The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume 2

by Orlando Pearson

  “I am fully aware of your propensity to keep mistresses. Even though your father found you an excellent match in Princess Alexandra of Denmark, it has hardly escaped my attention that you have kept a coven of other women over the years and it has taken all our efforts to keep the scandals out of the newspapers.”

  A long pause followed. It was like watching two experienced boxers who had weathered the initial fusillade of blows at the opening of a bout and were now circling in the ring, each warily waiting for the other to make the next move. Finally, with a forced smile, the Prince spoke.

  “Dear mother, the last years must have been such a strain for you. Now that you have started your eighth decade, is it not perhaps time you relinquished some of your roles to the next generation, who will accomplish them to the best of their abilities although, need I say it, not with the skill you always display?”

  At this point I was surprised to see one of the Indian servants, a sturdy man in his twenties with an exuberant turban and a thick beard, lean forward and whisper into the Queen’s ear. She nodded, smiled and said.

  “Thank you, Munshi, your counsel is always most welcome. Dear Bertie, the Munshi has reminded me that you made the same suggestion last time you were our guest here at Balmoral and the time before that. I would add that I would happily relinquish my responsibilities to any member of my family who was capable of fulfilling them to the standard that they merit. You are right to say that I have had a life of small comfort since the death of your dear father and that many people in my position would have looked to pass responsibilities on. I, however, take my coronation oath with the utmost seriousness. I swore then to cause law and justice in mercy to be executed in all my judgements. I do not believe that by passing power to you that I would be causing law and justice in mercy to be executed. In fact I believe that the interests of my subjects are best served by delaying the day when you succeed to power for as long as possible. Indeed it is possible that I will outlive you just as I have outlived two of my other children.” The Queen reached out and sipped her tea.

  “Your longevity, dear mother, and I am sure I am speaking on behalf of my brothers and sisters when I say this, is a source of unalloyed delight to us all. It is profoundly to be hoped that nothing untoward will happen to prevent you celebrating your diamond jubilee in eight years’ time with the same élan with which you celebrated your golden jubilee two years ago.”

  “Thank you, dear Bertie, for your tender expression of concern. For my part, I intend to eschew all risks to my person to ensure that that is the case. I shall live without haste but without rest. I shall not travel abroad - not even to enjoy the delights of Paris, where I understand you spend so much time, but which is a dangerous city in so many ways, particularly for travel at night. I shall always direct my carriage driver to proceed with the utmost caution. I shall take a constitutional walk in the morning, eat well but modestly, and will retire early in the evening.” She paused as though she had finished speaking, and then smiled as a further thought occurred to her. “Indeed, dear Bertie,” she added brightly, “I believe I may have a better chance of seeing my Diamond Jubilee than you have.”

  The exchanges between mother and son continued in this vein, but after half an hour the tea party broke up with both the Prince and his mother returning to their own quarters.

  Quaife approached us and said “The Queen and the Prince have no further engagements together today. I suggest you return to your quarters and await a summons for tomorrow.”

  As Quaife had predicted, the servants’ quarters were deserted. Holmes and I had been allocated a room to share with two narrow beds. I was too nervous to put my mind to anything and Holmes was content to blow smoke rings but, as the sun started to set, Holmes suddenly started. “Hush! There is a carriage drawing up outside. I know that no guests are expected. It must be to collect someone who is leaving the castle, but who could it be? It is surely too late for anyone to be leaving for the station. Let us go down and investigate.”

  We cautiously made our way down the stairs from our garret. Just as we emerged from a side exit of the building onto the edge of the main drive we were astonished to see that the passengers climbing into the carriage were none other than the Queen and her Indian servant. As soon as they were aboard, the coachman set off. Fortunately, the coachman drove in accordance with the Queen’s previously expressed wishes for a sedate pace, so Holmes and I were easily able to follow on foot although we made sure we remained in the shadows at all times.

  “Where can they be going at this time?” I whispered to Holmes.

  “That is what I intend to find out!” said Holmes. We did not have too long to wait for after a drive of no more than half an hour we arrived at a darkened lodge by a lake. The Queen and Karim got out of the carriage and went into the apparently deserted building. After a short time, a light shone out on the ground floor. This appeared to be a signal to the coachman to depart as the carriage immediately wheeled around and set off the way it had come into the gloaming.

  We stole up to the lit ground-floor window, taking great care to muffle our steps. The curtains were undrawn and we could peer into a small library lit by candles. Inside, we saw the young Munshi and the aged Queen sat at a small table engaged in what looked like a language lesson with the Indian chanting and the aged monarch trying to repeat what he had chanted.

  After a short while Karim left the room and we saw lights come on in two places at opposite sides of the first floor of the lodge. We heard a muffled call and immediately the Queen got up, blew out the candles in the library and exited. Shortly afterwards, first one set of lights on the first floor was extinguished and then the other. All was still. “Come Watson!” said Holmes. “We have seen all there is to see.”

