The Star of India

by Carole Bugge

  I, too, was curious, and was about to ask Holmes what he had in mind, when he rapped on the roof of the cab again. Once more the driver’s sodden face appeared in the window.

  “Here, sir?”

  “Yes, thank you, this will do.”

  We disembarked and paid the driver, and Holmes led me through the crowded streets, past baked-potato sellers and greengrocers in blue aprons. The cries of vendors filled the air:

  “Fine firm apples! Care to try one, sir?”

  “Eels—hot pickled eels!”

  “Violets, penny a bunch!”

  I wanted to ask Holmes where we were going, but he walked briskly in front of me, his head bent over like a bird dog on a scent. I had no choice but to follow, stepping over cobblestones littered with walnut shells, cabbage leaves, and squashed oranges. We turned onto a little street in the shadow of St. Paul’s Church, and then down a narrow alley, leaving the noise and clatter of the market behind us. Holmes stopped in front of a shop which had all the appearance of being boarded up. He rapped sharply on the door with his walking stick, and the sound reverberated through the narrow twisted street. We stood there, rain dripping from our top hats—in my excitement I had left my umbrella in the cab—until a voice called out from deep within the shop.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Sherlock Holmes.”

  There was the sound of something being dragged across a wooden floor, and then the door opened. I had seen many a strange character on my numerous adventures with Holmes, but I was unprepared for the sight which greeted us at the door.

  The man’s age was impossible to tell; he could have been thirty or eighty. His nose didn’t resemble a nose so much as it did a swollen gourd: purple, bumpy, and distended, it dominated a face which, even without it, would have been grotesque. His one good eye was blue—strikingly blue, the color of turquoise—and his other eye was covered by a lump of flesh which protruded from his forehead. His entire face was so misshapen that his mouth was pulled upward in a sort of lopsided grin. His skull was comprised of uneven layers of bumps and lumps; his head was altogether massive and sat upon his spindly body like a pumpkin teetering upon a post. His limbs were underdeveloped, and his spine was so twisted that it was impossible for him to stand up straight. He held the doorjamb with his right hand in order to keep his balance.

  I tried my best not to stare at him, but, in spite of my medical training and my experiences with wounded men in the war, I am afraid I did not succeed. Holmes, however, greeted the man with a friendly familiarity.

  “Good evening, Mr. Wiggins,” he said. “You will forgive me, I hope, for calling at this hour?”

  To my surprise the man’s voice was as beautiful as his body was hideous.

  “Not at all, Mr. Holmes,” he said in a smooth, cultivated baritone with just a trace of a foreign accent. “Come right in.”

  He opened the door wider to admit us into the room. I had another surprise when I saw the interior of his shop, for it bore no resemblance to its crumbling exterior. The place was immaculate: the carefully sanded and swept wooden floors were covered by richly hued handwoven Persian carpets. More amazing to me was the fact that the entire room was taken up by floor-to-ceiling shelves, which were stocked with the most amazing assortment of bottles I had ever seen—all sizes, shapes, and colors imaginable. The heady mixture of scents in the room at once advertised the fact that the bottles contained perfumes. The combination of so many aromas was intoxicating, and I felt absolutely lightheaded as I walked about the room, taking in his collection with open-mouthed admiration.

  “May I present my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson,” said Holmes. “Watson, this is Jeremiah Wiggins, perfumer extraordinaire.”

  “Is there any kind of perfume you don’t carry?” I finally said to our host, swept away by such a dazzling array of bottles.

  “What are you looking for?” said a voice behind me, but it wasn’t Wiggins—in fact, it wasn’t a human voice at all. I turned around: behind the counter which held the cash register, an enormous blue and yellow parrot sat on a perch. The parrot regarded me through one bright orange eye, his head cocked sideways.

  “What are you looking for?” he repeated, bobbing up and down on his perch.

  “He likes you, Watson,” said Holmes, laughing the peculiar dry laugh of his.

  “How can you tell?” I said, not sure whether it was a compliment or not.

