The House at Baker Street Read online

  Everyone who had passed him had given him a coin or two. Everyone knew someone who had been lost in the wars. Mary had brought him two hot pies. She had a special affinity for injured veterans – after all, her husband was one, and if he had not met Sherlock, who knows if he might have ended up begging for his meals.

  The woman in grey paused before the veteran, then knelt down before him, heedless of the dirt on her skirt. She talked to him in a low voice, and gently touched one of his faded medal ribbons, as if she knew what it meant, and what it had cost. He smiled at her, a soft, sad smile, and she emptied her purse into his lap.

  As she stood, I glanced at Mary. She too had seen the woman’s gentle care of the veteran, and she watched intently. She had been captivated.

  The woman walked past us, and then stopped. She turned back, and looked at us with a puzzled expression.

  ‘Mrs Hudson?’ Irene Adler asked. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  She invited us into her parlour. The room was fresh and clean, with simple but comfortable furnishings, and a few beautiful, jewel-like paintings. After the heavy, dark, velvet-cloaked, ornament-choked rooms of my usual acquaintances, this room felt deliciously cool and relaxing.

  Miss Adler unpinned her hat, and placed it on a side table, motioning us towards the sofa.

  ‘Did Mr Holmes send you?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘He has no idea we are here and I would be grateful if you did not tell him.’

  She smiled, and studied me with her dark brown eyes.

  ‘How intriguing,’ she said lightly. ‘So why are you here? Is Mr Holmes well? Not in any kind of trouble?’ There was a momentary expression of unease on her face. Taunt him, tease him, defeat him, escape him she might, but Miss Adler had a liking for Mr Holmes.

  ‘He is perfectly well, as well and safe as he ever is,’ I reassured her, aware that Mary sat next to me staring with unabashed wide-eyed curiosity at Miss Adler. ‘He is busy, very busy. I . . . we . . . are here for our own reason, Miss Adler,’ I stammered, suddenly nervous. I had just realized how impertinent it would look to ask Irene Adler if she knew a willing burglar to help us rob a house.

  ‘Mrs Norton, now,’ she reminded me gently, as a sweet-faced little maid entered with the tea. Irene held the door open for her, and glanced up at me. ‘Yes, I am still married,’ she said, and that was when I realized I had been assuming she was not. ‘I love my husband, and he loves me. He is currently in America, but when we are together, we are still a honeymoon couple. Given both my past and my nature, no one is more surprised at this turn of events than I, but I am happy.’

  Irene thanked the little maid and dismissed her, and sat on the sofa opposite Mary and me.

  ‘My husband is also understanding enough to indulge my sudden craving to visit London alone. I mean to revisit some memories, transact some business, see some old friends. Milk, Mrs Hudson?’

  There was always something about the way she spoke – as if her words said one thing, but everything else about her was saying something else. Not that she lied to us, or dissimulated – though often she did! – but what she told us was never the whole story. Still, even then, I knew better than to ask her outright why she had returned to London. Besides, another question had just struck me.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘But as I recall, we’ve never actually met before. I know who you are, from Mr Holmes, and from the newspapers – but how do you know who I am?’

  She poured the golden tea into the thinnest of china cups.

  ‘I researched my adversary well, Mrs Hudson,’ she said. ‘I knew Mr Holmes was a formidable foe, and if I was to defeat him, in the matter of the King of Bohemia’s ridiculous photograph, and I did defeat him thoroughly, I had to know him. Not just his strengths and weaknesses, but the people around him. Have you heard that a man can be judged by his friends? Therefore I had to know about the few friends he had, his family . . .’

  ‘His housekeeper,’ I finished for her bluntly. I hadn’t meant to. Something about Irene Adler – Norton – brought out the brutally honest in me. It always would. She liked that.

  ‘More than just a housekeeper, so much more,’ Irene said, her dark eyes meeting mine, a wealth of knowledge in them. I smiled, almost blushing. I could not help it. It felt so warm, to be thought of as more than just Mr Holmes’ housekeeper.

