Even though I had previously met Mr Lawler several times before, I had never ceased to be amazed by his manner. He seemed to materialise out of thin air in the space framed by the lintel, jambs and threshold. His face was as ever wreathed in smiles.
“My dear Mr Holmes, how excellent to see you again! And the good Dr Watson! A delight that you are here too. I am bound to say I was not sure I would have the pleasure of seeing you here as I had learnt you have moved out of Baker Street to become a constituent of mine. This is why I asked Mr Holmes to ask you to come as I am aware of the great services you have performed in the matters on which I have previously petitioned Mr Holmes.”
I had not yet taken any steps to discover who the Member of Parliament was for my Queen Square residence, but Mr Lawler was only too happy to explain. “I have the honour to be the Member for Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell, so Queen Square falls within my constituency. Normally, dear Dr Watson, it is my duty to serve you as your elected representative in Parliament, but in this case it is your services and those of Mr Holmes of which I wish to avail myself.”
“Perhaps you would like to expand on what you wrote to me last night, Mr Lawler?” asked Holmes.
“The London Softwear Company is much the largest employer in my constituency. They have a technique of finishing garments which are shipped in from Amsterdam. This process enables the garments to meet the modern taste in fashion while affording the wearer considerably ameliorated levels of personal comfort. An employee at the factory came to my constituency office yesterday and informed me of rumours that this finishing work in the London factory will be moved to Amsterdam. The closure will be a disaster for my constituents. The jobs at the factory are highly skilled and well rewarded by the standards of our times. Thus for every job at the factory that goes, two additional jobs within my constituency will disappear as ancillary suppliers to the London Softwear Company are put out of business.”
“You make yourself very clear. And what is it you wish me to do?”
“I need you to infiltrate the London Softwear Company and establish whether the rumours are true and, assuming they are, to find out if there is any way to prevail upon the London Softwear Company to change its mind. In my position as a Member of Parliament I am unable to offer you any pecuniary reward for this service, but I am sure that Dr Watson will see, as a doctor serving the needs of his patients, that it is in his interests to ensure that the finishing of ladies’ garments in Bloomsbury continues.”
“Very well,” said Holmes. “There is obviously no time to lose. The cause is an excellent one, which I would seek to pursue irrespective of any financial considerations.”
When Mr Lawler had gone, I turned to Holmes: “How do you think a man trying to establish a medical practice has the time to engage in industrial espionage?”
“My dear doctor, how do you think a man trying to establish a medical practice can afford to permit the precipitate pauperisation of his potential pool of patients? I have already established that the London Softwear Company is in Southampton Row. I suggest we go there immediately. You can present yourself as what you are - a newly established practitioner anxious to offer your services as the company doctor - and you can present me as your assistant.”
Within the hour we were at the London Softwear Company’s Southampton Row premises. Its imposing building was just south of Russell Square. We walked through an archway into a courtyard, at the centre of which stood an elaborate fountain with a myriad cascades and rivulets. Above the water, rainbows appeared and evanesced in some welcome late-autumn sunshine. A section of the courtyard where carriages would normally be parked was cordoned off, but this was no obstacle to us as we had taken the Metropolitan line from Baker Street and had walked from Euston Square. We presented ourselves at the reception and, in no time at all, were in the office of Mr Scott Alleyne, a man who bore the grandiose title of Global Head of People.
Mr Alleyne was a tall man with oiled black hair and a hearty manner. “A company doctor is just the sort of thing we are looking for,” he said when I presented my credentials, “and we always look favourably on people with a military background. We employ two thousand people on this site and they are our greatest asset. Accordingly, their safety and well-being is our primary concern. Having a company doctor whose practice is only a few hundred yards from our door is exactly what we need to show our commitment to our workforce. Next Thursday, we have a surprise for our employees. We will gather all of them together to mark five years of the London Softwear Company when we shall celebrate not only the success of the company but also the numerous good works we do through our charitable foundation, which our Managing Director actively supports.”
Mr Alleyne paused to give us a slim but lavishly illustrated booklet on the company’s welfare activities, which I looked at briefly before I passed it to my assistant.
“I shall take the opportunity to make an announcement of your appointment to the workforce and I would be grateful if you could be present for this. I would take you in to see our Managing Director now, but he is in Amsterdam today and will not return before next Tuesday. I will arrange a meeting for you with him in due course.”
Within a few minutes we were back on the Southampton Row.
“Well,” I commented to Holmes, “no sign there of imminent closure.”
“My dear Watson,” said Holmes. “Are you really telling me you failed to see the obvious signs of imminent closure at the London Softwear Company’s premises?”
“I saw none at all. He expressed his commitment to his workforce and is already making plans for their future.”
“So here we are in late November 1907 and yet there was still no 1908 diary on his desk.”
“But Holmes, not everyone is as adept as you are in planning their appointments ahead.”
“Did the cordoning-off of part of the courtyard not strike you as strange?”
“Doubtless it was to enable some minor repair work to the façade of the building to be carried out unimpeded.”
