I should like you to place this in the crown of Thalia. It has come home, perhaps.
Yours sincerely
Bunty Rogers
The Embers of Truth
For the first time in his life, Francis Jones looked into a mirror thoughtfully.
A boy of sixteen has little healthy reason to gaze at his reflection. He has yet to begin shaving if his complexion is fair, or quiffing his hair, or checking the colour of his eyes, and it is not the sort of thing he would want to be caught doing by his parents, but they were away from home, and Red Cherry House was unnaturally quiet. Freed from the clatter of Mrs Jones’s baking, the house was settling down to a few days calm, and Francis was taking advantage by gazing into a mirror.
He was determined to make a critical appraisal of what he saw. From some angles it seemed a promising face, although the eyes, cat-like grey, looked back at him like pools of vagueness. The chin was neither weak nor prominent, almost ending in a point. The slightly rosy cheeks reminded him of young farm labourers in Victorian paintings he had seen at Norwich Castle Museum, boys flushed from their labour in the fields. His finely delineated eyebrows dominated everything below them, as if they had been drawn and cross-hatched by an HB pencil.
It wasn’t a bad face, all in all. His main criticism was that it had none of the features of an incipient Sherlock Holmes. Where were the hooded eyes, the strong nose and inquisitive nostril, the finely intellectual forehead that marked the unmistakable profile of Baker Street’s most distinguished inhabitant? So immediately recognisable was Holmes’s profile that, after his return from the Reichenbach Falls, he had commissioned a bust of himself to be placed in full view in the window of 221B, to convince a would-be assassin that he was sitting contemplatively in his study – a ruse in which he was assisted by his admirable landlady Mrs Hudson, who frequently crawled across the study floor to adjust the angle. Knowing Holmes as he did, Francis suspected that Mrs Hudson had had to buy her own kneepads.
The local newspaper had recently described Francis as ‘a Sherlock in the making’, but what chance of that when adventures were so hard to come by? There had been the excitement of the mystery at St Mildred’s School, and the extraordinary affair of the Deepthorpe Dirk, since when there had been little to excite Francis’s longing for adventure. The weather was depressing, too. It had been a brilliant September, and October had burnished Branlingham’s trees in rich ochre and gold until, overnight, November brought biting winds and clattering showers.
Outside Red Cherry House, leaves danced through the village. A low mist made a carpet across the surrounding fields. In the quickening gloom of late afternoon, the lamp-posts pricked with light, but all that Francis could see as the daylight faded second on second, was a figure standing under the arc of one of the lamp-posts; a man wearing a belted trench coat and a hat that tilted over his face. Through the dark haze, Francis saw sparks fall from the man’s cigarette. For an instant, Francis turned away to look once more into the mirror. When he turned again to look into the street, the man had gone.
*
While Francis worried that he was so unlike Holmes, Gordon was grateful that his cousin hadn’t turned into him. At least Francis couldn't play the violin, didn't smoke a pipe, take cocaine, shoot holes in the walls of Red Cherry House or wear one of those ridiculous hats with flaps over the ears! And, unlike Holmes, Francis was never insufferable or condescending. On the other hand there was always the danger that Francis might get what Uncle Billy called 'above himself', and Gordon wanted to avoid that ever happening. He was too fond of his cousin to see him change into a character of fiction.
That recent newspaper article about Francis had been enough to turn any boy’s head, and had barely mentioned the role that Gordon had played in their cases. Perhaps Francis felt a little threatened by the fact that it had been Gordon who was at the very heart of putting an end to the spy ring at the girls’ school, and it had been Gordon who had so magnificently retrieved the pearl of Thalia. He knew there wasn’t a jealous bone in Francis’s body, but it was only natural that Francis’s reputation as the elder of the boy detectives might have been jolted a little, making him even more determined than ever to emulate the greatest detective of all. What was needed was something to take Francis out of himself, or put Francis back into himself, and at once the perfect idea occurred to Gordon. What better to take Francis's mind off Sherlock Holmes than organizing a grand bonfire night jamboree for the whole village.
