The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets (10 page)

“F
LORA
H
ARRIS,” SAYS THE GREAT DETECTIVE
, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, to his friend and colleague Dr. Watson as they relax after an excellent dinner at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. “Or ’Arris, I suppose I ought to say, as she is eminently qualified to a place in the ranks of those born within the sound of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow.”

Only a little slow to follow, Watson nods. “Cockney, you mean.”

“Precisely. Flora Harris and her sister, Frances, five years older. Flora did not marry. Frances, however, married above her station. She and her husband started a shop in Holywell Street, Chaunticleer’s; Frances took it into her head to start calling herself Pertelote.”

“Clever,” Watson remarks, admiring a handsome Havana cigar he intends to enjoy in a few minutes, “but a bit irregular.”

“The entire family seems to have been more than a bit irregular, as you’ve discovered to your discomfiture.”

“I have? I can’t say I recognise anything you’ve told me so far.”

“The older sister’s husband’s name was Augustus Kippersalt.”

“Ah!” Watson drops his cigar upon the tablecloth and does not bother to retrieve it.

“His wife’s younger sister resided with them. A bit of an odd arrangement, I should say. Augustus Kippersalt eventually had her put away on the basis of George Sandism.”

Watson sits up straight for a moment of mental illumination and excitement. “I remember now! It was not just that the woman dressed like a man; there were a variety of unsettling indications that she ought to be separated from the body public so as not to infect it. An unhealthy relationship between the sisters, an accidental facial disfigurement concerning which the younger was bitter to the point of monomania—”

“Oh, Flora Harris is a madwoman, right enough. No one is challenging your diagnosis, Doctor.”

“So you are saying it was she who—was
she
the man who came and fetched me from my club?” Dr. Watson’s incredulity has grown by the moment.

“Yes, indeed. And she who gave you that nasty week in Colney Hatch.” Holmes goes on to explain how Mrs. Pertelote Kippersalt, herself also perhaps a bit mad, had chosen her sister over the husband, releasing the former from the asylum at the expense of the latter’s life. The murder had apparently upset the older sister, who had kept a tight rein on the younger one for a long time after. But eventually Pertelote Kippersalt’s vigilance had lessened, and Flora Harris had managed to orchestrate her revenge upon the doctor who had signed her commitment papers.

“But it’s all so absurdly simple,” says Watson placidly, once more at ease in his chair, when everything has been explained to him.

“Now, in retrospect, yes. But at the time…” A very strange expression ghosts across the great detective’s face. As if for comfort, Sherlock Holmes produces pipe and tobacco pouch from an inner pocket of his cutaway jacket. “At the time,” he admits in a low, strained voice, “it simply never occurred to me.”

“All’s well that ends well.”

“In your goodness of heart you do not reproach me, my dear Watson, but I reproach myself for neglecting an obvious avenue of inquiry. You would be in Colney Hatch still if it were not for my sister.”

Although fully aware that Watson knows of his sister’s existence—they had, after all, both been present the night Enola, in a nun’s black garb, had burst into Watson’s house with a half-killed lady who required the doctor’s care—although there has been more than sufficient opportunity, this is the first time the great detective has willingly mentioned her to his close friend Watson. As the touchy topic is introduced, the good doctor is careful not to react, not even to blink.

“Ah. Your sister,” he says as if he and Holmes converse about Enola as routinely as they mention Holmes’s monograph on the identification of different types of cigar ashes. “What do you make of your sister, Holmes?”

There is a silence which extends for several moments as the great detective stares, focused on nothing within the gentlemen’s saloon at Simpson’s, his expression most difficult to read.

“I think,” he says at last, “that it is a great pity she will not trust in me.”