by Mrs Hudson
‘Settle down by the fire, Flotsam. You were right to make haste with your news and I think you are right about its significance. But things are so arranged that I think we can afford to sit and reflect a little. Moran is under careful guard, Neale is safe at Rumbelow’s and our two gentlemen are comfortably set for the evening. Pour yourself a glass of milk, fetch your mending and let’s rest a little.’
Upstairs the hum of the violin swelled to a momentary peak, paused, then continued its slow musing.
‘The gentlemen have spent the day with Mr Moran. I’ve not been told of what passed but there is something in Mr Holmes’s face that suggests to me he’s troubled. He has been playing that instrument ever since his return.’
‘And what of Mr Spencer’s news, ma’am?’
‘It gives us something else to ask Mr Moran. But first we’ll go to see Mr Neale. I rather think he may be ready to talk to us now. Our interview with Moran can wait till after that.’
She reached behind her to where a shopping list lay on the kitchen table. She turned it over and handed it to me. On the back she had sketched a rough floor plan of a building I didn’t recognise.
‘I’ve had a fascinating afternoon, Flottie. I was interested to have a look at the building Mr Moran lives in. If things develop in the way I predict, we may need to know how to get in or out in a hurry. However it was a great deal harder to achieve than I’d expected. With the various people watching the house and all the extra policemen patrolling, it’s like Speakers Corner on May Day down there. I recognised Gregory’s man straightaway. He was too busy looking casual to be anybody else. Then I spotted Mr Holmes’s boy in an archway, lying low very commendably. I’d just decided that they were the only two I needed to avoid when I noticed a third, a scruffy child of about nine or ten. He was sauntering to and fro as if on the scrounge but whatever happened he was never more than a few yards away from Moran’s place. Now I had fully expected two people to be watching, but the third surprised me. Who else has an interest in watching Moran, Flottie?’
I shook my head hesitantly.
‘Exactly. And it made things a bit trickier for me because I didn’t much want to be noticed. However, once I’d tracked down the caretaker for a quiet chat, I soon found out most of what I wanted to know. Let me show you, Flottie.’
She took the shopping list out of my hand and placed it on the floor in front of us so that we could both see it as we leaned forward. Her finger began to retrace the pencil outlines.
‘New Buildings is one of those old mansion blocks. I don’t know when it was new but it’s certainly looking rather shabby now. And listen to this, Flottie. There are three different entrances and three different staircases. Moran’s is reached from the left-hand staircase. That’s the only one that concerns us here. His rooms are the uppermost of the three and – here is where it gets interesting, Flottie – the two below are both currently unlet and completely empty. Gregory’s men have searched them and, just to make sure, they added their own padlocks to each door so no-one can get in or out.
‘Next I checked the rear of the building. The apartments back onto an empty alley. Moran’s windows are high up and there’s only a rickety drainpipe to climb on. An athletic man with good nerves may be able to drop down from Moran’s flat but he wouldn’t be able to climb up to it. What this means, Flottie,’ and here her eyes glinted keenly at me, ‘what this means is that Moran’s position is virtually impregnable. His door is watched constantly and that’s the only way in. So we should know exactly where Moran and that servant of his are at all times.’
I nodded silently, intent on absorbing all the detail she had shown me in her pencil drawing. A week before I may have questioned the importance of such a diagram but the last few days had shown me that Mrs Hudson’s instincts merited close attention. And I found myself remembering that desperate rush up the dark stairs towards Mr Neale’s room when it seemed there was a murder taking place above us. Next time, I hoped, I would know where I was going and how to get there.
‘Is Mr Moran there now, ma’am?’
‘Philpotts the caretaker says he has scarcely left the house in the last two days. He must be wondering who has the papers that Mr Raffles lifted from under his nose.’
‘I wonder if Mr Neale has been in touch with him.’
Mrs Hudson raised her glass to her nose in the suggestion of a toast. Behind the dark liquid her eyes sparkled.
