The House at Baker Street Read online

  ‘I only wanted her to tell the truth. I needed her to tell me everything. I expected her to return, duly chastened, and tell me what I asked. I had every intention of helping her, but I must have data!’ he snapped, picking up his cup of tea. He was almost defensive. ‘I was sure she’d come back. Why wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Perhaps she found someone else to help her,’ I said quietly, picking up my tray.

  Mr Holmes bridled. ‘Who else can help her?’ he demanded. ‘Who else in London could there possibly be to help her?’ He went back to the window, and his ceaseless watching.

  ‘Who indeed?’ I replied. ‘Surely there is no one else suitable, in the whole of London.’ And with that, I left him alone.

  For so long, the three of us had rubbed along together quite nicely. Sherlock Holmes, the detective, his reputation growing by the day, John Watson, the doctor, Mr Holmes’ staunch companion and chronicler (and how good he turned out to be at that!) and Mrs Hudson, housekeeper, forever running in and out with cups of tea, and learning that these men would never keep ordinary hours, or have ordinary visitors. Not to mention the strange requests from Mr Holmes at all hours of the day and night. Mrs Hudson, I need such and such a chemical. Mrs Hudson, do you know where I can get a tracking dog in Central London? Mrs Hudson, instead of putting breakfast on this plate, please put this roll of paper on it.

  It was the most exciting time I’d had since meeting Hector. Even if, every once in a while, when I watched them charge off hot on the chase, I wished I could go too. I swallowed that feeling. It was not my place to hunt down the villains or track the clues or save the victim. It was my place to wait quietly at home, and look after my tenants when they returned. I was where I was meant to be. This was, I was certain, my place in life. And in this way, the three of us, I hope and think, were happy.

  Then along came Mary Morstan, with her straight back and beautiful eyes and stubborn nature. Mary, who would have walked straight into hell with her head high rather than hurt any of us. Mary, who loved us all. Mary, who one day would tear our hearts into tiny pieces. But that is a story for another time, if I ever have the strength to tell it.

  The morning of the day after Mary and I had drunk champagne and decided to become detectives, of a sort, I sat in my room and told myself I was a silly woman.

  My bedroom was above Mr Holmes’ sitting room, and I often lay there in bed at night, listening to him pace and up and down, muttering to himself, working out the complexities of a case that had baffled Scotland Yard. What made me think I could do such a thing?

  I sat on the large iron-framed, neatly made bed and looked in the mirror. I saw a woman of slightly below the average height. She looked older than she actually was; even I forgot my own age sometimes. She had a plain, comfortable face, and a plump body, a sign that she enjoyed her own cakes too much. There was a mass of brown hair, turning grey now, tightly pulled into a bun on the back of her head. She wore a respectable black bombazine dress, with a long thin gold chain hanging around her neck, carrying a watch that was tucked into the waistband.

  I sighed. In my mind I was still the slim, pretty, giggling girl who had caught Hector’s eye. Then I would look in the mirror, and see an ageing, ordinary woman, not worthy of notice or attention, and wonder what had happened to me. Sometimes I felt I was invisible, just one more number in the huge mass of London’s respectable older women, always in black, always doing the right thing, always silent.

  I glanced towards the wardrobe. In there were two dresses I had bought on an impulse. One was dark green, the colour of horse chestnut leaves in shadow. The other, even more daringly, was a deep russet red.

  Hector would have loved the green dress. My eyes were brown, but they had flecks of green and blue which were always more noticeable if I wore those colours. Hector loved me in green. He said it made my eyes bewitching. But I was an almost-silver-haired widow now, nothing but a landlady, and we weren’t supposed to wear green dresses and have bewitching eyes. As for red – that was beyond the pale!

  I looked again in the mirror. Perhaps I would go along with Mary’s idea, just for a little while. Just to occupy my mind. Just to chase out the sad thoughts I had sometimes. I went down to the kitchen. The bedroom was only where I slept. The kitchen was my domain, my kingdom, my refuge, my home. I loved that room, and I always felt at peace there.