“It is far more likely it was to enable a security firm to be able to establish itself quickly on the day of the announcement of the closure and to protect the company’s assets, not to mention its senior management, from the violent wrath of the terminated employees.”
“You make the space cordoned off sound like a parking spot for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse!” I quipped, though Holmes’s observations were already starting to undermine my confidence in the long-term future of the factory in Bloomsbury. “And in any case, why do they want to employ a Company Doctor if they are going to announce the closure of the site?” I asked, though even I could detect a slightly faint tone in my own voice.
“If a riot ensues on the announcement of closure, they will doubtless want medical staff on hand to deal with any people suffering from injuries.”
“But Mr Alleyne even took an interest in my military background.”
“I assume he wanted a doctor with a military background because such a practitioner will be used to treating open wounds and to carrying out rapid and drastic surgery,” replied Holmes. I suspect my friend could see my increasingly wan expression and he pressed home his advantage. “Did you fail to observe the curriculum vitae Mr Alleyne had on the desk in front of him?” he added.
“Holmes,” I retorted with some asperity, “I have had the honour to work with you for long enough. Whatever you and others may say, I have learnt to see and to observe. Mr Alleyne is the Global Head of People, so recruitment forms part of his brief. I was thus entirely unsurprised to see a document headed ‘Curriculum Vitae’ on his desk.”
“But the curriculum vitae had Mr Alleyne’s own name on it. While he may reckon on surviving any moving of production to another site, he is nevertheless making sure he has cover against the wind. Accordingly, he is in search of another position and this, along with the absence of a 1908 di
ary and the cordoned-off space in the courtyard, suggests that announcement of closure is imminent. I assume that it will be made next week when the entire workforce is gathered for what they think is the celebration of London Softwear’s success. The coached-in security staff will be at the ready to prevent the workforce gathered in the courtyard from returning to the machinery on the factory floor to wreck it, or from launching physical attacks on the management when the announcement is made.”
Even after more than twenty years of association with my friend, his capacity to leave me open-mouthed at his acuity and far-sightedness was undiminished. We walked in silence the few steps back to Queen Square where another demonstration of his ability to see, observe and infer was soon to follow. At my invitation he came in for a late lunch. “So very little structural work was required on your house when you moved in, I see,” he commented, as we walked up the stairs to the front door.
“No indeed,” I said, as I opened the front door. “The people who had this house before us invested heavily in the exterior - so heavily, in fact, that they were unable to meet the costs and fell out with each other. That was how we were able to afford it, as they were obliged to make a sale at a distressed price, although it did mean that the interior had been substantially neglected and this entailed significant expenditure on my part to rectify. I confess, Holmes, I cannot see how you spotted that.”
“Structural work normally requires scaffolding which leaves behind scratches in the cement in the area,” replied Holmes airily as he stood before the doorstep. “I see such scratches on the cement below, but with moss growing over them, which suggests that they are not recent. Thus the deduction was merely a somewhat facile demonstration of my art.”
We sat down in our lounge and puffed at our pipes. I was comforted by the aroma of tobacco as Holmes’s forebodings about the future of the London Softwear Company’s premises in Bloomsbury filled me with gloom.
“So what are our next steps to be?” I eventually asked.
“The Managing Director is in Amsterdam. He is returning early next week and must do so through Victoria Station. I cannot believe a final decision has yet been made, so I shall find out what I can about him and track him on his return. Be you prepared to come to my aid at a moment’s notice. Much hangs on this case - the livelihoods of many hundreds of people, not to mention a useful source of recurring income for a newly established medical practice in need of more patients.”
I had not long to wait. On the following Tuesday, as foreshadowed, Holmes sent an urgent message asking me to meet him at twelve Bloomsbury Square. It was just getting dark when I got there and I looked around vainly for Holmes. Suddenly I heard a whisper in a familiar voice from a man driving a hansom: “Step in here, Watson! There is no time to lose.”
I leapt in. As I did so, the heavy wrought-iron gates of number twelve swung open and a four-wheeler with a driver and a footman swept out and headed south.
My readers will be used to hearing colourful opinions on a wide range of subjects from their hansom cab driver, but may not always give their full attention to what the driver is saying. There was no danger of that happening here. Although our coach thundered along as it struggled to keep pace with the fleeter four-wheeler, I strained my ears to pick up what Holmes shouted to me from his driver’s perch.
“The Managing Director of the London Softwear company is Mr Peter Velder,” he yelled down as I pressed myself into my seat with my feet wedged to the floor and my hand clutching the armrest. “He arrived back in London this afternoon and was picked up by his coachman at Victoria Station off the boat-train. I have an arrangement with Mr Barlow, one of the Baker Street cab drivers, that I can use his cab when I need it for my own purposes. It has been of inestimable value to me as a means of pursuing cases where a carriage chase is involved.”
The events I have described so far had seen my powers of observation traduced by both Holmes and my wife, but no great observational skills were required to assess that Holmes was highly talented at driving a hansom.