  “See the way he’s bobbing up and down?” said Mr. Wiggins. “That means he’s excited. Sometimes he bobs like that when he just wants attention or is agitated about something.”

  “What is he?” I said, “I mean, what kind?”

  “He’s originally from South America,” said Mr. Wiggins, “though I got him from an Indian gentleman of my acquaintance, one of my clients. His name is Bandu, which is Bengali for ‘friend.’”

  This revelation caused me to wonder even more about our friend’s refined manners. He was evidently well educated; was it also possible that he had traveled widely?

  Wiggins hobbled over to the parrot and held out a skinny arm to the bird. The parrot hopped from his perch onto Wiggins’ hand.

  “Peck on the cheek, Bandu,” said Wiggins, and the parrot repeated the words after him.

  “Peck on the cheek, peck on the cheek,” said the bird, and then rubbed the blunt top of his beak against Wiggins’ poor deformed cheek.

  “He’s a great talker,” said Wiggins, “and a very fast learner. Bandu gets bored with his old phrases and is always adding new ones. He’ll probably be imitating you after you’ve gone.” He stroked the bird’s bright feathers. “He’s very affectionate, as you can see. He even cries when I leave—which, fortunately for both of us, is not often.”

  I thought of Wiggins alone in his little shop, surrounded by his perfume bottles and his bird, safe from the curious stares of his fellow creatures; to the bird, he was no different from anyone else.

  “I don’t know how old he was when I got him, but he may very well outlive me,” Wiggins said as he placed the bird back on its perch.

  “Yes, they live a long time, don’t they?” said Holmes.

  I looked at Holmes; he was standing in front of the shelves, studying the bottles. It occurred to me that he was being unusually patient. Exchanging small talk was never his forte, and yet he stood there in Wiggins’ shop as though he had all the time in the world. I came to the conclusion that he either felt sorry for the man or simply liked him. As though reading my mind, Wiggins turned to Holmes.

  “So, Mr. Holmes, what can I do for you today?” he said, sitting on an intricately carved little stool which sat in front of his counter.

  “Well, I’ve come across a scent that I can’t quite identify, and I need your help.”

  Wiggins smiled, or at least his mouth twisted into its own version of a smile. To my surprise, I found the expression rather charming instead of horrifying. Somehow the man’s gentle, refined nature shone through the hideous exterior that a cruel trick of Nature had given him.

  “What, Mr. Holmes,” he said, crossing his thin arms. “Do you mean to tell me that there exists a scent in London that you can’t identify?”

  Holmes smiled in response. Now I was certain that rather than feeling sorry for Wiggins, he liked and admired the man.

  “I’m afraid so, although I would appreciate it if you didn’t broadcast the fact. After all, I do have my reputation to think about.”

  Wiggins laughed, a deep, gurgling chortle, and rose from the stool. With the help of an elegant ebony cane, he moved to the shelf closest to him.

  “Tell me as much as you can,” he said.

  “Definitely foreign, probably Eastern; musky, with a hint of jasmine—and very expensive.”

  “Expensive, eh?” said Wiggins. “Well, that narrows it down considerably. Let’s see...” he said, and his eyes—or rather, his eye—scanned the shelves in front of him. “I think I can narrow it down to three,” he said, reaching for a small, opaque gre
en bottle in front of him. “This is one,” he said, placing it on the counter behind him. He returned to the shelves and selected a second bottle, this one larger, with a pale blue color. He placed that one on the counter and then turned to Holmes.

  “The third is rather high up,” he said with no hint of embarrassment or self-pity, “and I believe you’re somewhat taller than I—”

  “Certainly,” said Holmes, and reached for the bottle indicated. This one was even more striking than the others: It was long and thin, and of a deep ruby-red tint that I had never seen in glass before. Our host uncorked each bottle one by one, with the solemn air of a priest conducting an initiation rite. Holmes sniffed each one in turn with equal seriousness, shaking his head at the first two, but when he came to the elegant ruby-red vial, he cried, “That’s it—that’s the one!”

