The House at Baker Street Read online

  ‘“This cannot go on,” he said, and he was very determined. “I will not have the brightest lights of society dimmed for this man’s pleasure.”

  ‘He told me the name of the Whitechapel Lady and who she had once been. She was once so high in society! You would recognize her name from court circulars. And then, without any more demands or questions, he gave me a list of women who have disappeared, and asked me to make sure no one else suffered like the Whitechapel Lady. I think, perhaps, he had been rather fond of her.’

  Mary sat down then, and handed me the list. It was long, of about thirty women.

  ‘These are the women he could think of who have retired from society for no reason, or gone abroad suddenly or just disappeared.’

  ‘Dead?’ I asked.

  Mary blinked. ‘I didn’t think of that. Yes, I suppose some of them must have died. Do you mean . . . ?’

  ‘Suicide. I mean they killed themselves. At least I think that’s what I mean.’

  ‘At least seven separated from their husbands despite seeming to be blissfully married up to that point.’ Mary pointed their names out. ‘Five of them, well . . .’

  ‘Their husbands had inexplicable accidents?’ I asked. Mary nodded.

  ‘Next, we go to the library,’ I said firmly. ‘We shall research each and every one of these names. In Debrett’s Peerage, in old newspapers, every reference source we can find. There must be a link between them: a family friend, a lawyer, a servant. Someone!’

  ‘Mr Pike did give me one possible name,’ Mary said. ‘A man with a very bad reputation with women. He is apparently irresistible. He tricks them and uses them and then abandons them, and yet still they love him. I suppose they think they can save him. I swear, I have problems understanding my own sex sometimes. He did say he is not the kind of man to indulge in this kind of nasty abuse. Violence is not quite his style; he is, at heart, a coward. Still, he is the kind of man who easily gains power over women, and then abuses it.’

  ‘“A most convincing rogue”,’ I quoted. ‘How many of these women is he linked to?’

  ‘So far, Mr Pike knew of five.’

  ‘That’s not many, in a list of thirty.’

  ‘There may be more. Besides, it’s a start,’ Mary said, rising.

  ‘Then we’ll research him too. What’s his name?’

  ‘Sir George Burnwell.’

  ‘To the library!’ may not have the same dramatic ring as ‘the game’s afoot!’ but it was far more useful. Mr Holmes employed a Mr Mercer for the endless slogging work, trawling for information from papers and journals and registries and records. (Not a fact John knew yet. At this time, Mr Holmes liked to maintain his infallible image with John, especially after his remarks in writing about Mr Holmes’ lack of knowledge of the solar system.) But Mary and I had to do it ourselves, with the occasional help of Billy. Mary haunted the periodical section of the library, Billy took advantage of Mr Holmes’ absence – he was away a lot at the time, there must have been a very complex investigation going on – to plunder his cuttings books, and I went through the piles of newspapers that had built up in the attic. Mr Holmes hated to have anything that might one day be useful thrown away – and his definition of ‘possibly useful’ was very wide-ranging.

  By the end of a week, we had two names – or rather, confirmation of one name and a new one. I had found several divorce notices, as well as advertisements for sale of goods ‘to be applied for via the solicitor’ – a sure sign the seller had left the country quickly. Mary had found several names that simply disappeared from the society pages for no good reason, notes of at least two court cases quickly abandoned and several wills changed at the very last moment.

  The same person had kept popping up in all the gossip columns, court cases, divorce notices, even court circulars. The same man was named in connection with all these women, sometimes as little as being mentioned as being at the same ball as them, but it was there.

  Sir George Burnwell.

  The other man was the reporter who covered these stories. Of course, most of the reports were anonymous, just snippets in a gossip column. However, whenever the story was meatier, often it was the same man who wrote the story. He seemed to take a subtle pleasure in the downfall of these women, and the further they fell, the better. He also seemed to hint that he knew far more than he was telling. It was a tenuous link, but a link nonetheless. His name was Patrick West. I did not have the first idea how to investigate a reporter, but Billy did. He was anxious to use some of the skills he was learning from Mr Holmes, so I set him on to the task of discovering all he could about Mr Patrick West – discreetly, of course.

