The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes (16 page)

The appointment was for three o’clock and I returned to Baker Street in good time, well before the arrival of the Duchess.

As on the first occasion our client, heavily cloaked and veiled, arrived in a four-wheeler and was shown upstairs to where Holmes and I were waiting and where the packages were laid out in readiness on the desk, the one containing the pearls so skilfully rewrapped and sealed by Holmes that it was impossible to tell that it had ever been opened.

Holmes handed the three packets to her with a small bow, assuring her as he did so that there would be no further attempts at blackmail.

‘You have my word for that,
madame.’

‘I do not know how to express my thanks, Mr Holmes,’ the lady replied. ‘I shall leave here with a happy heart. We did not, by the way, discuss your fees.’

‘Your happiness is sufficient reward,’ Holmes told her with a touch of Gallic gallantry.

‘You are most kind. I shall make sure that the money you have returned to me is donated to some worthwhile charity. Would you agree that the Society for Distressed Gentlewomen might be suitable? Or would you recommend the Committee for the Relief of Anglican Clergymen’s Orphans and Widows?’

The last question took Holmes completely aback and, unusually for him, he was at a loss for words.

‘Perhaps the Society for Distressed Gentlewomen might be more worthy,’ the lady continued, holding out a black-gloved hand to each of us in turn. ‘And speaking of gentlewomen, Mr Holmes, you may be interested to know that my secretary, Miss Gordon, gave in her notice this morning. It appears she received a letter informing her that her mother has suddenly been taken ill. Consequently, she has had to leave my service in order to
take care of her. I have arranged for a yearly annuity to be paid to Miss Gordon so that she will not be in any financial hardship and will not therefore be forced to seek a secretarial post elsewhere. On that understanding, I have not given her a reference.’

‘A most generous decision,’ Holmes murmured as he escorted her to the door. ‘And, if I may be allowed to say so, also a wise one under the circumstances.’

A few minutes later, we heard her cab drive away.

There was, however, a small denouement to the case, or drama, as Holmes had described it. To expand on his metaphor, it was in the nature of a curtain call in which he received the well-deserved acclaim for his undoubted skills.

A few days after the Duchess of Welbourne’s final visit, my professional duties took me into the Baker Street area and I called in on my old friend to find him in the act of opening a small parcel which had not long been delivered by the afternoon post.

When the wrapping was removed, a solid silver cigar box was revealed, engraved with his initials on the lid and with a short inscription on the inside.

It read simply:

‘To Mr Sherlock Holmes, Famous Consulting Detective, From a Grateful Client, Mary Woods.’

In ‘The Adventure of Black Peter’ I referred in passing to the other cases which engaged Holmes’ attention in the year ’95,
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  among them that of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer whose arrest ‘removed a plague-spot from the East End of London’.

In the same account, I also remarked on my old friend’s capriciousness in refusing to help the powerful and wealthy where a problem failed to engage his sympathies, preferring to devote his time and effort to the affairs of some more humble client whose case appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity.

Although these two references may appear to be unconnected except in the most general way, there is, in fact, a direct link between them which will be apparent only to those who were involved in the investigation.

As for the case itself, Holmes and I have spent many hours discussing the merits and demerits of publishing a full account of the facts.

On the one hand, it would bring to public attention a most unsavoury aspect of life in the great metropolis of London – and no doubt other cities, too – as well as serving as an awful
warning to the young and gullible on whom such abominable creatures as Wilson and his accomplices have preyed.

On the other, we are most anxious not to offend the sensibilities of our readers, most particularly the fair sex and those gentlemen of a refined and sheltered upbringing to whom such revelations would be an all too shocking exposure of some of the worst aspects of our society.

After much earnest debate, Holmes and I have concluded that the present-day moral climate is not yet ready for the publication of the truth. However, I have my old friend’s permission to make a record of the case which I shall preserve among my papers in the hope that, at some future date, a more robust readership will be prepared to accept in print the full and unexpurgated account of the case of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer.

The adventure began prosaically enough one evening in January of ’95 with the arrival at Holmes’ rooms at 221B Baker Street of Mrs Annie Hare. I use the word ‘prosaically’ quite deliberately for there was nothing about either Mrs Hare herself or her story which suggested that the case she laid before us was anything more than a commonplace affair concerning a missing daughter, a misfortune which had, no doubt, happened to many other mothers in Mrs Hare’s position.

In appearance, Mrs Hare herself was unremarkable. She was a small, slight woman, with worn features, shabbily dressed in black and with nothing more than an old red shawl over her shoulders, an inadequate covering for such a bleak winter’s evening. Even as Mrs Hudson showed her into the sitting-room, Holmes and I, seated on either side of a blazing fire, could hear the wind rattling the window-frame and flinging handfuls of hard raindrops, like scatterings of gravel, against the panes.