  “That’s the one, that’s the one,” said the parrot behind us. I turned to look at him. He was dancing on his perch, ducking his head up and down and hopping from one foot to the other.

  “I told you he’s a fast learner,” said Wiggins, smiling. “Well, Mr. Holmes, your friend—whoever she is—has expensive taste. You were right when you said that this perfume is dear; what you didn’t know is that it is virtually unaffordable for everyone but the wealthiest. It is indeed Eastern—Indian, to be exact. There is indeed a hint of jasmine in it, but the ingredient which makes it so expensive is saffron.” He held the bottle out toward me. “See, Dr. Watson, if you can’t detect the faint aroma of saffron.”

  I placed my face above the lid of the bottle, not too close, and inhaled the ineffable sweetness and delicacy of saffron, with its evocation of balmy Indian nights. To my surprise, instead of my earlier allergic reaction, suddenly I was transported for a moment to my younger days as a soldier stationed in the Indian countryside. I had a vision of sitting with my comrades around a table of cards, with a sweet Indian girl at my side, her dark almond eyes smiling into mine as I played cards with my companions.

  “Are you quite all right, Watson?” Holmes’ sharp voice jerked me out of my reverie.

  “Oh, yes, I’m fine; I just—”

  “You were experiencing a memory,” said Wiggins, smiling. “Yes, perfume can do that to you, especially one of this quality, which seems to contain within it all the scents of one’s youth. I believe Mr. Holmes once told me you were stationed in India for a while.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “I myself was born in Calcutta.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes; my father was British, but my mother was Indian.”

  “I see.”

  “So this scent is as evocative for you as it is for me,” Wiggins said with a lopsided smile.

  “Yes; it’s not as musky here as it was in the concert hall. When I first smelled it, I seemed to have quite an allergic reaction, but now it’s quite pleasant.”

  “Ah, yes; that is typical of really good perfumes. They merge with the scent of the wearer and take on a different identity with each person.”

  “Perhaps it was the woman you were allergic to, Watson,” Holmes said, smiling.

  “That’s your department, Holmes,” I shot back, “being allergic to women.”

  “Not allergic, Watson—just distrustful,” Holmes corrected me.

  “Well, allergies can come and go,” Wiggins said cheerfully. “You must know that, being a medical man, Dr. Watson.”

  “Indeed I do; they are most mysterious.”

  “Just like women,” added Wiggins, with a wink at Holmes.

  I had to agree with Wiggins—and particularly mysterious was the young woman at the concert with the musky scent. I wondered about her—who she was, what she was doing at the concert, and why Holmes was so interested in her. But Holmes was already moving toward the door.

  “Well, I congratulate you, Mr. Wiggins; once again, you have proved invaluable to me,” he said. “What is the name of the scent in question?”

  “Golden Nights,” said Wiggins. “Believe me when I tell you it costs a king’s ransom to buy.”

  “I would never doubt you, my friend,” said Holmes, grasping the man’s shoulder affectionately. “Take care of yourself. Here is a little contribution to your research,” he added, slipping a few bills into Wiggins’ jacket pocket.

  “That really isn’t necessary,” said Wiggins. “It’s always a pleasure to be of service to you, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Take it on my account,” Holmes urged. “It will make me feel better.”

  “Very well; thank you,” our host said with a simple dignity.

  “Oh, just one last question,” said Holmes. “Do any of your clients order this particular scent?”

  Wiggins smiled, and again I was struck by the sweetness of the man’s nature.

  “I’m afraid most of my ‘clients,’ as you so kindly put it, can’t afford a scent like this one. I haven’t sold any of this particular scent for years. No, I’m afraid I have that one, as I have most of these,” he said, indicating the rows of bottles, “simply for my own amusement. Some I even manufacture myself. Next time you must let me show you my new laboratory equipment.”

  “I would be delighted,” said Holmes, and once again we stepped out into the night.

  It was a shock to stand once again in the rain-slicked street after the warm gentility of Mr. Wiggins’ shop. We pulled our collars up around our ears and headed back down the alley in search of a cab.