  ‘You I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Irene said, turning to Mary and holding out a cup of tea. Mary, who had been watching the exchanges between Irene and me with a delighted fascination, suddenly realized she had been silent until now.

  ‘Oh, how rude of me!’ Mary said, taking the tea. ‘I’m Mary Watson. John’s wife. Dr John Watson, I mean. Well, of course, you know who I mean.’ Mary was babbling, but she stopped herself by drinking her tea.

  ‘Really?’ Irene looked at her steadily, examining her top to toe. Mary met her inquiring glance frankly, staring back over the rim of tea cup with her fierce blue eyes. She put the cup down, and smiled. Very few people could resist Mary’s smile. Irene smiled back. ‘I approve,’ she said. ‘A perfect match.’

  ‘I think so,’ Mary said. ‘I am very excited to meet you, Miss Adler – I mean Mrs Norton. John has told me all about you – well, all he knows.’

  ‘And is his opinion of me good or bad?’ Irene asked dryly, handing me my tea. I noticed it was made exactly how I like it, though I had not got round to telling her if I wanted milk or sugar.

  ‘All good,’ Mary told her. ‘He appreciates the way you fooled Sherlock. And approves, too. He thinks Sherlock being beaten by a woman did him the world of good.’

  ‘You call him Sherlock? Does he call you Mary?’ Irene asked, intrigued.

  ‘No, I’m always “Mrs Watson” but I persist in calling him Sherlock. He’s practically a brother-in-law to me, after all.’ Mary took a sip of tea, and then said thoughtfully, ‘John says that does him good, too. He says at this rate Sherlock might begin to think of women as at least half as good as men by the end of the century.’ She glanced up at Mrs Norton, laughing. ‘Between the two of us – I mean the three of us – we could reform him!’

  ‘I doubt that,’ Irene replied, though she laughed. ‘But ladies – excuse me, you were not in the neighbourhood for a gossip, or idle curiosity. You want something. How can I help?’

  Mary and I exchanged glances. This was it, the vital moment. The moment where we reached out, and knew not what the answer would be. We had enlisted the help of Billy and Wiggins, but we knew them, we knew what they would say. Now we were going to ask this woman neither of us had ever met for help, and what’s more, we were going to ask her to help us with something utterly illegal. We didn’t know what would happen next. She might be insulted. She might be angry. She might tell the police. Doubtful, but possible. She might tell Mr Holmes, which was more possible, and then he and John would – in the gentlest possible way – either tell us to stop, or worse, push us to one side and take over the investigation themselves. Mary and I would become bystanders again. This moment was quite a risk.

  Ah well, as my Hector often observed, risks are there to be taken. I put down my tea cup, faced Irene, and said, very directly, ‘We want you to introduce us to someone trustworthy who could pick locks and break into safes and generally burgle a house so no one knows we have been there.’

  I said it quickly, all in one breath. Beside me, I heard Mary give a tiny cry of surprise at my audacity, which she quickly silenced. Irene stared at me, her tea cup in her hand, eyes wide.

  Give me my due, I’d achieved something Mr Holmes never had. I’d surprised Irene Adler.

  She put the tea cup down very slowly and said, ‘What makes you think I know such people?’

  ‘Because you managed to retrieve the photograph of you and the King of Bohemia, even though it was safely locked away,’ I said swiftly. ‘Because you knew enough about the habits of burglars not to keep it in a safe. Because from all I’ve read about you, I suspect there are many other pictur
es and souvenirs you had to get back before you married and I don’t think you could have got them all yourself. You must know someone with the necessary skills.’ I stopped. My mouth had gone dry and I could not have said more if my life depended on it. Irene’s face froze. I felt my hands twist against each other in my lap, and I grasped them tight to control them. If she was going to feel insulted, that last statement should just about do it. I braced myself for the inevitable flood of anger.

  She took a deep breath and then said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Why do you need to find such a person?’

  Well, that was not what I expected.

