by Barry Cryer
37 Why the signature on the photo remains to be seen. I am not perfect, after all.
38 She was operating under this ‘nom de guerre’ around 1875, the year that Alfred Nobel gave us the aforesaid explosive material.
II
Mrs Hudson’s hiatus 1891–94
1891
2 January
Arthur, please forgive me not writing yesterday. Hannah persuaded me to join her for a jolly new year’s trip to Ye Grapes in Shepherd Market and, as you can guess, it was full of her usual tomfoolery. Let me tell you what happened. We were both to be dressed as nuns, she said. I should’ve asked why but she told me she’d done it before. When we got there, Hannah began telling customers not to enter the pub. I must confess, I felt very proper in my wimple, but I spent most of the time trying not to laugh as she did so. One man stopped to ask us if we’d ever had a drink. Hannah was horrified and said no. He said we shouldn’t tell people not to drink if we’d never tried one. Hannah solemnly agreed but said that we could never be seen entering a pub. So, she asked him to bring us the drinks outside in two teacups. With our ears at the door, we heard the man asking for two large whiskeys in teacups. ‘Are those nuns out there again?’ said the landlord, and we ran away, laughing. Honestly, the nonsense Hannah gets up to and here’s me, joining in. Arthur, you would have laughed the loudest, I’m sure. I cannot believe another year has gone by without you, my dear.
5 January
Today I heard the front door go. It must’ve been off the latch for some reason. I went out into the street, but there was no one there. Anyway, later on, I went in to Mr Holmes’s room and there on his desk was a note. I couldn’t resist looking. And do you know what it said?
‘Army Riot.’
What on earth?
Mr Holmes came in shortly after and came into the kitchen. He asked if anybody had called and I said no, but I heard the door go. He didn’t mention the note but somehow I knew it was connected. I’ve never seen him so disturbed.
Then, this afternoon, Inspector Lestrade stopped by for some tea and I mentioned the note to him. ‘Army Riot?’ he said. ‘What on earth?’ Well, that’s what I thought, I told him. Then he went very thoughtful and asked for a piece of paper. He wrote ‘Army Riot’ on it and sat staring at it. Then he wrote all the letters on a newspaper, tore them out and put them in a circle on the table. Then he stared at them, jabbing with his pen. And I thought, what’s he up to? ‘Ah!’ he says, ‘it’s an anagram, Mrs Hudson. It’s an anagram!’ He rushed upstairs straight to Mr Holmes with some alarm. Shortly after Moaner left, I popped in with a cup of coffee and found Mr Holmes looking rather gravely at the note and the bits of paper. He asked me if I had seen anyone come in and when I said no, he sat, gazing out of the window as if I wasn’t there, with a look I had never seen before. What had Moaner said?39
12 March
I’ve just returned from Glasshouse Street, not far from the Cambrian Stores. There, I spied a mob – not unusual for the Cambrian at this time of night – and they were gathered around a tussle – again, not unusual – so I walked over to take a closer look.
I was greeted by the sight of two women punching each other. Quite what the argument was, I had no idea. There was certainly no love lost between the two of them and I turned to the gentleman next to me and asked what was going on. He told me that a maid called Nellie Bowman had taken a shine to another woman’s husband and this was the result. Apparently it started in the pub and only now had spilled out into the street. Well, the landlord of the pub, Al Perkins (who I know from his boxing days as Piccadilly Perkins) suggested a ring be marked out in the street and the problem be solved there. He even offered to referee but his place had already been taken by the old Chinaman with one eye from Berwick Street. His job was made difficult by the fact that a dog spent most of the bout trying to jump up at the two women. I wish I could have stayed longer but it was getting late. When I left, the Salvation Army band had arrived and was trying to calm the situation by playing ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’. Handsome takings at the pub, I should think.
It has been a long time since I saw a boxing match but apparently Jock Reid (son of Hamish Reid – ‘The Celtic Claymore’) has decided to come out of retirement again to fight Jasper Winstanley (‘The Chelsea Snob’) at the Barracks on Friday. I am sorely tempted and wonder whether Hannah will join me.