I shall summarise her story as she was too much intimidated by Holmes’ reputation and too inarticulate to relate it in a consecutive and coherent form. Indeed, it took much patient questioning on my friend’s part to elicit all the facts of the case, which amounted to this.

She was the widow of a hansom-cab driver who, succumbing
to pneumonia, one of the hazards for anyone following that particular profession, had died several years before, leaving her with a daughter to support, which Mrs Hare had done by taking in washing and acting as charwoman to those of her neighbours in Bow, in the East End of London, who could afford the pitifully small charge she asked for her services.

But – and she was most anxious to stress this point – she had always kept herself decent and had brought up her daughter in a respectable manner. Indeed, the words ‘decent’ and ‘respectable’ figured largely in her account.

The daughter, whose name was Rosie – and in speaking of her Mrs Hare’s eyes lit up and her haggard features took on an animation which suggested that she herself when young must have possessed a beauty of her own – was a pretty, intelligent girl who, in her mother’s words, had been ‘good at her schoolwork’ and whose ambition it was to rise above her situation and to find employment either as a shop-assistant in a West End store or as a maidservant to a good family, aspirations which the mother had encouraged.

At this point in Mrs Hare’s narrative, I saw Holmes’ aquiline features soften with an expression of keen compassion, a response I shared. For what chance had a young woman from such a background and with, no doubt, a limited education of fulfilling such a dream?

Indeed, as Mrs Hare’s account continued, it became apparent that both the young woman’s and her mother’s hopes had received an early setback. On leaving school at the age of thirteen, Rosie had been able to obtain no better employment for herself that that of a trimmer in a wholesale milliner’s in Wapping where she worked long hours in a basement room for the princely sum of five shillings and sixpence a week.

And then, the year before, when Rosie was fifteen, her fortune had suddenly changed.

An advertisement had appeared in the local newspaper, the
Bow
and
Wapping
Gazette,
appealing for young women to apply for well-paid domestic posts in good-class households.

‘Do you have the advertisement with you, Mrs Hare?’ Holmes inquired.

She had and, taking a worn purse from her skirt pocket, handed a piece of paper to Holmes who, having read it and raised a quizzical eyebrow at its contents, passed it to me.

It had been carefully cut from the newspaper and read as follows:

‘May I keep this?’ Holmes asked when I had returned the cutting to him, and, on receiving Mrs Hare’s consent, he continued, ‘I take it your daughter attended the interview?’

‘She did, sir,’ Mrs Hare replied. ‘She asked for the afternoon off work, even though it meant losin’ part of ’er wages, and went along to the address given in the paper. And Lor’, sir! She said there was dozens of girls waitin’. It were gone four o’clock afore she was seen.’

‘By the Honourable Mrs Clyde-Bannister, I assume. Did your daughter describe her to you?’

‘She said she was a large lady, very well-spoken and dressed like a duchess in black silk. And diamond rings! Rosie said she’d never seen the like of them.’

As Mrs Hare continued, I noticed that Holmes’ features, while not losing their expression of compassion, had grown sharper and more attentive as if the story itself, rather than the
pitiable circumstances which surrounded it, had caught his interest.

To sum up the rest of Mrs Hare’s account, it seemed that Rosie was only one of two successful applicants, the other being a young apprentice dressmaker named Mary Sullivan. The week following the interview, both young women were taken to live at the Hon. Mrs Clyde-Bannister’s West End house, number 14 Cadogan Crescent, where for the next month they were to be trained in the duties of parlourmaids.

The training having been successfully completed, the two young women were then placed in households, Rosie Hare with the Duckham family in Streatham, Mary Sullivan somewhere in Hampstead although Mrs Hare did not know the exact address.

At first, Mrs Hare had received regular weekly letters from her daughter while she was living at Cadogan Crescent and with the Duckhams in Streatham, saying how happy she was and expressing her gratitude both to the Hon. Mrs Clyde-Bannister and to the Duckhams for their kindness.

When Holmes asked her if she had brought the letters with her, Mrs Hare produced a small packet from under her shawl, carefully wrapped up in brown paper, which Holmes said he would examine at his leisure and return to her at a later date.

And then the letters from her daughter had stopped coming.

‘When was this?’ Holmes asked.

‘Five months ago, sir, in September last year,’ Mrs Hare replied.

She went on to explain that she had waited for several weeks and then, thinking that her daughter might have been taken ill, had asked a neighbour to write on her behalf to Rosie at the Duckhams’ address.

‘You see, Mr ’Olmes,’ she said, twisting one corner of her shawl nervously between her fingers, ‘I never was much of a scholar, not like Rosie. I can’t read nor write. This neighbour of mine, Mrs ’Arris, always read Rosie’s letters to me. That’s one of the reasons why I never went to the ’ouse when the letter I’d sent to Rosie was returned, marked “Gone Away” or somethin’ like that on the envelope. I can’t read the street names to find
my way there and I couldn’t ask Mrs ’Arris to come with me. She’s got the five little ones to look after.’