  Before I went out, I popped up to Mr Holmes’ rooms to check the street. I did that a lot lately, only if he was out, though. I just looked down the street, one way and the other. As usual, there was nothing sinister, nothing odd, just busy Baker Street, same as always. But the ditherer was back, the tall blond man standing on the opposite side of the street, still staring at our windows (and incidentally getting in the way of everyone on the pavement). Billy came in at that moment.

  ‘There’s a ditherer,’ I said to him. ‘Maybe we should make up his mind for him and just invite him in.’

  Billy peered out of the window, and then leaned in closer, staring hard at the man.

  ‘I know him!’ he said, making sure the lace curtain covered us. ‘I saw him when we were following Mr Shirley – he’s a friend of the Shirleys.’

  ‘Get him in here,’ I demanded. Billy ran down the stairs, but by the time he got there, the man had gone, marching briskly down the street.

  ‘Sorry,’ Billy said, coming back in as I walked down the stairs. ‘He’s fast!’

  ‘You definitely saw him with the Shirleys?’ I asked. Billy nodded.

  ‘It’s not a coincidence he’s here, is it?’ Billy wondered.

  ‘I doubt it,’ I told him. ‘Someone directed him; he had the address written down. He may be a victim too. If you see him again, grab him.’

  Two hours later, I had left Baker Street to meet Mary. I stood on a street corner in the drizzle, ostensibly staring at dress patterns in a haberdashery shop window but really checking my reflection to see if the Ordinary Man was behind me. Not that I had much confidence in recognizing him without the distinctive splash of paint on his jacket. I had not seen him since that day, and I was beginning to tell myself I had imagined the whole affair. Perhaps he, too, was a Baker Street resident who just happened to have business in Whitechapel that day. Perhaps I had been over-sensitive, my nerves heightened by the Whitechapel Lady’s story. And yet . . . and yet . . . no. When I thought about it, calmly and sensibly, I knew he had been following me. Was it for some reason of his own, or did Burnwell have his victims watched? Or was it not linked to our investigation at all – was I being followed merely because of my connection to Mr Holmes, in which case, should I warn him? Questions, questions, questions, but at least I was getting close to answers now.

  Mary came round the corner, wearing a dress of primrose yellow, carrying a jaunty umbrella and smiling to herself. She looked bright and lovely and sunny, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. That impression was misleading. All those stories of despair she had uncovered had hit her hard. She had dreamed of them, she told me. She had dreamed of all those women, all those families, so happy, so lively, and then that man had appeared and whispered in an ear and it all came crashing down. The dreams had not made Mary fearful or cautious though. Instead she had announced we would catch him, and stop him, and there was a steely look in her eye when she promised me this. Kind as Mary was, she would nevertheless make an implacable enemy.

  She joined me, crying, ‘Proof! That’s what we need,’ as we walked off down the street together. A tall, lovely woman in yellow, and a shorter, plainer one in black. We must have looked like mother and daughter, instead of the closest of friends. ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked, as I glanced over my shoulder.

  ‘Sometimes I think we
’re being followed,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s my imagination.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Mary replied, looking around the street. ‘You notice things more than I do. You observe, as Sherlock says. Followed by whom?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just an ordinary man,’ I told her. ‘I thought I saw him in Whitechapel, and then in Baker Street.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Mary demanded.

  ‘No, I’m not sure,’ I told her. ‘I’m not used to this, Mary, how can I tell if someone’s following me? I honestly don’t think I could pick his face out of a crowd if it wasn’t for the stain on his jacket. But it’s probably just my imagination. I was a bit shaken by Whitechapel, and anyway he’s not here now. It doesn’t matter. So how do we get this proof?’ I asked, as Mary blithely ignored a man trying to make eyes at her, and steered me round a puddle.

  ‘Well, the man we’re hunting must keep all kinds of letters and souvenirs and so on. I doubt he trusts a bank, or a solicitor.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, as we turned the corner into a quieter street, lined with trees.

  ‘All it takes is one nosy bank clerk or solicitor’s clerk or burglar, and he’d be undone. Besides, he likes power. I’d lay good odds he likes to gloat over those letters of an evening. How can he do that if they’re at the bank? No, I reckon Sir George keeps them at home.’

