by David Marcum
“Maybe I’m too honest for that,” the small man said.
“Ha!” Holmes replied. “I’m afraid both the inspector and the doctor are correct. At the same time, everything and nothing are amiss here. You’ll have to let them go, Inspector.”
“That’s not what I brought you down here for. Constables have seen this caravan all over London in places it oughtn’t be. They are up to something and I mean to prove it.”
“I concur completely, but there is nothing more to be gained here. Send them on their way.”
“Much obliged, Mister Holmes,” the small man tipped his hat. His companions scooped the errant laundry into the back of the wagon and the whole enterprise trundled off.
“Shouldn’t we follow them, at least?” Lestrade asked.
“They won’t do anything incriminating while we are trotting after them. Besides, the laundry’s address was painted right on the side of the van. Keep an eye on Upper Camphor Street, Inspector.”
“That’s it?”
“I’ll make some inquiries of my network. I have the feeling we see that petite gentleman in cuffs yet.”
“You had better be right,” Lestrade said, spinning on his heel and disappearing into the murky byways beyond.
The constable quickly trotted away behind him. Holmes and I were suddenly very much alone beneath the weight of a hundred feral gazes. I brought my shoulders back, hoping to look as imposing as possible. Holmes took a moment to survey the crowd before smiling to himself and, much to my surprise, moving to throw open one of the dilapidated doors on the edge of the square. The action sent a ripple through the onlookers. Holmes stepped through and now I was left on my own. To follow Holmes in would be to make myself subject to whatever might lie inside, and perhaps worse, it would likely trap us in. Yet I didn’t much fancy my chances of retracing our path here, nor of being allowed to egress unmolested. I made up my mind and strutted right into that mysterious void whence Holmes had disappeared. I was relieved to see there was a bolt and, as quickly as I could, I closed the door and shot it home. Rarely in London does one experience true darkness, but in this place it was absolute.
“Holmes?” I rasped.
There was a burst of light in the distance, which after a moment I reconciled as a struck match held by my friend.
“This way, Watson, but carefully.”
“Are you mad?” I protested. “It will be trivial for that lot to wait us out. Or worse, break down the door. We could have made it out the way we came in.”
“Many of those poor souls are little more than animals, relying on instinct. The moment they saw us as prey, they were not going to let us go. We may have gotten a block or so, but they would have gotten us before we left their territory.”
“Let’s hand over our valuables and be done with it. Better that than our lives.”
“I fear it would not be so simple. The calculations of life and death are different here than what we are accustomed to.”
The light between Holmes’s fingers fizzled, but I had a bearing now. Carefully I slid my feet forward until I could see his shape in the void.
“What do you mean to do then?” I asked.
With a horrible wrenching noise, Holmes pried up a section of the floor. A fetid earthy breeze now washed over me.
“London is a city built on a city built on a city,” Holmes said. “In these raw places, the strata are thinnest.”
“How did you know to look here?”
“The masonry is characteristic of the old wards. These secret passages were common means of circumventing quarantine during plague. The resurrection men made free use of these contrivances as well. I have an atlas of that macabre trade back at Baker Street.”
The door by which we had entered splintered and buckled, casting an ominous pillar of light into the room.
“Quickly!” Holmes hissed.
I scuttled through the opening and Holmes followed, letting the trapdoor close as quietly as possible.
“How far do these tunnels go?” I asked.
“They are the streets of Old London, so as far as we need them to.”
“Have you been down here before?”
“Not in some time.”
As my eyes adjusted, I was surprised to find myself in a brick lined passage, and indeed the building above appeared to be an extension, almost like a turret.
“All of this is just laying abandoned down here?”
“It is not abandoned by any means,” Holmes replied. “I suggest we step quickly.”
We walked for several minutes through eerie silence before Holmes tugged at my sleeve and led me up an almost impossibly tight stairway, which let out upon an alley. Following the city noises to the street, I was amazed to find ourselves in front of Grant and Son.
“Holmes, I had my watch repaired here just last year!”
“You might have done as well fixing it yourself,” Holmes scoffed.
“Do you think they know?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Open portals like this are well-kept secrets. There are a thousand of these, long-since boarded up and bricked over. Only a scant few remain passable.”
With that we made our way back to Baker Street, Holmes turning the curtain in the bow window to signal the Irregulars that they were wanted. By the time we had our tea, Samuel had appeared. He was chief among the Irregulars, a post that seemed to change every few years as the unfortunate children progressed from street urchins to whatever fate lay before them. I know that Holmes would discreetly exert his influence on behalf of those he felt held the most promise. He charged the boy with observing the laundry wagon, and most of all putting a name to the driver.
Shortly thereafter, Holmes noted that there was no immediate action to be taken and he suggested that I return home.
“If I keep you past your curfew,” he observed, “I’ll not see you again for a month.”
With assurances he would not do anything that would put himself in jeopardy without summoning me first, I went home with my head spinning and an unquiet feeling in my stomach. Thus it was that I expected the worst when my wife prodded me awake to tell me there was a policeman at the door. It was the constable who had come to Baker Street yesterday.