  Mary had already arrived – she often came to see me in the morning – and sat there, turning Mrs Shirley’s letter over and over in her hands. Mary was the only person ever allowed to sit in my kitchen when I was not there, the only one permitted to make tea with my own teapot, the only one authorized to make the occasional small meal. Not cakes and pastries though; only I ever baked in my kitchen, and only I ever would.

  ‘May I read it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is vile,’ she warned. Yet she did not withhold the letter from me but held it out willingly.

  ‘I understand,’ I said, taking it from her.

  It was indeed vile. It accused Laura of unnatural acts with any number of men, in most explicit and lascivious tones. I felt sullied just reading it. It was ridiculous to think of that quiet, small woman doing any of these things. I doubt she even knew half of them existed. And yet – it was a clever letter. It had a few small touches here and there that seemed true. The tone was not hysterical. This letter would be enough to raise a doubt in the mind of a man who truly believed an innocent woman’s reputation remained untouched. Women – good women – had been ruined by milder whispers than these.

  Mary sat at the table, turning her tea cup – the tea had long since gone cold – round and round in her hand, staring into the distance.

  ‘Where to start? That is the question,’ she said softly.

  ‘With the letter, surely,’ I said, sitting down opposite her. ‘Mr Holmes always starts with the evidence.’

  ‘I think we’ve got all we can from that letter,’ Mary said ruefully. ‘I’ve no doubt Mr Holmes would find some clue from the irregularity in the ink or the way the sunlight has fallen on the paper, but my skills don’t stretch that far.’

  We sat in silence for a moment, and then I said, ‘With the victim – we start with the victim.’

  Mary looked at me questioningly, expecting me to defend my hypothesis.

  ‘This is not random,’ I said slowly, thinking as I talked. This moment – this right here, what I was doing – was . . . exciting. After years of feeling like I was nothing more than a middle-aged lady doing nothing that required any intelligence, I was finally thinking. I was making deductions and connections and coming up with ideas and using my mind. It felt odd, it almost felt like my brain was rusty, and needed to be coaxed back into life – but I could feel it working, for the first time in years.

  I loved it.

  No wonder Mr Holmes was addicted to this. No wonder he turned to stimulants when there was nothing to think about.

  ‘He has chosen his victim carefully,’ I said to Mary, continuing my train of thought. ‘A meek woman, no real friends, with a jealous husband. She is the perfect target.’

  ‘Target for what?’ Mary asked. ‘He hasn’t said what he wants yet.’

  ‘That is not the point, presently,’ I said urgently. ‘The point is, he has not just picked a name at random out of the society pages. He has made a well-informed choice. And that means . . .’

  ‘He knows her!’ Mary cried, picking up on my thread of thought. I smiled. This was going satisfactorily. ‘He’s not just a passing acquaintance either.’

  ‘Exactly – which means he is probably part of her social circle. We need to know who her acquaintances are.’

  ‘It’d be someone she’d never suspect,’ Mary said. ‘Which means, she won’t give us his name – if she gives us any.’

  ‘Perhaps we should find a way to meet her friends?’ I suggested. ‘Pretend to be her new acquaintances, be introduced to her social circle?’

  ‘I doubt Laura could lie to her husband,’ Mary objected. ‘I doubt
she could even lie by omission. She’d blush and stammer. She’d never be able to calmly introduce us to her husband as her new friends that she just happened to make. And if this . . . man – and I use the word in its lightest possible sense,’ she made a sound of disgust, ‘does know them, he might be suspicious of a shy little mouse like Laura suddenly acquiring two new friends, even if her husband would not suspect a thing.’

  She was right, of course. I’m not even sure I could have carried the lie off myself, anyway, let alone Laura with all her worries.

  ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘he may not even be a friend. He may be someone Laura contracts business with. A dressmaker, a solicitor, a butcher. My grocer knows to a nicety how much my budget for weekly shopping is, and whether I have guests and whether or not I have the nerve to argue the bill, but I wouldn’t invite him to afternoon tea.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Mary admitted. ‘You are right, of course. We need to find a way of watching Laura, seeing who she meets, and why, and we need to find a way of doing it without Laura, her husband, or anyone else knowing.’