20 March
Mrs Flint from Dorset Street gave birth to triplets last night. Half the street turned up this afternoon as it is such a rare thing. Herbert Flint went to wet the babies heads and hasn’t been seen since.
23 April
St George’s Day. A day to forget. I am writing this from Mrs Brayley’s kitchen. Martha is asleep upstairs, Billy is staring into the fire with the most horrible look upon his face and Hannah is scrambling around in the larder looking for some gin. I can barely write I am trembling so, I am just delighted to be able to write at all. Earlier this afternoon, I heard the door open with a crack and heavy feet pounded upstairs followed by shouting, struggling and the sound of breaking glass. I was confronted in the hall by a man, whose horrible face I will never forget for as long as I live, who charged past me and up the stairs with a flaming torch. To my horror, I saw Billy having it out with two more burly types at the top of the stair and I feared he might be thrown down but, to his credit, he managed to chase them off. The man with the torch was stronger and got himself into Mr Holmes’s room before setting fire to the curtains. Thank goodness for Martha – she had already run into the street to sound the alert and it was not long before the engine and the men with their lamps and hoses were there to prevent a final catastrophe. Who would do such a thing?
24 April
Hannah is such a good friend. To take us all in as she did last night was very kind. We were able to return this afternoon and I’m happy to say that all was not as bad as we first feared. Thankfully, Mr Holmes and Dr Watson have not returned yet but, until they do, we’ll not know why this has happened. Billy has set to work straight away repairing things and even Inspector Gregson came round to let me know that the culprits won’t get away. Another sleepless night I fear.
25 April
Baked Hannah a very special cake today as a thank you.
TIPSY CAKE
Put 4lb of castor sugar into a basin with 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar, 1 pinch of salt and the yolks of seven eggs; beat the mixture well, then gradually sift in 5oz of flour. Whip the whites of eight eggs, mix with the batter and pass the whole mixture through a hair sieve. Take a warm mould and grease it with fat, dusting it with some caster sugar. Fill the mould three parts with the batter, put it on a hot baking-sheet and bake it for an hour. When cooked, turn the cake on to a sieve and leave it till it has cooled. Cut out a round of Genoa cake, about 2in. thick and bake it in a flat stew pan. Coat the cake with orange icing, place it on a dish and put the Savoy cake in the centre. Make holes in some oranges and empty them of juice and pulp. Put some butter in the holes and place the oranges on ice. Fill the oranges with alternate layers of blancmange and red orange-jelly. When the mixture is solid, divide them into quarters from top to bottom, cut an end off each of the quarters so that they will stand upright, surround the Savoy cake with the imitation oranges and serve.
I had to borrow a little of Mr H.’s Madeira wine too! Hannah did enjoy herself.
4 May
I don’t know why, but something made me go up to the first floor today. I wondered whether Mr Holmes had come back without telling me. Billy has finished the new wallpaper and it is as if nothing had happened. The funniest thing struck me as I was in that room. A cold wind suddenly blew in from the window and made me shiver. It felt as if there was somebody there for a moment, but no. I locked the door quite quickly and have decided I won’t go upstairs until we know they’re back.
7 May
The most dreadful news. A man describing himself as Mr H.’s brother40 greeted me in my own kitchen this morning clutching a piece of paper. It
was a news wire about an accident involving Mr H. and another man. It said that he had been killed. I was so upset that I couldn’t speak, but the strangest thing was that this man didn’t seem too put out. Instead, he told me that I was to keep Mr H.’s rooms locked until further notice and was on no account to touch his things. He also asked that I’m to let Wiggins know if anybody calls for Mr H. I offered to open the rooms up so he could attend to matters himself but he declined and left soon after. This is all very strange. If it were my brother, I may have behaved differently but I’ve heard he has his own way. This is all too terrible and I don’t know what to think.
14 May
Still no word from the doctor. Where can he be? A package arrived from Mr H.’s brother and inside was a year’s worth of rent. Something is not right.
16 May
I hear the doctor has returned. Thank heavens. Mrs Watson must have been worried sick.