'Well, I think it's a silly idea,' said Francis, who would much rather have spent the time reading and honing his skills. 'All that work and effort, and in the end it all goes up in smoke.' The only thing that might have pleased Francis was the challenge of some fresh mystery!
Nevertheless, Gordon was determined that Guy Fawkes would win over Sherlock Holmes, and now, with just a few lowering days to go before November the fifth, the boys were busy organizing the inflammatory event on Branlingham Common. Already, the local children had wheeled their homemade guys beyond their garden gates, and the men of straw lay sprawled in wheelbarrows or awkwardly propped up over fences through the streets of the village. The women were busy preparing for the feast - jacket potatoes and sausages and hot punch - and all the while the stack of wood for the bonfire grew taller and wider day by day. There was much to be done, and every establishment in the village had to be visited for one reason or another: Mrs Reilly for the loan of crockery, Jim Daley to arrange for the appearance of Branlingham Brass Band, Cawson’s Garage for the donation of paraffin, and Mr Grimchance’s butchery for pork meat. Even Francis threw himself into making the event one that everyone in the village would enjoy.
Late one afternoon, when almost everything was in place, the boys felt they deserved a treat. What better than to call at the ‘Bide –a–Wee Tea Rooms’, where as always they were warmly welcomed by the proprietor Beryl Sanders. Hot tea, she insisted, and fresh scones with strawberry jam and cream. ‘Not that your mother would approve of my baking, Francis!’, she laughed. She was well aware of Mrs Jones’s reputation as a baker on an industrial scale.
Soon, the boys were enjoying bloater paste sandwiches and anchovies on toast and dainty cakes, enhanced by the delightful chintz decor and willow pattern crockery that Beryl had bought half price at a fire sale. As the low sun slunk out of sight, they were contemplating a final solitary scone when Beryl emerged from the nether regions of the shop, and, after standing for some moments at a furtive angle to the window looking on to the street, crossed to their table .
‘We are deciding how to deal with a final solitary scone,’ explained Francis, fearful that their hostess might be about to offer fresh supplies, but Beryl seemed agitated.
'It’s wrong of me to worry you,’ she whispered, ‘but you being boy detectives and all ... There is a man outside, just standing there, under that lamppost. I can't explain it, but I think he is watching you.'
The boys turned to look into the street. Gordon saw nothing remarkable: only a man in a trench coat and a hat tilting over his face, so that it was all in shadow, except for the slow glow of a burning cigarette, but Francis recognized the man as the one he had seen outside Red Cherry House, just as still and silent and watchful as he had been before until, all at once, he vanished.
There was so much else to be done to get ready for Bonfire Night that the boys barely gave the man in the shadows another thought. The next morning, Gordon bicycled over to Red Cherry House from Strutton-by-the-Way, to discuss some of the finer points of the firework display. As he pushed his bicycle up the path towards the front door, he was a little alarmed to see Francis sitting stock still in the window, his profile proudly defined.
‘You’re doing the Sherlock thing again, aren’t you?’ asked Gordon, as he dropped into one of the armchairs by the fire. He couldn’t help sounding rather fed up with such antics.
‘As a matter of fact,’ began Francis, ‘I was thinking that to make the bust trick work, it would have been necessary for Holmes to h
ave already sat at his window for several preceding days in just such a still way, so that when he substituted the bust it would not have come as such a surprise to the evildoers who had been observing his movements.’
‘Busts indeed!’ said Gordon. ‘You should be thinking about how many Roman candles, and if we can give a lecture about the horrific evolution of the Catherine Wheel, and if we should measure the distance to which we have to retire after lighting the blue paper, instead of all this Baker Street stuff. After all …’
A knock at the door stopped Gordon, and jolted Francis from his rigid position at the window.
‘Answer that, will you Gordon?’ said Francis. Really, there were times when he seemed to regard his young cousin as his very own Doctor Watson!