“What is it?” I cried. “What has happened?”
“I’m meant to fetch you to the police morgue, Doctor Watson.”
I clutched at the doorway as the world seemed to tilt suddenly.
“Is it Holmes?” I gasped.
“Of course, sir,” the constable replied.
“Of course, sir?” I bellowed. “Of course it is, that dashed fool! I knew I should never have left him alone last night! Curfew, indeed.”
“Are you coming to see the body, Doctor Watson?”
“Certainly, though his brother Mycroft is his next of kin. Probably can’t pry the man away from Whitehall, even for this.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir.”
This time there was a police carriage, and we rode in silence, for I was adrift on a sea of remorse and self-recrimination. I was a bit taken aback to see that it was business as usual at the Yard. Holmes had not been one of that fraternity, but I would have thought him dear enough that his passing would warrant at least a pause in the business of this place.
“Ah, Doctor Watson,” Lestrade said as I descended into the morgue. “Have a look, won’t you.”
The inspector’s glib manner rankled me, but every thought was stilled by the rough white laundry sack sat upon the exam table at the center of the room. The tiled floor felt as if it dropped out from beneath me as I stepped forward, and my hands trembled uncontrollably. Close upon it now there was the unmistakable odor of human death. I fumbled at the neck of the bag as I tried to open it. Steeling myself, I uncinched it and cast a steely gaze upon the tragi
c contents.
“This isn’t Holmes!” I said.
“Of course not,” Holmes laughed. “Why would it be?”
I turned to see my friend perched on a stool at the coroner’s desk, papers adorned with dark smudges spread out before him like painter’s palettes.
“The police came and told me I had to come down here to see a body,” I stammered. “I was told it was you!”
“It was Mr. Holmes that sent for you, Doctor,” the constable offered.
“I insisted upon it,” Holmes said. “As per our agreement.”
“I thought... you were... I’ve got my nightshirt tucked into my pants like a fool.”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” Lestrade said. “Since you have fallen back on writing, I thought you might have gone a bit eccentric. Hard times can do that to a man.”
“I have not fallen back on writing,” I said. “I’m quite successful, I’ll have you know. Never you mind. Is there reason beyond abuse that I have been dragged out of bed?”
“I don’t think you can complain about having been drug out of bed mid-morning,” Lestrade muttered.
“Was the message not clear?” Holmes asked. “I would like you to examine the body.”
“That is what I told him,” the constable said.
“My dear Watson likes his intrigues,” Holmes said. “Does this poor fellow remind you of anyone?”
“It is a bit hard to get at him like this,” I said. “May I cut the bag?”
“Of course,” Holmes said. “It has revealed to me all of its secrets.”
“Hold on a minute,” Lestrade said. “I’m the Inspector here and that’s my evidence.”
We stood about for a moment.
“I suppose the next step is to cut open the bag,” Lestrade conceded.
Holmes produced a jackknife.
“No need to dull a scalpel,” he observed.
The blade was more keen than any I’d ever wielded. The rough cloth parted like water, and inside was a man curled into a ball, packed in tight with fresh laundry.
“A transient, like the ones we saw earlier?” I said.
“So it appears,” Holmes replied.
“Body snatchers?” Lestrade asked.
“I think he was alive when he was stuffed in the bag,” I said.
“I agree,” Holmes said. “This man suffocated in the bag.”
“How?” Lestrade asked. “He looks hearty enough to me, and I don’t see any sign that he struggled.”
I pulled back his eyelid and say the trademark dilation and glassiness. “This man was plied with laudanum.”
“Poisoned?”
“Surely the effect was meant to be purely soporific,” Holmes said. “It is a needlessly complex scheme otherwise.”
“Slavery, perhaps?” Lestrade said. “Selling off transients to foreign merchant ships and the like.”
“True press ganging is rare anymore. A penny of opium would save you a pound of bother. Observe your fingers, Watson.”
The grime on the man’s face had easily transferred to my own. It was less ground-in grit and more like a paste.
“Makeup?” I conjectured.
“Expensive makeup at that. I’ve narrowed the source down to a couple of likely candidates. Note also his shoes. While somewhat worn, they are expertly constructed - in Naples if I don’t miss my guess - and that pair is worth as much as every other shoe in this building combined. I’ll hazard much the same can be said for his undergarments. We’ve all seen our fair share of the disenfranchised. Apply your senses once again, gentlemen.”
We all stepped forward to look at the figure now laying slack upon the table.
“There’s no smell,” I said.
“There is a bit of an odor,” the constable replied.
“Of death, but not of vagrancy,” Lestrade said.
“While his costume looks the part, the clothes he is wearing are as cosmetic as his face.”
“You are thinking of Neville St. Clair,” I said. “The man with the twisted lip.”