10 July
Dr Watson has still not visited but I cannot blame him. Mrs Gresham, who visited his practice last week, told me that he wasn’t there. The maid informed her that all the doctor does is sit in his study at home and write. In fact, my heart leapt when I heard movement on the stairs yesterday but it was only old Moaner. He’d come to pay his respects. Times are a little lean for the poor man now that Mr H. is gone. I asked if there was anything I could do to help but he just shrugged his shoulders and left. Didn’t stay for a cup of tea or anything. Poor lamb. Pity, as he missed Mr H.’s brother by a whisker. Not sure about Mr H.’s brother at all. He has visited a few times now and the situation is still no clearer.
2 September
Dear Arthur,
I’m sorry I haven’t written for some weeks now but life here at 221b is just not the same now Mr H. is gone. His brother has stopped visiting and I do not know whether or not to open his room again. The doctor is by the coast and cannot be reached. You would know what to do, my sweet. For now, I must wait.
29 December
There was a noise in Mr Holmes’s room this afternoon. Who could it be? There are only three keys to the rooms. I have one. The doctor has one and Mr Holmes had the other. Well, Mr Mycroft Holmes can keep his instructions. I decided to open up the room. I unlocked the door and everything was in its place. Well, I say everything, save O’Connell41 tugging at a Persian slipper by the fireside. How did he get in there? One thing is certain: Mr Holmes would have worked it out.
This is a true novelty. Mrs Hudson may even have taken it herself.42 It’s the butcher’s shop where D. L. worked. The letters above the shop are, at first sight, indecipherable, hidden as they are by tarpaulin. However, I have deduced, from the visible ones, ‘K.R.I.C.’. This is almost certainly the shop of Vladimir Pukric, a Russian immigrant and pioneer kosher butcher. I say almost, because Mrs Hudson refers to Mr Yarrow as being the butcher, but I have to disagree. The man may well be Mr Pukric, but the woman is certainly not his wife as he was known to be a confirmed bachelor. This fact, coupled with his ethnicity, led to his becoming something of a gregarious recluse – open and expansive whilst serving his customers, but living alone with his butterfly collection out of working hours. A poignant picture, hinting at the pathos of a butcher behind closed doors, who rarely came out to ‘meat’ his fellows.43 The wicker baskets are typical of butcher’s assistants at this time but the gentlemen sporting such ample examples do not appear to be in the least bit connected to butchery.
39 I have reread the entire Holmes canon and can find no trace of an army riot. However, once I employed Inspector Lestrade’s rather innovative method for solving anagrams, I was able to abstract the following name. I can now confidently state that Mary Trio must be the suspect we are looking for. Case solved.
40 Mycroft Holmes, obviously.
41 As you will of course remember, O’Connell is the surviving member of the cat community at 221b. He must be ten years old by now. A good age for a cat of his type.
42 Perhaps with a Box Brownie?
43 Please delete this unworthy pun.
Mrs Hudson’s hiatus
by Oliver Philpott
A considered view of the years 1892–94
I feel it is my duty to step in at this point and explain a little about the background to the two-year period titled ‘Mrs Hudson’s hiatus’. The devotees of Holmes like to refer to this period in Sherlock’s life as The Great Hiatus, in which he is said to have travelled the world. He spent two years in Tibet, had an amusing visit to Lhasa (where he visited the head Lama no less), posed as a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson, then went through Persia, Mecca and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, before returning to France where he spent some months researching coal-tar derivatives in a laboratory at Montpelier. Just as Dr Watson appears to have picked up his pen with renewed vigour during this period, it seems Mrs Hudson did precisely the opposite. No diary entries were found for 1892 or 1893.