  We told her. We told her of the crying woman and the man in the river and the attack on Wiggins. We told her of the Whitechapel Lady, and all those other women who had disappeared from their ruined lives. We told her of the destroyed families, and the suicides and the whispering, the constant, corrosive whispering. We told her of the foul, faceless spider of a man who squatted in the centre of it all, pulling strings and playing tricks and feeding off the pain, growing fat on terror and loss and heartbreak.

  ‘I see,’ Irene said when we were done. ‘What a horrible story. I never knew all this was happening. I should have understood, I have seen some terrible things, but I never put all the pieces together. Blackmail is such a foul crime.’

  ‘He’s not even blackmailing for money,’ Mary said. ‘He just likes to destroy.’

  The day had grown dark outside, and Irene rose to light the lamps. She took a spill from a jar on the mantelpiece, and lit it on the fire. She held the flame up to the gas lamp, briefly throwing her face into a bizarre, flickering shadow.

  ‘You think you know who this man is?’ she asked, as she lit the lamp.

  ‘Sir George Burnwell,’ I told her.

  She blew out the burning spill and turned to me in surprise. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘I am aware of him. The man is a heartless manipulative bully who hates women even as he seduces them, but to go as far as this . . . It really does not seem to be in his nature.’

  ‘The evidence points that way,’ Mary said. ‘For now. It’s only circumstantial. We need something solid.’

  ‘I see,’ Irene said. She threw the spill into the fire, and walked up and down the room a few times, deep in thought. Then she turned to us, straightened her back, and said, ‘The person you are looking for, the trustworthy and skilled housebreaker, is me.’

  ‘You?’ I asked, surprised – but not actually that surprised.

  ‘I am quite good at it, I assure you,’ she said gently, but very seriously. ‘Actually, very good at it. Let me not underestimate my own talents. I had the best of all teachers.’

  ‘But . . .’ Mary started to say. Irene sat down on the sofa opposite us again.

  ‘As you say,’ Irene confirmed, ‘there have been objects – photographs, letters, locks of hair – that I have needed to retrieve. I could trust only myself, therefore I alone took back those objects from those who kept them. If anyone else had seen them, I would have been open to blackmail myself. I have some interesting, highly scandalous information. Even the information I lodge with my solicitor must be sealed. I have had some narrow escapes in my time,’ she said, in a quiet voice. She shuddered, as if an old and bitter memory washed over her. Then she turned back to us, and smiled brightly.

  ‘I accept,’ she said. ‘Whatever you need, I will do.’ Her smile became mischievous. ‘I’m in the mood for an adventure.’

  ‘Um . . . thank you, Miss . . . I mean Mrs Norton,’ I said, stammering in my surprise. Mary laughed, utterly delighted with the outcome.

  ‘Irene, please,’ she said. ‘If we’re to be criminals together, let us use our first names. I am Irene.’

  ‘And you know I’m Mary,’ Mary said cheerfully. They both turned to me.

  Criminals. We would be criminals. We would rob and steal and who knew what else?

  I looked up to see Mary and Irene looking at me, waiting. My first name? No one had used my first name since Hector died. I had not even told Mary my name. For a moment, I wasn’t sure I could remember it.

  ‘Martha,’ I said to them. ‘My first name is Martha.’

  Martha, Mary and Irene. Criminals together. So be it. It was for the best of causes.

  We planned late into the night, accompanied by a lovely supper, only stopping at ten, when Mary mentioned her husband might possibly be wondering where she was. I knew Mr Holmes would not care where I was. If I was not there to serve his supper, he would merely go out to eat at his favourite Italian restaurant. Everything was settled for two nights hence, when the moon would be new, and cast less light. Mary and I walked up to the main street to hail a cab. Mary ran ahead, seeing one in the distance. I, trailing behind, happened to turn as we left Irene’s street.

  It was empty now, apart from one last, solitary straggler. He lounged against a postbox, not even bothering to hide the fact that he was watching us. He could have been there all day. He must have been there ever since it was dark. He could have watched us through the well-lit window of Irene’s house. I did not recognize his face – the street was too dark, his face too plain. I looked at the arm of his jacket. There was no paint, but I could just see, under the gaslight, a paler patch where it had been cleaned vigorously. He tipped his hat to me and strolled away.