  When we got back to the Palace, Holmes suddenly pointed out some fresh tracks superimposed in the soft ground onto the tracks of the carriage we had followed, “Another coach has called here to collect someone since we left,” he said. “For anyone to depart at this hour of the night, there must have been some exceedingly urgent business.”

  I was tired by the time we got to our quarters and was soon asleep. When I woke up the next morning, it was obvious that Holmes had already been active. “I needed photographs of the footprints at the lodge and it was too dark to take them last night,” he explained. “The Prince will need to know that feet belonging to only two people came down from the carriage and went into the lodge.”

  We then went to see Quaife, expecting further instructions. When we approached him, he said “The Prince has had to return to London on urgent business. I would be grateful, Mr Holmes, if you would give me the camera with which you ventured forth this morning. Any evidence you create is, of course, the property of this enquiry and I expect it to be handed to me without my having to ask for it. You are not the only person, Mr Holmes, capable of deduction and observation. I have made arrangements for both of you to return to London on the next train. You are to await further instructions there.”

  Holmes seemed unperturbed both by the demand for the camera and by the sudden change in arrangements. Our path through the Aberdeenshire countryside and on towards London was accompanied by desultory conversation on topics as diverse as golf clubs, the reasons for changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic, atavism and hereditary aptitudes. When we arrived in London, Holmes insisted we head straight to Scotland Yard, where we were shown up to Inspector Lestrade. He was obviously pleased to see us and passed around a box of cigars. “I called on you at Baker Street, Mr Holmes, but was told that you were in Scotland and could not be contacted. I could do with your help on a new and difficult case.”

  “I had an instinct that this might be so,” said Holmes inscrutably. “That is why I terminated my Scottish sojourn. I am at your disposal.”

  Lestrade waited a second, presumably expecting Holmes to explain how his instincts had told him he was needed in London,
but Holmes did not elaborate and sat drawing steadily on his cigar. Finally Lestrade continued.

  “We were investigating a theft at the Central London Telegraph Office. Amongst the telegraph boys, one of them, a Thomas Swinscow, was found carrying fourteen shillings - equivalent to several weeks of his wages. When he was asked to account for this, he admitted to supplementing his earnings by working at a male brothel in Cleveland Street, near Euston Station.”

  “What is the legal position in a situation such as this?”

  “In offences of this kind, the focus of the law is on the provider of the illicit services rather than on the users of them. Anyone working in the brothel will face up to two years of hard labour. The alleged users of the services may of course also be prosecuted although it might be hard to obtain any proof that they visited the premises or took part in illegal activities.”

  “And do we know who any of these clients might have been?”

  “We rounded up five other workers from this brothel and one of them, Henry Newlove, named among the clients of the brothel Lord Arthur Somerset, the head of the Prince of Wales’s stables.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “I need your help in finding out the name of any other prominent people involved in this case. I have Henry Newlove in the cells and would welcome it if you could interrogate him.”

  “I am bound to say,” said Holmes, “that I am only accepting this commission because I want to identify the prominent people who have been abusing these boys. They, surely, are the true criminals along with the Telegraph Service from whom the boys earn apparently only earn fourteen shillings for several weeks’ work. Could I prevail on you, Inspector, to pass me over the three society magazines I see on your typist’s desk?”

  Lestrade’s eyebrows were raised at Holmes’s request, but long experience had taught him to do my friend’s bidding. Holmes sat for some time leafing through the magazines before he took out a pocket knife and cut out a selection of pictures from the pages.

  Holmes, Lestrade and I descended to an interview room at the level of the cells and, at his insistence, my companion took his travel bag with him. This had to be thoroughly searched before we entered the area of the cells and the presence of the servant’s uniform in it occasioned considerable curiosity on the part of both the duty officer and Lestrade.

  Newlove was brought in to us. He was fair-haired, tall for fifteen but stooped. Whether this was due to malnourishment or the gravity of his situation, I could not be sure.

  “Now then, young Newlove,” said Holmes firmly but not unkindly, “let us see what we can do to help you.”

  “I never meant no harm, sir,” said Newlove imploringly.

  “My view,” said Holmes, “is that the people who meant harm are those who gave you their attentions. We will need to find them and to protect those who might be falsely accused of involvement.” Holmes suddenly put his travel bag onto the table to shield Newlove’s side of it from my view and that of Lestrade. “I have a selection of photographs of some people you may have seen,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “Could you pick out any faces you recognise?”

  Newlove leaned forward, “I didn’t see too many faces,” he said, “’cause you don’t in the dark.” He paused and ran his tongue nervously across his lips, and then said “But that one looks like one who asked me to call him Clarence. I don’t recognise any of the others.”

  Holmes immediately swept all the photographs into his pocket. We returned to Lestrade’s office and, without saying anything more, Holmes glanced at his watch. “I see it is twenty past seven and I have another appointment.”

  When we found ourselves on the street, Holmes said “The person who can help us is Mycroft and we have just time to get to the Diogenes Club before he leaves it at twenty to eight.”