‘We can ask Neale that tomorrow, Flottie. Though I’d be surprised if he doesn’t feel that one of the best things about being at Rumbelow’s isn’t the fact that it removes him totally from the reach of Mr Nathaniel Moran.’
*
The following morning we set off a little after breakfast, as soon as the gentlemen had left the house. Mr Holmes’s violin had played long into the night and at breakfast that morning he continued deep in thought. Before leaving the house with Dr Watson, he put his head around the kitchen door. His pipe was unlit, but nevertheless he held it anxiously in his hand and on occasions chewed on it.
‘Mrs Hudson, having considered deeply overnight, I worry that there are aspects of this case that still pose difficult questions.’
‘Those Chinese gentlemen, sir?’
‘Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by them, Mrs H. It is possible there may be aspects of the case not yet revealed to us. You may perhaps begin to perceive that pure reason, however ably applied, has its limits. The truly great mind is aware of those limits and is able to identify unerringly the additional information needed to support its thesis. In this case, I conclude I need to find Mr Neale.’
His brow was still furrowed and he took another puff on his unlit pipe.
‘Mrs Hudson, I perceive you are a woman of particular talents, and I am aware too that certain kinds of information may sometimes by more readily available to those below stairs rather than above. So if, by any chance, Mr Neale’s whereabouts were to become known to you …’
Mrs Hudson wiped the table with slow, measured sweeps of her hand and nodded gently.
‘Mr Holmes, if you allow me a few hours, I shall, at the end of that period, ensure that any information I have relating to Mr Neale is relayed to you forthwith.’
Their eyes met for a moment and Mr Holmes straightened. ‘Very good, Mrs Hudson. And a very good day to you.’
‘There you go, Flottie,’ said Mrs Hudson decisively as the door closed behind him. ‘As pretty a cry for help as you’ll ever hear. The gentleman doesn’t disappoint me.’ She gave the table two or three emphatic swipes of the cloth, then straightened up. ‘Now, Flotsam, gather up your wits and your woollens. We’re off to visit Mr Neale.’
Mr Rumbelow, it emerged, was a resident of Kensington, and it wasn’t until eleven o’clock that we alighted from an omnibus and made our way to his bright blue front door. The door was opened by a nervous housemaid who told us that Mr Rumbelow was not at home.
‘We are here to see Mr Neale, child,’ replied Mrs Hudson. ‘Please be good enough to tell him that Mrs Hudson is here.’
‘Mrs Hudson? Why, of course, ma’am. Please come in, ma’am, please.’
We were shown into a neat parlour furnished in what I could tell was discreet good taste. There, after a moment or two, we were joined by the gentleman himself. He was a tall, nervous-looking man, though no longer the shivering wreck I remembered from our night near St Pancras. A day or two at Rumbelow’s had clearly done him good, for a slight flush of pink had replaced the deadly pallor of his cheeks, though when he spoke his underlying state was betrayed by the tremor in his voice.
‘Mrs Hudson! I cannot tell you how delighted … I haven’t yet thanked you properly …’
‘Mr Neale, I fear we are here to ask you some very direct questions. Pray save your thanks for another time.’ He gulped a little, as much at her peremptory tone as at the words themselves. ‘Flotsam here was vital to your rescue the other night. You may trust to her discretion as you trust to mine.’
Mr Neale nodde
d at me faintly and waved me towards a seat.
‘No, thank you, sir,’ returned Mrs Hudson, seeing the gesture. ‘We shall stand, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘Of course.’
His throat already sounded dry and his voice had fallen to little more than a whisper. The strong frame that Dr Watson had commented upon appeared to shrink a little.
‘Mr Neale, Mr Holmes requires a full statement from you. A full statement, sir, laying out the whole history of this tawdry affair. You will appreciate he is a busy man. He has little time for those who have attempted to deceive him.’
For a moment I thought he would give in straightaway but from somewhere he found the strength to prevaricate.