  * * *

  Before long I was snugly ensconced in the sitting room at Baker Street, sipping brandy and watching the storm as it gathered strength outside, while Holmes rummaged around downstairs for something to eat. I watched as the rain swept in sheets across the deserted streets; only the hardiest of souls would venture out on a night like this. Even the usual procession of hansom cabs had disappeared, leaving the bare cobblestones to receive the brunt of the storm’s fury.

  Holmes appeared at the door holding a joint of beef in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other.

  “Success!” he cried cheerfully. “Good old Mrs. Hudson, reliable to the last.”

  “That’s a strange thing to say. You make it sound as if she had died.”

  “Hmmm, you’re right. I don’t know why I said that,” he replied, setting the food on the sideboard. “Cornwall may be a form of purgatory, but it isn’t quite death, I suppose. I think you had better stay here tonight,” he added, drawing the curtains on the tempest outside.

  “Thank you, I will,” I said, carving myself a large slice of roast beef. As the flu epidemic was finally showing signs of slowing down, I had left my surgery in the care of a colleague for a few days so that I could get some much-needed rest. It was pleasant to be once again in my old digs, sharing brandy with Holmes in front of the fire. His black mood of earlier had lightened and he was in a talkative mood.

  “Nature is often a cruel mistress, Watson,” he said meditatively, gazing into his brandy glass as the fire crackled and sparked in the grate.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” said Holmes, “it strikes me as terribly cruel that a prince of a man like Wiggins should have been saddled with such a pathetic and repulsive body, whilst spiritually repulsive men often are blessed with the handsomest of figures. Take the odious Baron Gruner, for example. Do you remember him?”

  “Remember him!” I exclaimed. “How could I forget him; his henchmen nearly beat you to death. I’ll never forget the day I saw the newspaper which carried the report of the attack on you; I thought my heart had stopped—”

  Holmes dismissed the memory with a wave of his hand.

  “That was a mere trifle compared to the way the baron treated women. A truly venomous snake, that one—and yet Nature gave him the face and figure of a god.”

  “Well, he got what was coming to him; he was horribly disfigured by the acid which Kitty threw in his face. There was a strange justice in his fate after all.”

  “True, but by the hand of a woman, not Nature.”

  I laughed. �
�Holmes, you know nothing about women if you separate them from Nature—”

  Holmes chuckled. “Perhaps you’re right... I just regret that a man like Wiggins has to spend his life in such a body. He doesn’t deserve such a fate.”

  “I think I have read of a case such as his in my medical textbooks. A certain John Merrick had a similar disease, and became quite famous after he became the special patient of a London physician.”

  “Yes, yes; Wiggins has often spoken of Merrick, or the Elephant Man, as he was called, and wished he could meet him. Wiggins himself has had quite a life. I shall tell you about him one day—I count him as one of the many treasures London has to offer the curious adventurer.”

  “Who are his clients?”

  Holmes smiled. “Mostly ‘fancy women,’ as they are so delicately called. They go to Wiggins for their ounce or two of cologne, because he gives them a good price. More importantly, he treats them with respect.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh, Watson, don’t look so scandalized! The women themselves aren’t evil—the real evil lies in society. It’s shameful that conditions are such that a woman has to trade her virtue for a few coins and then be vilified in the process.”

  I got up and put some more wood on the fire. The log was damp, and smoked and popped when I lowered it onto the flames. I picked up the poker and jabbed at it a bit. Finally, however, I could contain myself no longer.

  “Well, Holmes, are you going to tell me about the young woman at the Albert Hall now, or am I going to have to remain in ignorance until you are quite ready to divulge your secrets?”

  Holmes laughed. “Secrets? I have no secrets from you, Watson. There are only plain facts, which you yourself could have deduced if you had bothered to observe what I did.”

  “And exactly what did you observe?”

  “Let’s start with what you observed, Watson. You noticed the young lady, the empty seat, and the strong perfume, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  I tried hard to remember what I had noticed at the concert, but everything was already becoming faint in my mind, blunted by the brandy, the fire, and the lateness of the hour.