  In 1889, I had not heard the name Mycroft before although I was used to Holmes referring to helpers and contacts without my knowing who they were. My reader will be aware that I first introduced Holmes’s elder brother Mycroft in the story of “The Greek Interpreter”, Mr Melas, but may have been somewhat puzzled by the seemingly random way he appeared. In that adventure, Mr Melas is presented as a neighbour of the chronically unsociable Mycroft Holmes. This neighbour solicits the help of the latter on precisely the day that Sherlock Holmes and I chanced to pay Mycroft Holmes what proved to be our only joint visit at the Diogenes club. We were prompted to do so by discussion of golf clubs, the reasons for changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic, atavism and hereditary aptitudes, which have then no relevance to the story that follows. Some of my readers may have formed the view that this whole episode is dramatically rather unsatisfactory. Now is the time to confess that my first encounter with Mycroft was in fact in connection with this adventure of 1889 where, as my reader will see, his involvement and the events leading up to it make full sense. Furthermore, in this adventure, Mycroft provides full justification for my friend’s claim in the later “Bruce Partington Plans” that Mycroft Holmes often is the British Government.

  “Ah Sherlock,” he said when he saw us. “You look well after your long train journey. And you,” he said, shaking my hand, “must be Dr Watson. I do enjoy reading your colourful accounts of my brother’s petty investigations and his sometimes less-than-optimal conduct of them. I see from your right sleeve that you have not much done writing recently. I trust you are not suffering from writer’s block?”

  Mycroft Holmes listened carefully as my companion presented the problem to which Lestrade had introduced us.

  “The discoveries in Cleveland Street,” he responded when his brother had put the matter before him, “are of course known to me, but I fail to see how I can help you. In my position, I am able to do no more than ensuring that a lenient judge is appointed to hear the case against the unfortunate telegraph boys. But I take it, Sherlock, that you wish me to do more than that?”

  “One of the people mentioned amongst those who frequented the establishment in Cleveland Street is Prince Albert Victor, son of the Prince of Wales.”

  “You do not surprise me,” sighed Mycroft Holmes. “All scandals these days seem to attribute some involvement to the Duke of Clarence and Avondale. He appears to be a most wild young man and is cited in every den of vice that we investigate, although it is fair to say that we never find any hard proof of his presence anywhere we look.”

  “I am eager to keep his name and that of any prominent people out of the Press. To what extent are you able to control the stories which the Press publishes?”

  “In my position as the chief clearing house of government business, I am naturally in a position to feed the Press stories, or to ask them to apply the focus of their investigations elsewhere if I so choose. The ship of state is the only vessel which leaks from the top. Accordingly, if I ask them not to publish a story, I find that they abide by my request for fear that I may withhold a story at a later date. Of course I enjoy no such power with the foreign press, but by the time stories in the foreign press are available here, other events tend to have overtaken them. I am sure that I can keep the names of the prominent people in this case out of the national press, but you will understand that I cannot persuade the press not to publish the details of this case once it comes to court.”

  We returned to Baker Street and watched over the ensuing days as the press covered a wide range of stories, but made no mention of Cleveland Street. I was not surprised when Quaife came around a week later. “The Prince is very pleased with the photographic evidence with which you have provided him. He regards it as conclusive evidence of a wholly improper relationship between the Queen and her servant. He would like you to come to Balmoral again to witness the conclusion of the investigation. The train leaves at nine o’clock tonight.”

  The next morning found us back in Aberdeenshire and we were again asked to serve at the tea party of the Queen and the Prince that
afternoon. The Prince looked to have aged several years since the previous time we had seen him. His frame had become even more corpulent, his beard seemed to have taken on a harsher shade of grey and his face had quite fallen in. By contrast, the Queen had a demeanour of sprightliness which belied her seventy years.

  “Dear Bertie, it is good that you are back here so soon after your precipitate departure. I do hope you were able to resolve your little problems.”

  “It is all in the past, mother. We now have to look at the future and to see what can be done for the best for all of us. I am bound to say that I would be able to discuss this better if your troupe of Indian servants were not present.”

  “Dear Bertie, what is it you wish to discuss? My servants may have dark skins, but they are servants just like any others and you may speak as freely in front of them as I do in front of yours.”

  “Very well then, I shall do so. I believe that your relationship with the servant immediately behind you, Abdul Karim, is completely inappropriate. You treat him as a trusted adviser when he is not qualified for the role. And you open yourself up to ridicule with the amount of time you spend alone with him. I understand you even spent the night with him at one of the hunting lodges.”

  “You seem very interested in my activities and, may I say, extremely well informed. Quaife’s newly acquired expertise with the camera, which, I would have thought, should have been beyond his means, is obviously being used with great enterprise. I would advise you that I propose to continue to take advice from whomsoever I please and to pass my time as I see fit.”

  “Mother, your preferential treatment towards this man threatens a constitutional crisis. To elevate an Indian in this way will create disquiet across the Empire and will cause particular discord in India itself as this man is a Moslem from a predominantly Hindu society. If comments about it were made in the British press, there may be questions as to your fitness for office and calls for a period of Regency.”