‘Really, madam,’ he began, ‘I do not understand you …’
‘Mr Carruthers is already dead, sir. Must more lives be lost over this? There is no escaping the part you played. The plans for the distillery you built in Sumatra are as we speak lying on a table in Baker Street.’ Her face was like iron. ‘It is all over, Mr Neale.’
The effect of this was devastating. The man tottered slightly then seemed to crumple. He dropped into the chair behind him and covered his face with his hands. With a shock I realised he was weeping.
Mrs Hudson had stepped close to him to fire her broadside and now she stepped back. I made a move forward, towards the stricken man, but she caught my eye and, with a gesture neither unkind nor sympathetic, signalled me back.
‘Mr Neale?’ she asked.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he sobbed from behind his hands. ‘Mrs Hudson, I swear it wasn’t me.’ He dropped his hands and looked up desperately. ‘Please, Mrs Hudson, I beg you, if I explain it to you, will you intercede for me with Mr Holmes?’
‘You had best begin at the beginning, sir. We need to hear it all. What you added to the gin, for instance; how you came to be guilty of those terrible deaths; what you have been up to since coming to London.’
He nodded quickly and pressed his face with his handkerchief in an attempt to master his tears.
‘It was Carruthers first,’ he offered, continuing to wipe his nose. ‘No, that’s not true. It was my idea to sell gin to the natives. I’d seen in other places that spirits had an effect on the savages that rendered them helpless and easy to control. My idea was to use liquor as a way of winning them over and opening up the market. But Moran saw greater potential. He realised that we could manufacture our own gin and sell it all over the region. Postgate knew enough to construct a still so we set to work. We didn’t really know what we were making but the natives knew even less and it all worked like a dream. Suddenly they were falling over themselves to trade with us.’
He shook his head as if remembering back to those days played out in the damp jungles of another land.
‘The problem was that we were too successful. Postgate, one of our original group, ran the distillery. We threw in lots of local herbs and stuff to mask the terrible taste. Believe it or not, in the early days I was actually concerned about the taste. I wanted to take out a licence – had visions of a brand that people would drink throughout the tropics. But Moran and Carruthers didn’t care for any of that. They wanted quick profit and when we couldn’t keep up with demand they began to take risks. There is no law there – the nearest Dutch garrison is a hundred miles away – so we were free to do as we pleased. Carruthers decided the herbs we got from the Chinese were costing too much so he began to try out other things – God knows what he was putting in. He didn’t seem to care, so long as it hid the taste enough for us to sell it to the tribes.’
I found myself imaging the scene, the steaming isolation of the island working gradually on the little group of Britons until it had stripped away the veneer of civilisation they had brought with them, the very thing they used to justify their contempt for those around them. I thought of them slipping into their damp beds at night, all their dreams reduced to this squalid act of profiteering and the sound of the rain on rusting iron roofs.
Neale’s eyes were now fixed on the laced window as he talked.
‘I knew things couldn’t last and they didn’t. There was one batch that went badly wrong. I don’t know what we did. It must have been something Carruthers added. By then he was pretty much out of control. People began to have these fits that killed them. First it was Postgate, who was never above drinking his own poison. Then it was the natives. We tried to tell each other we weren’t the cause but in ourselves we all knew the truth. We knew it as we watched them die.’
He was shaking as he remembered.
‘It was terrible. It seemed to send them mad, writhing and screaming, screaming at visions only they could see. Unless their hands were bound they would tear out their own eyes, and all the time shrieking like demented souls.’
He looked Mrs Hudson in the eye. ‘I don’t know what did it. I’ve heard that wormwood in liquor can affect your mind – it must have been something like that. But far, far worse. I begged Moran and Carruthers to stop selling but by then we had a warehouse full of gin and no way of knowing which casks were sound and which weren’t. We carried on far longer than I believed possible, selling the stuff everywhere. I think we’d all gone a little mad ourselves. We sold to the natives, to sailors that put in, even to some of the Chinese. And we were getting away with it. No-one thought to blame us. Carruthers began to swear it wasn’t the gin after all and Penge took his word for it. One night we found him writhing in agony on the veranda. He should have died – everyone else did – but we saved one of his eyes by tying him down and his remarkable constitution must have done the rest. But he was terribly altered in his head. Have you met him? Did you notice he never speaks, just looks at you with that one eye until you think you’ll go mad?’