“I followed Mr Velder to his address, which you saw,” continued Holmes. “As he got out of his coach to go into the house, I heard him shout to his driver that he would need the coach again in an hour. I am agog to find out where Mr Velder is now bound for.”
“So what is my role in this?” I shouted up. “Surely your pursuit would be easier without me?”
“I will explain your role,” came a reply I could barely hear over the clangourous rattling of the wheels, “at our destination,” and Holmes fell silent.
I don’t think I have gone as fast in a hansom cab as I did when Holmes was trying to keep up with the four-wheeler. We hurtled south onto New Oxford Street, down Charing Cross Road, around Trafalgar Square and into Whitehall. Mr Velder’s coach turned right to go into Downing Street, but Holmes pulled in to come to a halt opposite the turning.
“I shall have to be swift,” he said.
He returned a few minutes later. “I went to the telegraph office and sent a telegram to Barlow asking him to come here as soon as possible. I hope Mr Velder does not come out of Downing Street before Barlow arrives because part of my agreement with Mr Barlow is that I never leave his cab unattended.”
“But Holmes!” I exclaimed. “When Barlow picks up the cab, we will have no means of swift pursuit when Mr Velder returns.”
Holmes gave me no answer but instead hauled a bag out from under the driver’s seat of the cab and pulled some clothing out. “Slip into the cab, Watson and change into these. I have had livery made up to replicate that of Mr Velder’s stable staff. His coachman and footman are in for a surprise.”
I quickly did as bid and soon Holmes was changed as well. A few minutes later a cabbie arrived.
“So what is our plan now?” I asked, looking mournfully first at the cab taking my normal clothing away and then down at the alien uniform I was wearing.
“We are here to look for ...” Holmes paused as another cab drew up on the other side of Whitehall. “We are here to look for that!” he said and pointed theatrically across the street to where Mr Alleyne was getting out of the cab. His cab drove off and he walked into Downing Street.
“I reasoned,” continued Holmes, “that Mr Velder was unlikely to take any action without consulting a third party. He was also unlikely to take any action without Mr Alleyne being kept fully informed. I knew I would not have time to infiltrate myself into the office of any third party, but I thought there was a fair chance Velder and Alleyne might get into a coach together and I would be able to listen to what they were saying.”
“But how are we going to get close enough to do that?”
Holmes reached into his pocket and extracted two sealed bags, one of which he gave to me. “Inside the bag is a chloroform-soaked cloth. These cloths are to be our weapons. We will incapacitate Mr Velder’s coaching staff, impersonate them with these uniforms and listen to what Mr Velder and Mr Alleyne discuss in the coach when they come out.”
“But what will we do with the unconscious bodies?” I protested.
The passing of years had not made Holmes any less inclined to display his disbelief at my slow-wittedness. He stared at me before saying: “We are in Whitehall, dear Watson. The sight of a couple of apparent drunks lying slumped against a wall will occasion less surprise here, in sight of the Houses of Parliament, than anywhere else in the country.”
We crossed Whitehall and went into Downing Street. Doubtless at some point in the future, Downing Street will be closed off to those without a permit, but our access to the street was unimpeded. With cat-like tread, we stole into Downing Street, crept up to the driver and the footman, and pounced! Within seconds they had joined other bodies slouched against one of the buildings of Whitehall. And an instant later my friend had taken his place in the driver’s seat and I was sitting next to him.
And only just in time! Mr Ve
lder and Mr Alleyne emerged from number eleven Downing Street shortly afterwards. We could see them pause in the doorway to shake hands with the familiar figure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I got down from my seat and opened the door of the coach, keeping my face out of the flickering lamplight. I overheard a last snatch of the conversation between the Chancellor and the board members of the London Softwear Company:
Mr Velder said “We would again stress the uniqueness of the process, and ask you to give our petition favourable consideration. The alternative to our proposal would be distressing indeed.”
Then the three men said their farewells.
“Let us go back to Bloomsbury for some dinner,” said Velder to Alleyne as the two men climbed into the coach. “We have something to celebrate! Driver, rather than taking me straight home, take us to the Royal Dutch Palace in Sicilian Avenue for some dinner.”
I noted that Holmes drove with great circumspection, which made the conversation between Velder and Alleyne easy to overhear above the sound of the moving carriage.
“That went much more easily than I anticipated,” said Velder. “I had planned to explain in detail about the special techniques of deep stitching applied to our garments in London. I was going to tell him that the technique had been devised in Amsterdam, so it was only right that a significant royalty should be paid there.”
“He didn’t even ask whether we had ever had any employees in the Netherlands,” chortled Alleyne.
“I told him that the goods were shipped from Amsterdam. I did not tell him they were made in Manchester and shipped to Amsterdam to give them the cachet of being imported. But, Mr Alleyne, that brass plate of London Softwear’s new holding company on the wall of our lawyers on the Herengracht will need regular polishing. As Global Head of People, maybe you should recruit someone special for the task.”
The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume 3 Page 10