“There are superficial similarities,” Holmes said, “But also significant points of departure. St. Clair essentially lived a double life. When he was Hugh Boone he was a vagabond - his clothes were filthy, his weather-beaten features were real, and so were the begged coins in his pockets. This gives every indication of pure costume.”
“Perhaps a pantomime,” I said.
“I commend that possibility to your attention, Lestrade. It might explain the makeup, and the laundry service, and perhaps even the strange locations we know that laundry van to have been.”
“You sound unconvinced, Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade said.
“That eventuality does little to explain how this man came to be suffocated in this bag.”
“Those theatre folk get up to all sorts,” Lestrade offered.
“I leave it in your dogged hands then, Inspector. I can suggest a few cosmeticians who might have concocted the makeup. Kindly leave my name out of it, as I still avail myself of their services on occasion.”
“And you, Mr. Holmes?”
“I want to know what this laundry business is all about. Leave that to me for the time being.”
When we returned to Baker Street, we found Samuel waiting on the stoop.
“Did Mrs. Hudson leave you out here on the street?”
“If I go in, she makes me scrub every inch of myself until I shine like a penny.”
“That sounds quite beneficial to me,” I said.
“Right, well, if you live out here, it ain’t a favor. Besides, then she just sets there and looks at me all queer, like I’m going to make off with the silverware if she takes her eyes off me.”
“I’m afraid she has had some experiences along those lines,” Holmes said. “The Irregulars have come in all stripes, like any other men. What did you discover?”
“The bloke’s name is Peter Grande. He’s a sharpie from down south.”
“Peter Grande, eh?” I said. “A pseudonym surely. He’s not any taller than Samuel here.”
“Still,” Holmes said, “it is something with which we can work. Anything else?”
“That laundry van don’t go where it says on the side. It spends the night in a warehouse down in the docks.”
“Slavers after all,” I said.
“It don’t go the right way,” Samuel said.
“It doesn’t?” Holmes replied.
“They pick up the laundry in posh places like Chelsea and Kensington, but they deliver it to places like Barking and Islington. Then they take it back again, one bag at a time.”
“We saw the back of the wagon,” I said. “It was stocked full of laundry.”
“I’m telling you they only ever touch the one bag.”
“How can you be sure?” Holmes asked.
“Because it is heavy. They’ve two large lads carrying it, and between the two of them they still staggar about.”
“The bag is always heavy?” Holmes asked.
“As far as we can see.”
“It begins to take shape,” Holmes said. He pressed a handful of coins into Samuel’s hands. “See that your comrades are well compensated.”
The boy scampered off and we continued inside. “What is taking shape, Holmes?”
“Clearly the bogus laundry service is being used to transport people back and forth, but I now suspect it is with their consent. You were very near the mark when you suggested that there was a bit of theatre at hand.”
There came a knocking at the door. Moments later, Mrs. Hudson appeared on the landing. “One of your gentleman friends, I presume, Mr. Holmes.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Please send him in.”
The figure that replaced her
in the doorway was almost comic in his appearance and tragic in his mein. He wore a collection of the finest cashmeres and silks I had ever laid eyes upon, but in a riot of colors and patterns, like he was the King of the Fortune-tellers. Likewise, his hands were gnarled and cracked, yet his swarthy face was as cleanly-shaven as a politician.
“Now this,” Holmes said, “is a genuine launderer.”
“You must be Mr. Holmes,” the man replied. “My name is Aldridge.”
“Please, Mr. Aldridge, have a seat. I take it that recent events are far beyond what you bargained for.”
“Ha, I certainly wouldn’t call it a bargain, Mr. Holmes. It seems that you know all, just as they say.”
“It is a simple enough deduction when a man shows up on my doorstep the same day his business is implicated in a murder. You know that things look bad for you, and you fear that the police will find just enough to stop looking once they have you in cuffs.”
“A murder?” Aldridge cried.
“Did you not know that a dead man was found in one of your laundry bags early this morning?”
“Oh, this is terrible news!”
“But news to you nonetheless. Why are you here, if not for that?”
“There is no use in trying to hide any of it now,” Aldridge said. “I am afraid I am at the mercy of very bad people, Mr. Holmes.”
“Including Peter Grande.”
Aldridge was completely shaken by the mention of that name.
“It is true, Mr. Holmes, Grande is the devil in my home. My family have been in the laundry business for generations, but times are changing and we needed to change with them. We were no longer able to make a living with only a handful of workers, each with only a handful of clients. Laundry, like all things, is becoming a business of scale. We needed a commercial building, and washing machines and wagons and horses and so on. We took out a small loan and were able to quickly pay it back.”
“From a private financier?” Holmes asked.
“English banks still see me as a foreigner, although my British roots run as deep as yours. With our contacts and reputation, we quickly needed to expand our business again, and then again. It was this third expansion that was our misfortune. We were successful enough that our benefactor accepted shares in the business as collateral. I was blind to the conflict of interest in that arrangement. I thought we both only benefited if the laundry business was successful. My whole livelihood was wrapped up in it.