  ‘It would be good to keep the husband under surveillance too,’ I added. ‘Perhaps it is one of his acquaintances. And he would have a far wider range of business contacts.’

  Mary blew out her breath.

  ‘That’s an awful lot of spying for just the two of us,’ she said.

  ‘It can’t be us. We don’t have the skills,’ I pointed out. ‘Laura knows us, and would react if she saw us. And someone as devious as this blackmailer would be bound to spot us. We need someone he’d never notice.’

  It didn’t take the two of us long to come up with the answer. We’d practically talked ourselves into it. We looked at each other, grinned, and said together,

  ‘The Irregulars!’

  If you have read John’s stories, you will know about the Baker Street Irregulars – but if you haven’t, then I will tell you their story.

  Back then, during the last century, London’s streets thronged with boys – and occasionally girls – running wild. They often had no home or family, or if they did, it was not somewhere they were welcome. They roamed the streets, living as best they could, running errands, carrying messages, doing any little task that needed doing and that they could earn a shilling for. Whenever Mr Holmes needed anything fetched from some shop or another, there was always a boy on the street who would run the errand. Sometimes they committed petty crimes – stole an apple, or a bun. And some were tempted into bigger crimes, into working for bigger criminals, destined to end up in jail – or at the end of a hangman’s rope. And some just . . . disappeared.

  One of the boys on the street was Wiggins. He was the wily, clever, cunning leader of the Irregulars.

  Wiggins was a boy who could think and plan and see consequences. That made him unusual. He looked around him, at all the urchins running round the street, some surviving, some not, and decided they needed help. He banded them together, found a place for them to sleep, made sure they shared their food, found them work and kept them safe. He gave them a family, of sorts, and he watched over all of them. And at some point, they met Mr Holmes, and each could see the advantage of helping the other. They had worked for Mr Holmes often.

  I did not even know they existed until one day I opened the front door of 221b Baker Street to find a group of filthy ragamuffins standing there. The one at the front, a young man all of twelve years with watchful eyes, said very politely, ‘Wiggins and the Baker Street Irregulars, missus, here to see Mr ’Olmes. At ’is invitation,’ he added quickly, and I looked round at the faces, some nervous, some hopeful, one or two angry. Something told me they expected to be kicked off the front doorstep, told to use the tradesman’s entrance, told to just go away.

  Well, I’ve let far worse people into his rooms, and certainly far ruder, so I stepped aside, and invited them in. They scampered up the stairs, led by Wiggins.

  When they came down again, I was at the top of the kitchen stairs. I called to them, ‘I have cake, if any should want some! And tea or milk. Enough for all of you.’

  Their eyes lit up, poor half-starved things, but they looked towards their leader first. He, in turn, looked at me suspiciously.

  ‘I shan’t make you wash, and I shan’t ask questions,’ I promised. I vaguely remembered, from so long ago, what boys were like.

  He nodded, and the boys (about ten of them, but as they dashed around and in and out it was difficult to count) rushed past me into the kitchen. He, the older boy, walked towards me, and said, ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs ’Udson.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ I assured him. ‘You know my name, and I know you are Wiggins, yes?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said politely, touching his cap, and walked past me into the kitchen, as self-possessed as any city gent. I heard him tell the boys to eat properly, not like a bunch of savages. I followed him in and watched him pour milk for the younger ones, and make sure each and every boy got his share. He insisted on please and thank you, served himself last, settled disputes quickly and all the time he watched those boys.

  I have known many worse men than Wiggins of the Baker Street Irregulars, but none better.

  The boys wolfed down the cakes, all I had, and I was glad to see it.

  ‘You’re welcome here any time,’ I said to them. ‘I always make too much food, and it just goes to waste.’

  Wiggins didn’t trust charity. I could see it in his face. Charity meant the workhouse, and prayers and exhortations to remember your sins and then eat bad food, and never enough of it, and beatings, and separations.

  ‘Mr Holmes doesn’t eat his dinner half the time,’ I told him. ‘It pains me to see all my hard work over the stove going to waste.’