Their visitor stood diffidently on the doorstep: a thin grey haired woman of indeterminable height, for her shoulders were hunched, as if for too many years she had borne a great weight. She wore thick tweeds over an off-white blouse clasped at the neck by a great cameo, her costume partly disguised by a voluminous, well-worn ulster. Her strangely pale nose was made the more grotesque by wired spectacles, and a blue beret crowned her disorganized grey curls.
‘Francis Jones?’ she asked. It was a mouse-like voice, the sound seeming to come from a long way back in her body.
‘No, I’m Gordon Jones. Do come in. This is my cousin, Francis. May I ask …?’
‘Miss Dean. Miss Felicia Dean. Do forgive my unannounced arrival. It’s just that … oh dear …’
‘Perhaps a cup of tea for our visitor, Gordon. Won’t you sit down, Miss Dean? Take a moment to collect yourself.’
‘How kind,’ murmured the agitated woman. ‘How very kind. Oh dear oh dear.’
Francis suspected that whoever his visitor was, she was not a great conversationalist, but the arrival of a pot of Earl Grey seemed to lift her spirits.
‘I don’t know where to begin,’ stammered Miss Dean. ‘I simply knew that I had to see you, and here – oh dear oh dear oh dear – here I am.’
‘And on a matter of some urgency,’ said Francis, sitting back luxuriantly in the window seat and looking hard at the nervous woman.
‘For whatever reason, it is obvious that you have made a great effort to seek me out,’ he said. ‘You left home this morning having had nothing substantial to eat, mistook the costume that would be most comfortable for your journey in a third class railway carriage, arrived there on foot through streets that were under repair, and have come to see me on a matter not altogether unconnected with your profession as a piano teacher of small children in Somerset.’
‘Remarkable!’ exclaimed Miss Dean. ‘Quite remarkable! I read in the newspapers of your abilities, but to experience them at first hand … How can you possibly have deduced all this when I have only this moment stepped into the room?’
‘It is merely a matter of observation,’ said Francis (rather smugly, Gordon thought). ‘Your voice is weak, betraying the fact that you breakfasted modestly. Your costume is not especially well coordinated, and your hat, a very nice felt one nevertheless, is an inappropriate choice, suggesting that you were in a state of confusion when you dressed. My mother is an imaginative corseteer, and I have been brought up to notice such details. ‘
‘But how can you have ascertained that I travelled from home on a third class ticket?’
‘In your agitated state you played the ticket through your fingers throughout long periods of the journey, and the ink has imprinted salient details on your damp palm. En route to the railway station you walked into puddles, perhaps caused by roadworks, that have left on your right shoe smears of a clay found only within a few miles radius of Frome.’
‘The very town from which I departed this morning!’ cried Miss Dean.
‘And your saying that Miss Dean is a piano teacher?’ asked Gordon, his eyes twinkling hard at his cousin.
‘The delicacy of your fingers, Miss Dean,’ replied Francis, ‘the fact that you carry not a handbag but a music-case, the curvature of your hands, betraying long hours of labour at the pianoforte, and your obvious short-sightedness, suggest such an occupation, quite apart from the fact that you give off what may be called a musical air.’
Gordon knew this wasn’t the moment to point out that peeping out from Miss Dean’s capacious music-case for all the world to see was a tattered copy of Little Nellie’s Piano Tutor (Spinsters’ Edition) and the cover of Five Simple Pieces for Tiny Fingers translated from the French of Erik Satie.
Miss Dean sighed and set down her cup and saucer, unleashing a sweetened cloud of floral toilet water with which she had liberally anointed herself.
‘St Cecilia has been a demanding mistress, and pays poorly,’ she confessed. ‘I do not complain, you understand. As a Twelfth Day Assumpsionist, I am contented with my lot. And the beret was the first thing I found in the wardrobe.’
‘And yet something is troubling you,’ said Francis, thrusting himself to the edge of his seat and staring intently into his visitor’s eyes as she dabbed at a lace handkerchief. ‘Something that has brought you to me.’
‘You are my very last hope,’ said Miss Dean. ‘Yours was the first name I thought of to turn to for help, but I resisted, knowing your youth and the terrible responsibility that I would load onto you if I unburdened myself. The truth is,’ – and now she lowered her voice as if fearful that eavesdroppers were straining at every word – ‘nobody will believe me.’