  I had led the Ordinary Man right to Irene Adler’s door.

  John glowed the day he came to tell me he had won his Mary. I wept – I told him it was for joy, but it was loss. John had been the tie that bound us all, and now he was slipping away. I know that Mr Holmes felt it keenly, but he never said a word. He merely sat and brooded in the dark. His adventures for a while became more frenetic and more dangerous, and I sat in the kitchen and listened.

  The afternoon before his wedding, John came to visit. I was touched he chose to spend this time with me, and I would not stop talking, for fear if I fell silent, the afternoon would end. But dusk will always fall, and soon it did.

  ‘I have bought a medical practice,’ John told me, as I rose to light the gas lamps. ‘Not so very far away.’

  ‘But not here,’ I said, before I could stop myself.

  ‘Close,’ he said, and reached to light the highest gas lamp for me, the one I had to stand on a chair to reach. ‘A short cab ride away. You and Holmes will always be welcome there.’

  ‘Good luck getting Mr Holmes to leave 221b for anything other than a case,’ I said, more brightly than I felt, putting the matches away in the kitchen drawer.

  ‘Mary is talking to him now,’ John told me. ‘There is a room set aside for him in the new house, and she is consulting him on how he would like it to be decorated.’

  For a moment my heart fell away, and I had to grasp the kitchen dresser for support. If Mr Holmes left too . . .

  ‘Not that he will use it,’ John said quickly. ‘He is too fond of 221b.’

  ‘He’ll miss you,’ I said softly, my back still to John.

  ‘Billy is bright,’ John said lightly. ‘He soaks in everything Holmes teaches him, and Holmes has noticed. He’ll enjoy making an apprentice of the boy.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I will visit,’ John promised. ‘Not a week will go by that I will not be here. I will still keep a bed here, if I may. Billy will be here too. And Mr Holmes . . .’

  ‘Is used to me,’ I finished for him, straightening the plates on the dresser, still refusing to turn to look at John, in case he saw the tears in my eyes.

  ‘Is fond of you, in his own brusque way,’ John said gently. ‘Highly insulting way sometimes. He’s the same with me. Calls me all sorts of things, usually around the theme of “idiot”, day and night, but I know I am his closest friend. Only friend, I think.’ John came over to me, and placing his hands on my shoulders, turned me to face him. ‘We will neither of us abandon you, mother to us that you are,’ he said, and kissed me on the forehead.

  I wept again, as he wrapped his arms around me, but t
his time I wept with relief.

  ‘Now,’ he said to me. ‘I want you to meet my Mary. Yes, I know you’ve met her before, but I want you to meet her properly, as my wife, well, my wife after tomorrow. You will love her.’

  And I did.

  This had been seven months earlier, and I felt a little ashamed of how weak and foolish I had been. Of course Mary would not take John away from me. It was, in fact, quite the opposite – he had brought Mary to me. Given we were now working on our case, I felt Mary and I were as much partners in work and friendship as Mr Holmes and Dr Watson.

  In work as long as we could solve this case, that is. The morning after meeting Irene, I sat down to sort through what we had learnt and see what I could deduce from the few facts and many suppositions. Mr Holmes was out, John and Mary were, for once, in their own home, and I had sent Billy to instruct the Irregulars to discreetly watch Sir George’s house. Therefore, I was left all alone in 221b.

  You mustn’t feel sorry for me, that I was alone so much. I was of that nature that thrives on solitude. Much as I loved Mary and Billy and the others, sometimes I felt as if I could only breathe when I was alone. In solitude I found a peace and freedom I could never find in company. Even my husband and my child had known to give me time alone just to become myself again. Only when I was alone could I think. I have to admit, some of the most content moments of my life were spent alone, in the kitchen of 221b, the sun streaming through the window, with absolutely no demands on my time.

  But then again, being alone by choice is so very different from being alone in an always empty house.

  That day I was trying to get my thoughts in some sort of order. This case had started as blackmail and libel, evolved into attempted murder and had now become something so dark and disturbing I did not have a name for it.