  Wiggins nodded, but said nothing. He looked round at the others. He had his own stubborn pride, but would he deny his boys because of that?

  Wiggins deserved the truth.

  ‘I had a son once,’ I said to him, in a low voice. I sat down beside him, at the head of the huge wooden kitchen table. I kept my voice low, so none of the other boys could hear me. This was between Wiggins and me. ‘He died. So did my husband. To tell the truth, I would appreciate the company. Mr Holmes is out most of the time, and I am alone here.’

  Then he smiled at me, and nodded his approval of my plan at the rest of the boys. From that moment on, the Irregulars would turn up at my door, two or three times a month, never more than two or three at a time. I would feed them, and talk to them, never asking questions, but listening to all they said. Sometimes I would treat scratches and cuts and bruises – even with Wiggins’ protection, life on the streets was never easy. Every so often, Wiggins himself would appear, sometimes with a half-starved boy, sometimes alone. After a while, I came to realize that even though I thought I was looking after the boys, Wiggins believed he was looking after me. His visits weren’t just to eat, but to make sure I was all right, not lonely, not scared, not in trouble. It touched me more than I can say.

  And of course, one day he brought me Billy.

  ‘How do you find the Irregulars?’ Mary asked. ‘John says they run all over London; they could be anywhere.’

  ‘I leave a message in the newsagent’s window on the corner,’ I told her. ‘That’s how Mr Holmes contacts them. They check it every day, every hour sometimes.’

  So I did. BSI contact Mrs H. I have work for you.

  Wiggins came the next day, to the front door, as befitted a business transaction. Normally he slipped in through the kitchen door, as the boys did when they came for cake, but Wiggins was very conscious of the proprieties. He wasn’t here as a boy, but as a worker. I invited him down to the kitchen, my own particular office.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked, coming down the stairs. He hesitated when he saw Mary sitting there. He wasn’t used to seeing anyone else in the kitchen. I think he was worried that Mary was a do-gooder, come to take him away to some place to be prayed at and ordered about and locked away.

  ‘This is
my friend, Mary Watson,’ I said quickly. ‘Dr Watson’s wife.’

  I walked over to the hob and poured the tea as Mary and Wiggins took the measure of each other. She would have seen a boy of indeterminate age, somewhere between twelve and fifteen, thin but lean, with a suggestion of a hungry strength in the way he moved. He could be still, so very still, as if carved from stone, except for his eyes. His eyes watched and assessed and judged all the time. He was calm, though he never stopped thinking and his thoughts were not often pleasant. He was taller than most of his boys, with dirty skin, pale underneath all the grime. His dark blond hair was too long, and filthy, and his eyes were dark, very dark, and shadowed. He was dressed all in mismatched brown rags – a disguise to help him blend in on the streets. I knew he had better clothes as I had given them to him. All this Mary saw and understood as she looked at the boy standing before her.

  ‘Mr Wiggins,’ Mary said to him, nodding. He nodded back, all cool politeness.

  ‘Just Wiggins, ma’am,’ he told her.

  ‘No other name?’

  ‘Never needed one.’

  ‘Wiggins, then,’ she said, smiling at him. After a moment’s hesitation, he smiled back. In that moment they had made their assessment and found each other perfectly satisfactory. Wiggins sat down at the table and I poured tea for all of us.

  ‘Do you need help?’ Wiggins said to me. ‘The advert said you, not Mr ’Olmes.’

  ‘I do. I’m not in trouble, but someone I know is. I said I’d help her, and for that I need you,’ I told him, placing a very large slice of seed cake in front of him. It was his favourite. He looked at it suspiciously, recognizing it for what it was – a bribe. ‘And I’d rather Mr Holmes did not know.’

  Wiggins looked at us, from one to the other, warily.

  ‘Not tell Mr ’Olmes?’ He didn’t like this. He had a great deal of loyalty for Mr Holmes, not to mention a healthy amount of respect. He knew it would be very difficult to keep a secret from his major employer.

  ‘This is our case,’ Mary said forcefully. ‘Not his.’