Gordon was just as fascinated as his cousin to learn exactly what was troubling the poor woman. She seemed to collect herself, and slumped back into her chair.
‘Felicia is not my true name,’ she said, ‘but when I reached adulthood, I realized that to make my life bearable I could not be known by my given name. Would either of you boys like to have been christened Shillingford?’
This time it was Francis’s turn to look perplexed.
‘Shillingford? But that was the name that Conan Doyle originally considered for his great detective!’
‘Precisely. But I am jumping ahead, when I should explain from the beginning. My mother was Irish, born and brought up in the shantytown of Dublin slums as Kathleen O’Flaherty. Having no expectations of bettering herself, she was fortunate to be given the opportunity to leave Ireland, travelling by boat to England, where she settled in London in the 1880s. She married well, possibly - although such details are not clear - with a man well respected in the medical profession. So far as I am aware, she never again attempted to contact her family in Dublin, but became the respected wife of this professional gentleman. Kathleen’s natural charm seems to have compensated for her lack of education, and she was readily accepted in the smart social circles in which her husband, my father, moved. A woman of iron resolve, she read everything and transformed herself into a highly cultured person. She went on to write several three volume novels. Perhaps you have read The Stilled Strings, in which a beautiful lady harpist is possessed by Satan? It was once considered essential reading for the better-class parlourmaid.
‘My mother’s was a happy marriage, and for some years the sun smiled on her union, of which I was the only child. Sadly, Papa’s medical skills did not include the ability to self-diagnose and treat any ailments which he personally suffered, and, still an attractive woman, my mother was left a widow. Throughout her relatively brief married life she had been the chatelaine of her well-ordered household established in a thoroughly respectable street adjacent to Regent’s Park. She had always enjoyed an efficient management of her home, assisted by a small staff. It seemed for a time that her personal loss would be compensated by a future that was monetarily sound, but, very soon after losing my father, it emerged that he had made ill-advised investments, and the collapse of the East Bergholt branch of the Patagonian Consolidated Envelope Trust, in which he had been a prime mover, spelled financial ruin. There could be no thought of Kathleen keeping on her servants, and it seemed that she would have to give up the marital home she had so lovingly made with my father.
/> ‘Nevertheless, Kathleen was a resourceful character. She decided there could be no question of returning to Ireland, and by then she was in a delicate state, as I was to be born a few months after my father’s untimely demise. She made up her mind that she would stay where she was, that she would adapt to her unfortunate circumstances. She moved into rooms at the very top of the house and set about letting the other floors. When I tell you that the house was 221B Baker Street, and that my mother’s married name was Kathleen Hudson, you may at last begin to understand my predicament.’
Gordon thought he had never before seen Francis lost for words.
‘Miss Dean’, said Francis falteringly, ‘are you telling us that you are the daughter of Sherlock Holmes’s landlady?’
‘Indeed, yes.’
‘Gordon’, said Francis, who had turned white, ‘I think I’d like a cup of tea, too.’
*
Miss Dean passed a photograph to Gordon.
‘This is my mother. A snap taken, I believe, by Dr Watson.’
The sepia image showed a pretty young woman, her hair swept back in a chignon. She wore a high-collared blouse and long skirt, and was smiling directly into the camera. It was a forthright look, hinting that she was indeed mistress of the establishment against which she had posed. And, there was no doubt of it, she was standing in front of a door which bore the number 221B.
‘This is all quite fascinating, Miss Dean,’ said Gordon, ‘but as Francis has said, aren’t you forgetting that Mrs Hudson, Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson and everyone associated with them are figments of the imagination.’
Miss Dean gave an exasperated gasp.
‘That is as the world has understood it, and the inevitable scorn of a sceptical public prevented my mother from putting an end once and for all to such a falsehood. I, also, have been too shy to tell the world, wishing for a quiet life in Somerset, unwilling to face the ridicule that would befall me if I spoke the truth.’
THE BOY DETECTIVES Page 7