Some might consider it futile to speculate on her movements during this time, but you know I can leave no mystery intriguingly unsolved. In fact, as something of an amateur (as in ‘lover of’, I should add) graphologist, I embarked upon an analysis of our good lady’s handwriting to see if I could open a window into her patterns of behaviour. Incidentally, I can offer my services in the complementary field of Graphotherapy – please see my website www.philpottsworld.com for details (‘You too, can make the “write” change!’44). For those of you familiar with the engrossing art of graphology, you’ll be pleased to know that my analysis of Mrs Hudson’s handwriting focuses mainly on the major cardinal traits of the language of ink – namely the Slant, the Space, the Baseline, the Flex, the Swoop, the Elision, the Halt (controversially), the Size, the Signature (everyone’s favourite!) and the Serif, not to mention the foot soldiers of our trade: the Capitalisations and the Exclamatories. To begin with, Mrs Hudson’s sloping h’s give us the impression of someone who is constant and yet curious. Perhaps she may have travelled in her mind during this time, if not in her deeds. Unfortunately, nowhere in the diaries does Mrs Hudson’s signature manifest itself. It was upon investigating her vacillations and true ascending baseline that this thought struck me. Without this crucial piece of evidence, my graphological analysis reached something of a stalemate.
However, not to be deterred and mindful that what follows might make me seem like something of a fruitless pontificator, my supporting analysis did present the following theories:
The diaries yield seven instances of the word ‘Scotch’, therefore, Mrs Hudson may have upped sticks and moved to Scotland for two years. The fact that she never mentions living in Scotland in any way, shape or form did not deter this most tenacious of bloodhounds. However, it is unlikely.
She may have gone wandering in the Serengeti. I base this on the fact that, following the resumption of her writing, she mentions the warm weather quite a bit. Perhaps she was now used to hotter temperatures?
Perhaps she became a nun in Western Ireland? I had an aunt who was a nun in Western Ireland and she used to use the words ‘lawks’ as well. I cannot entirely rule this out, no matter how tempting.
She was kidnapped following Sebastian Moran’s attack. Why not? She wouldn’t be the first associate of Holmes to have this fate befall them. However, it’s highly unlikely given her handwriting post-hiatus shows no sign of being hindered by the recent presence of manacles.
She ran off with D. L. We know she didn’t because she says explicitly that this didn’t happen, but it doesn’t stop it being a theory. After all, Holmes himself said that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. However, this is both impossible and improbable.
She posed as a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson.
But despite all of these theories, I have decided to discount them all in favour of the following:
She did continue writing, but these parts of the diaries have yet to be found. A shocking conclusion, I think you’ll agree. Maybe someone like Moriarty stole t
hem? Maybe he was looking for recipes? It is well known that he had a weakness for chocolate-coated madeleines.45 If only our esteemed consulting detective had known this fact, then he could have brought the whole affair of The Final Problem to a much earlier conclusion, without the need for those Reichenbach shenanigans. Upon their first meeting, a carefully placed plate of this small shell-like buttery delicacy from north-eastern France could have distracted the Napoleon of crime, perhaps giving Holmes an opportunity to exploit this most obvious of Achilles heels! Food-related fatal flaws in criminal masterminds are not unknown.
Who can forget Hannibal Lecter’s penchant for his victim’s liver, accompanied by some fava beans and a nice Chianti? I certainly can’t! A little grizzlier than a chocolate covered madeleine I grant you, but the structure holds. In fact I confess that I have been known to do rather a good impression of this most sinister of nemeses. Just last autumn, I found myself fashioning a facemask from the most simple of household objects, a colander and a dog collar (sans dog of course). Utilising a supermarket trolley (which I did return incidentally – those pound coins don’t grow on trees!) and wheeled in by a willing friend, local dentist Neil Hawes, bless him, I made quite the splash at a number of functions that year. I even interrupted the reading of the minutes at the local Rotarian AGM, with my now famous cry of, ‘Tell me, Clarice – have the lambs stopped screaming?’ It seemed to go down quite well considering they’d only just been paying tribute to our recently deceased Mayor, Tony Sedgwick. I like to think that had he been able to be there, Tony would have enjoyed the whole thing. Whenever I pass the lock gates where he disappeared, I often like to utter his own famous cry of ‘Daddy’s here!’ by way of tribute. He’ll be missed by all, particularly by the staff at the Hinchley Wood Harvester.