Neale was struggling to control his hysteria but around him the atmosphere was very still. A little carriage clock on the mantelpiece clicked softly to itself.
‘Indeed, Mr Neale. I wondered why we hadn’t been told about Penge’s disfiguration. I see now that the loss of his eye didn’t fit with the story Moran wanted us to believe. It would rather lessen the supernatural mystery if a survivor was on hand who could be questioned as to what had occurred. Now please go on.’
Neale continued, cooled slightly by her monumental calm.
‘Penge had been Moran’s servant since he was a child. I think that was the beginning of the split between him and Carruthers, though God knows they had been in it together as deep as could be. Anyway, after a couple of dozen deaths on the island, the game was up. The natives came for us and we got out as quickly as we could. Moran was down with fever and couldn’t move. I wanted to take him with us but Carruthers wouldn’t wait. We took ship for London and left him to his fate.’
A silence fell. His face was covered again but now that he had spoken he seemed more in control, as if confession had brought him resolution.
‘And in London, Mr Neale?’
He rose to his feet and, moving to his left, leaned unsteadily against the mantelpiece.
‘We had nothing when we arrived but some cases of gin and a diagram for the stills. Carruthers tried to sell the gin on the docks but he was picked up by one of the gangs who control that sort of thing. In fact that proved to be a blessing. Introductions were made and Carruthers, who could be plausible enough when it mattered, made a lot of promises about the money to be made.’
Neale was clearly calmer now and he paused to check his pocket watch.
‘Go on, Mr Neale.’ Mrs Hudson’s face was blank but something in her voice spoke of a hard edge of excitement, as though she was reaching for something she was about to understand. ‘You resumed your operations in London?’
‘That’s right. Until Moran came back from the dead. We’d never dreamed he might survive. But he did, and he came for us. Even when he reappeared he never threatened us, but we were frightened all right, I promise you, and not because of any curse. It was Moran we feared. We knew him well enough to be afraid.’
‘And what happe
ned to your operations in London?’ Mrs Hudson’s face was neutral but there was urgency in her tone.
But Neale shook his head. ‘Mrs Hudson, you must forgive me. This has been a hard tale for me to tell and tomorrow I shall repeat it to Mr Holmes and accept my fate. I promise I will answer everything in full then, but in the meantime I would like to rest.’ He took a deep breath and his exhaustion seemed almost palpable. ‘I shall write to Mr Holmes this afternoon and arrange a time. Please excuse me until then.’
For a moment I thought Mrs Hudson was going to insist but instead she stepped back and dropped her head slightly.
‘Flotsam,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s right that Mr Holmes should hear this for himself.’ She began to gather her things together. ‘Until tomorrow then, Mr Neale,’ she added with a cool nod of her head, before leading me to the door.
But even when we had reached the street, our excitement for the day was not yet over. We had gone no further than ten yards from Mr Rumbelow’s door when a victoria-hansom pulled up beside us and there emerged from it the portly figure of Mr Rumbelow himself. But not the rather dapper solicitor with whom we were familiar. One glance was enough to see his usually fastidious dress sadly disordered, his carefully oiled hair woefully askew across his bald pate and what seemed remarkably like mud stains on both knees of his breeches.
‘Mr Rumbelow?’ asked Mrs Hudson and I together, with similarly disbelieving tones.
‘Mrs Hudson . . .!’ he began, his face pink with outraged dignity. Words appeared to fail him but he continued regardless, his mouth opening and closing mutely as if to give expression to an indignation that went far beyond mere language.
Mrs Hudson was the first to respond and taking my arm reversed our direction back to where the discountenanced solicitor stood.