  ‘“Good odds,”’ I quoted, amused. ‘Has John been taking you to the races again?’

  ‘I won five pounds last week,’ she said complacently. ‘John, on the other hand, lost ten shillings.’

  ‘Mary,’ I said, pulling her to a stop. ‘Are we sure about this? Sir George is very rich and very powerful.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean he’s not a blackmailer,’ Mary insisted. She had that stubborn set to her chin again.

  ‘But he’s very well known. The Whitechapel Lady said her blackmailer was an ordinary man, a man with an alias . . .’

  ‘Then Sir George hired an agent! It’s not hard to do, find an ordinary-looking man, and tell him to go and whisper certain phrases in a lady’s ear. I should imagine he’s very well paid . . . or he too has a secret that Sir George holds over him!’ Mary said quickly. A heavily moustached man tutted at our blocking the path, and Mary pulled me out of the way, so we could stand against a bookshop window. The earlier grey drizzle had cleared, and now the damp street sparkled in the sunlight. Even this usually quiet road was full of people, sober-faced men in dark suits, laughing girls in colourful dresses, errand boys dashing between the crowds, flower girls offering their bright violets. It was such a lovely, perfect London street in the spring sunshine.

  ‘I have seen his name everywhere,’ Mary urged. ‘His name appears over and over in the divorce court records. I’ve even seen it in records of the criminal court. Never the accused, but always there in the background, always just where a good man would not be, always with a faint patina of villainy on him. I have found his name over and over again. I do believe it is him: Sir George Burnwell is our man.’

  She was intense in her belief, and she was persuading me. But I needed more than a feeling.

  ‘Proof, then,’ I said. ‘Which we are agreed is in his home, which we have no way of being invited into.’

  ‘Then we break in,’ Mary said, a touch breathlessly. She smiled, a dazzling, daring smile, as if it meant nothing to her to suggest committing a crime. Yet the hand that rested on my arm trembled slightly.

  ‘How on earth do we break in?’ I asked. Mary had wild, wonderful ideas, but she sometimes forgot the practicalities of putting them into action. ‘If we smash a window, or break open a door, he’ll know someone’s been there and then he’ll redouble his efforts, punish his victims and find us!’

  ‘Pick the locks?’ Mary suggested.

  ‘A skill neither you nor I possess,’ I said, looking down at my hands, lined and small, draped in very proper black gloves, grasping my very proper reticule; respectable hands of a respectable woman. Yet as I thought about breaking into Sir George’s home, my hands did not tremble. How very cold-blooded I was becoming.

  ‘It’s time we had some assistance,’ I said.

  ‘Not Mr Holmes,’ Mary insisted. ‘He would . . .’

  I held up a hand to stop her. An idea was forming in my mind – a most delicious idea.

  ‘Not Mr Holmes,’ I agreed. I raised my head a little. The remaining clouds had drifted away and the sunshine felt so lovely on my face. I decided to remove my gloves, feel the sun on my skin for a change.

  ‘The Irregulars?’ Mary asked.

  ‘I’m not encouraging those children to break the law,’ I said firmly, as I folded my gloves into my reticule. I stretched out my fingers. ‘I know they do break the law, but I’m not going to give them a reason to. No, I know someone far better. Or at least, I know someone who could suggest an appropriate person. Someone who will definitely not tell Mr Holmes.’

  Oh, what an idea I’d had. What a perfect, thrilling, amusing idea. I almost giggled with the perfection of it.

  ‘Who?’ Mary demanded. ‘Why are you smiling like that? Tell me who!’

  ‘I did see in the papers that she has just returned, for a brief visit, from her year’s sojourn in America,’ I said, grinning. It was fun teasing Mary like this.

  ‘Who? Tell me now, or I’ll burst!’ Mary demanded.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Mr Holmes always calls her “the Woman”.’

