregulars

  Jake and Micky – members of the Irregulars

  Irene Norton (previously Adler) – the Woman, and ally to Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson

  Inspector Lestrade – representative of the police

  Mycroft Holmes – Sherlock Holmes’ brother, and a powerful man in the British Government

  Laura Shirley – a client of Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson

  Mr Shirley – Laura Shirley’s husband

  The Whitechapel Lady – a mysterious veiled lady

  Sir George Burnwell – a rake and a cad

  Patrick West – a gossip writer

  Langdale Pike – a man who loves gossip

  Adam Ballant – a dubious client of Mr Holmes

  Jack Ripon – tormentor of the Whitechapel Lady

  Richard Halifax – the Whitechapel Lady’s solicitor

  Lillian Rose – a clever prostitute

  The Ordinary Man – a suspicious character

  Robert Sheldon – a photographer

  Ruby – a model

  It started with champagne and promises on a sunny afternoon.

  It was an adventure, a dare, to while away the hours, to prove ourselves just as good as them. It started in laughter and hope and joy. It is ending here in blood and pain and fire, in the darkness.

  I am afraid, so very afraid, and I am tempted to run, to get help, to scream for rescue, but I won’t. She is there, tied to a chair at the point of a gun, half-unconscious, bleeding, having suffered worse than me, but she won’t call for help either. We made a pact – we would do this ourselves, without help from the men upstairs. It was a lightly taken oath, half in jest, but now the reality was deadly serious.

  ‘Who’s there?’ the vile creature calls, and I draw back into the blackness even further. My place is in the shadows, off the page, silent behind the clever and the good. I am the watcher, the listener, the minor player in the game. To be here, now, in this situation, in danger, is not my role.

  Yet my role has changed.

  ‘Holmes? I know you’re there!’ he calls. His voice rings with triumph. It is the cue for my entrance.

  ‘Mr Holmes has no idea who you are,’ I tell him, and although my hand shakes, my voice is firm, and she stirs a little behind him.

  Together. We started this together and we will end it together.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demands, confused. His hair is wild, his clothes disordered, his face suffused with blood. I step forward, into the light.

  ‘I am Sherlock Holmes’ housekeeper. I am Mrs Hudson.’ />
  If you have read John Watson’s thrilling stories, and I am sure you have, you know me best as housekeeper and landlady to the Great Detective, Sherlock Holmes.

  Such a short sentence to write, and yet, oh my, what a wealth of information is there. Such adventures, such stories, such people. And as for me – I did so much more than bustle in and out with the tea. Although to be fair, I did bustle, and there was an awful lot of tea consumed by everyone. And I feel you should know John did make a few mistakes in his stories. He claimed artistic licence, though I feel it was faulty memory. But what people don’t know about me is that I had adventures of my own, with Mary Watson, and sometimes other friends and acquaintances, and the occasional enemy, of Mr Holmes. So now it’s time I told a few stories of my own . . .

  Believe it or not, I was a young woman once. For the first nineteen years of my life, I was Miss Martha Grey: sweet, innocent, and ever so slightly bored. Then, one particularly dull evening, I met Hector Hudson, and I wasn’t bored any more. I loved him on sight. He was a soldier, so tall and handsome in his uniform, with dark blond hair, and a special smile just for me that made the lines around his grey-blue eyes wrinkle in a fascinating way. To my delight, he loved me on sight too. He proposed just a week later, and I said yes before he had even finished asking.

  We were a love story come true, but unlike most love stories, it did not end with a happy marriage.

  It ended with his death.

  He was a soldier and we were at war. Six months after our marriage, he died alone, on a blood-soaked battlefield, in some place I had never heard of, leaving me only with his child growing inside me.

  But he didn’t leave me destitute, like so many other poor widows of the war; Hector provided me with the rent from several properties he had owned in London, which were now mine. Including, of course, 221b Baker Street.

  But I didn’t go to London then. I stayed in the country with my son. He grew strong and clever and adventurous. He would stride out in the morning and not return till tea, full of tales of what he had done and seen, his pockets stuffed with treasures that he laid on my lap with pride. I know I should have tried to keep him indoors, keep him at his lessons, but he would not be shut up. He would escape into the world, and I did not have the heart to stop him. He looked at me with his father’s eyes, full of wonder and joy, and I knew he would grow up to be a great explorer, or writer, or something thrilling and exciting.

  Except that he didn’t grow up. One day he was tired and stayed indoors, quietly watching me do my work. Poor fool me, I was glad of his company. One week later, he died – his last, great adventure – leaving me behind, as his father had done on that godforsaken battlefield.

  I don’t want to talk about what my boy’s death did to me. Not yet. Not now. I will just say that I could not stay there, where every object, every sound, just the light in the trees, reminded me of what I had lost. I moved to London then. I became a landlady and looked after my properties efficiently, all those rooms in all those houses. All those bright young men and lovely hopeful young women in my rooms became ill and old and bitter. London can do that to some people, when they are alone, and poor, and lose all hope. It’s not kind to everyone. London can be cruel. I did not find friends. I did not find love. I did not find my place.

  However, I did learn to balance account books and make agreements with tradesmen and haggle for the best prices and everything else that came with running a business. I learnt how to appraise a maid or a tenant on sight, and how to get rid of them too. I learnt how to offset loss with profit, and what was a good investment, and what bad. Whilst Parliament argued over whether women had the mental ability even to own their own clothes, I quietly administered an empire – and no one noticed.