‘But you found your way here,’ Holmes pointed out.

‘Oh, that was different, Mr ‘Olmes. Afore I married my Albert, I used to work as a charlady at an ’ouse in the next street, so I knows my way ’ere on foot. And anyway, I didn’t like to turn up at the Duckhams’ in case I got Rosie into trouble. She said that at the interview Mrs Clyde-Bannister asked perticular if she ’ad any family, ’cos she’d ’ad bother in the past with girls gettin’ ’ome-sick. So Rosie said, no, she ’adn’t. She was a n’orphan. That’s why I’ve come to you, sir. I’ve ’eard you’re a famous detective; but you’re not like the regular police. I couldn’t go to them. Even if they was interested in finding my Rosie, which I doubt, I wouldn’t want them causin’ trouble in case they lost Rosie ’er place. But you’re different, sir. I wondered if you’d ask around, quiet-like, and find out what’s ’appened and where the Duckhams ’ave moved to. I couldn’t come afore this ’cos I ’ad to save up the money. I’ve got it now, though,’ she added timidly. Fumbling again in her shabby purse, she took out some coins which she laid on the table. ‘I don’t know what your charges is but there’s fifteen shillin’s there.’

‘Keep the money,’ Holmes said, pressing it back into her hand.

‘You mean you won’t look for my Rosie?’ Mrs Hare asked on the brink of tears.

‘I mean, Mrs Hare, that I charge only by results and, in the case of an interesting investigation such as yours, there are no fees whatsoever. I shall certainly make inquiries about your daughter. I gather all the addresses I shall need, including yours, will be found in the letters? Then all I shall require from you at the moment is a description of your daughter.’

‘Well, sir, she’s a bit taller than me and she’s got dark ’air and eyes. And, like I said, she’s as pretty as a picture.’

‘Any distinguishing features?’ When Mrs Hare appeared not to understand, Holmes rephrased the question. ‘Any scars or marks by which I might recognise her?’

‘Oh, I see, sir. Yes; she ’as a mole on ’er neck just below ’er right ear; only a small one; more like a beauty spot.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Hare,’ Holmes said. ‘That is all I shall need for the time being. I shall call on you in Bow when I have any news. And now, madam, I am going to order a cab for you. No, no!’ He held up a hand as she began to protest. ‘You cannot possibly walk all the way home in this weather. As for the fare, I shall see that the driver is paid. You can settle with me at some other time.’

‘Oh, Mr ‘Olmes, I don’t know ’ow to thank you!’ Mrs Hare cried.

Holmes looked deeply embarrassed.

‘Please, no thanks,’ he murmured, rising to his feet.

‘And no comment from you either, Watson,’ he added when, having escorted Mrs Hare downstairs and seen her into a hansom, he returned to the room.

‘I was only going to remark,’ I said mildly, knowing Holmes’ dislike of having attention drawn to his generosity, ‘that if Mrs Hare had been taught to read and write she could have pursued her own inquiries.’

‘We can only hope that, with the introduction of the Board schools,
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education will become so widespread that in fifty years’ time, illiteracy will be a thing of the past. But I doubt whether, even if Mrs Hare had been sent to the most exclusive academy for young ladies, she could have undertaken an inquiry of this nature. The case has too many complexities.’

‘Has it, Holmes? It sounded straightforward enough to me. A young woman betters herself and then chooses to have nothing more to do with her mother. We shall no doubt find her living happily with the Duckhams wherever it is they have moved to.’

‘I trust you are correct, Watson. For my part, I fear the case is not so simple. But we shall see. For the moment, I shall content myself with reading Rosie Hare’s letters to her mother and seeing if I can find any useful information in them.’

He settled himself at his desk, occasionally passing a letter to me. But I have to confess I soon grew bored with reading them. Despite Mrs Hare’s insistence that her daughter had been ‘good at her schoolwork’, they were ill-written, misspelt accounts of the trivial events in Rosie’s life and I soon transferred my attention to the evening newspaper.

After a quarter of an hour’s silence, Holmes put the letters away and asked, ‘Can you be free tomorrow, Watson, or will your professional duties keep you busy?’

‘No. My practice has been remarkably quiet for the past week or so. I have no urgent cases.’

‘Then be good enough to return here
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at ten o’clock when we shall take a cab and visit Cadogan Crescent where the Honourable Mrs Clyde-Bannister has her establishment as well as the house in Streatham where the Duckhams used to reside.’

‘Are you also proposing to call in at the Temperance Rooms in Bow?’

‘I see no point in going there at this stage in the inquiry. It is nearly nine months since the Honourable Mrs Clyde-Bannister rented them and I fear the trail may well have gone cold.’