  After Irene Adler had escaped him, and taken her new husband to America, Sherlock Holmes had stormed round his rooms for hours, alternately raging and laughing. She had changed him. Before her, he had never really respected women as intellectual equals. We were necessary, he supposed, to the continuation of the human race, and to perform certain tasks, but our minds were small and narrow. Even Mary, whom, when he met her, he called intelligent and organized, was still castigated as ‘just a woman’. And now, not only was he beaten – a rare occasion in itself – but by a woman!

  From then on, he never underestimated women again. Sometimes I would catch him staring at Mary or me with a puzzled expression as if he no longer knew what to think of us. Occasionally, John would bring up the subject of Miss Adler, mostly to amuse himself. I, of course, was usually listening, in the kitchen. John had never underestimated any woman, and he found it very funny that Mr Holmes had been beaten by one. Mr Holmes would shout about her perfidy, or admire her mind, or show John a new cutting about some incident that he swore bore her hallmark. And he always ended these tirades with ‘And married to a country solicitor. What a waste!’

  Once John said, in a rather too carefully careless way, ‘Would you have preferred her to marry you?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mr Holmes had said. ‘Emotion is an indulgence of the intellectually inferior. I will never marry. Especially not that woman. We’d be planning to murder each other within a month. And the worst thing is . . .’ I heard him tune his violin, ‘we are both more than capable of getting away with it.’

  And yet he never said her name. She was always ‘the Woman’. It was as if her name were difficult to utter. She confused and puzzled him, she infuriated him, and yet it seemed to me he took a certain pride in being beaten by her.

  And now she was back.

  I thought perhaps she would return to the house she had known before, that unassuming villa called Briony Lodge in Serpentine Avenue with the convenient secret cupboards tucked in mantelpieces. I knew exactly where it was, and I disguised myself as a perfectly respectable housekeeper as I made my way there. Not much of a disguise, I admit. My heart still ached for the green dress in my wardrobe though – I was becoming less respectable by the day. Mary was with me, in a plain grey merino dress, with her hair smoothed back, so she looked just like the governess she used to be. We caught the omnibus to St John’s Wood and found Serpentine Avenue easily. We walked arm in arm sedately down the street, just a pair of old friends enjoying the sunshine. An inquiry of a policeman, charmed by Mary’s sparkling yet demure eyes, confirmed our suspicion that sh
e was back, her house was indeed still in that street and, what’s more, she usually came home in about an hour or so.

  We walked up and down, just talking, not about the case, but about Mr Holmes and John, and the latest fashion, and what we had seen at the music hall and flowers and the seaside and everything except blackmail and murder. We had always talked well, not always agreeing but always content to discuss. Some of the happiest hours of my life were spent in Mary’s company.

  It was a wonderful day, and a wonderful place just to walk and talk. The street was busy, full of knife-grinders and fruit-sellers and grocery boys, but not crowded. The houses here were clean and white and freshly painted, and the newly swept street almost shone. There was a large public garden on one side of it, and the scent of the breeze in the trees wafted over us. It was more than a world away from Whitechapel, just a few miles down the road.

  As evening began to fall, Mary squeezed my arm.

  ‘Is that her?’ she whispered, looking towards the corner of the street.

  A woman had just turned the corner and was walking towards us. She was dressed in a trim grey suit, with narrow edgings of purple velvet. She was shorter than I expected, with dark hair and eyes, and a milky white skin. Her figure was well suited to the hourglass fashion currently prevalent and she walked with a certain sway that was not quite modest. She carried no parasol, and she turned her face up towards the sun, not caring if her skin tanned, apparently. She held her head high, and watched everyone – not out of concern or worry, but for interest, for she smiled at the lovers and laughed as the barrel organ started to play and nodded in a friendly way to the policeman. To be honest, she was not, by all the rules we had been taught, beautiful, but she was attractive and charming and fascinating.

  Halfway down the street sat a war veteran, crouched on the pavement. He was old and worn, with one leg missing, the empty trouser leg neatly folded and pinned. His battered crutch lay beside him. He still wore his uniform, though it was barely more than rags and patches now. He tipped his hat to all who passed by, and nodded to anyone who left money in front of him, but he did not speak. He seemed to look beyond the street, beyond London, to far-off lands and long-lost friends and scenes we could only see in books.