  I also discovered cooking. As Hector’s wife I’d had nothing to do except tell the servants what to do for me. As the landlady of all of these properties, I had to be capable of doing any work required, at any time. Therefore, I learnt to do every job of every servant. Cleaning bored me, laundry I loathed, but cooking I loved. Taking the ingredients one by one, all looking so simple, and then combining them and cooking them and using all kinds of secrets to make them into something delicious, I felt to be a form of magic. With all these discoveries about myself I changed and grew and became not Martha Hudson, grieving widow, but Mrs Hudson, formidable housekeeper and successful landlady.

  As I got older, I gradually sold all my properties and moved into what I was sure would be my final home: 221b Baker Street. It was a very elegant new building, rising several storeys above the busy street, with a smart black door edged in white woodwork and red brick. There was room for me, and a suite of rooms for a pair of gentlemen, and I settled down for my long and inevitable slide into old age.

  The first few men who rented my rooms were nice and polite. They had reasonable hours and required only breakfast and the occasional cup of tea, and kept themselves to themselves. They were the perfect tenants. Other landladies envied me.

  But I was so bored.

  They didn’t need me, they needed an automaton. I did not need them. We were perfect strangers living under one roof.

  Then he came. On a rainy night in September, he rang my bell and asked if my rooms were still vacant.

  He was so tall and thin that at first I thought he was quite elderly. Then he stepped into the light and I saw his face was young and lean, with restless dark eyes. He looked around then smiled and raised his hand, but oddly, as if he was remembering he was supposed to be polite. Those hands were covered in sticking plaster, and his jacket was strangely stained.

  He was soaked to the skin, so I invited him in and said I would bring him tea and, in the meantime, he could pop upstairs and view the rooms.

  I knew he’d like them. They were nice rooms, though I say so myself. Comfortable, but not shabby, well furnished, with plenty of space for my gentlemen to keep their books and suchlike, with two large bedrooms and all conveniently situated near the centre of London. The question was: would I like him?

  When I brought in his tea, I found him standing in the middle of the carpet – the exact middle – looking around curiously, with a certain intensity. I felt sorry for him then. There he was on a rainy cold night, all alone, nowhere to go, wet through, searching for a home. He turned to me as I entered, and took the tea and drank it gratefully. I felt he too had looked at me and studied me and come to his conclusions.

  ‘You keep a very clean house, Mrs Hudson,’ he said. I liked his voice. It was low, but expressive and strong.

  ‘I do, and a very private one,’ I assured him. He struck me as a man who treasured his privacy. ‘I will supply your meals and do your washing and clean your rooms, of course, but I won’t impose or interfere.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I may have many visitors, Mrs Hudson, in connection with my profession. Will that be an inconvenience?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I told him. Though I would regret that in years to come, running up and down those stairs to show in some very odd visitors, at all hours of the day and night. ‘May I ask . . . ?’

  ‘A consulting detective. The only consulting detective,’ he said, with a touch of pride.

  ‘How interesting,’ I said politely, as my heart stirred inside me. A detective! The things that could happen in those rooms, what I might see and hear, the kind of people who would visit – the lost, the lonely, the curious, even the dangerous . . .

  Excitement, of a sort, even just second-hand – but still, excitement!

  ‘I work with the police, but not for them, so discretion must be guaranteed,’ he warned.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I have odd habits,’ he admitted. He almost seemed to be warning me against allowing him into my home. ‘I keep strange hours. I can be very messy. I do chemical experiments that always seem to smell,’ he said ruefully. ‘There may be noise . . . ’

  I raised a hand to stop him.

  ‘None of that will be a problem,’ I assured him.
Oh, how I longed for noise and mess in my pristine home!

  ‘Other landladies have found me difficult,’ he warned. ‘In fact, I have been thrown out of my rooms three times – the latest just two hours ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  He took a breath, determined to admit it all.

  ‘I poisoned her cat. It was entirely accidental . . . ’

  I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. His contrite face, his bizarre admission – it was all so ridiculous! He stared at me, and then smiled. I looked up at him, this man tramping the streets searching for a room. He seemed to have no family, no friends to turn to in his hour of need, nowhere to go, never quite fitting in anywhere, no place he belonged to, and my heart just went out to him. He was a lost soul, just like me.

  ‘I don’t have a cat,’ I told him. ‘Do as you will, sir, as long as you pay for any damages.’ I was not a soft touch, after all. He nodded, serious again.

  ‘The rent . . .’ he started to say. His coat was patched, his bag worn. Consulting detectives were, I imagined, paid by results, and how many results had there been so far?

  ‘There are two bedrooms. I would have no objections to your bringing a companion to share the rooms and the rent.’

  ‘I have no companions,’ he said, his face turning from me towards the windows. ‘I have not that nature.’

  ‘You can have the rooms half-rent for a month whilst you find one,’ I told him. I could not let him go back alone into that dark and damp night. ‘London is full of men looking for a refuge. Perhaps a soldier returned from the wars? They always need a place to stay and an understanding companion. Just be sure and tell them about your bad habits first.’

  It was three weeks later that he brought him home. He’d followed my advice and found an ex-soldier, a doctor, with a pleasant smile, a hearty handshake and haunted eyes. He badly needed a place to stay, a task in life and someone to care for him. Although he thought he needed only one of those things.

  In the first days they were there together the doctor fixed my kitchen door, the detective had sharp words with the butcher, who had been cheating me (I had suspected as much) and I made them the best meal of their lives.