It was gone midnight when the Set finally tumbled out of the Cellar, leaving Jo-Jo one very happy proprietor, having trousered twice the usual takings. The moon was full and waxy, inspiring stars to twinkle, cats to yowl and Foxy Fairfax to treat Londoners with a loud rendition of ‘Danny Boy’.
‘Fancy putting on the old nosebag with me, Fizzy?’ Marriott asked, with a hopeful twiddle of the yellow rose in his buttonhole. ‘Only there’s this little French place I know round the corner that serves up some pretty nifty proteins and starch.’
‘We could all go,’ Biff said, elbowing Marriott out of the way.
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll give the roasts and boileds a miss tonight, chaps. I rather fancy an early night is in order.’
And besides. There was a cold, twisted knot deep inside that wouldn’t let her eat if she tried.
‘Don’t be a wet blanket, sweetheart,’ Kitty said, pouring Bubbles into the back of her car. ‘There’s plenty of room with us girls.’
‘I know!’ Biff nodded towards his convertible parked with its usual insouciance half on, half off the kerb whilst managing to completely block a back alley. ‘Let’s all go to the Kitty Kat Klub!’
‘Good idea,’ Bubbles and Kitty chorused together.
‘It won’t be the first time you’ve sat on my knee, Fizzy,’ Catspaw said.
‘No, but it’d be the first time she’s sat on mine, so don’t be greedy, old man,’ Chilton retorted.
‘Actually,’ a voice rumbled beneath a fedora set at a rakish (some might say dignified) angle, ‘the lady’s already accepted a lift.’
‘Dammit, Squiffy, you always get the pretty ones,’ Catspaw wailed, as Biff revved up the engine. ‘See you up there, then, what?’
‘Twenty minutes,’ Teddy promised, as the convertible cranked off the kerb with a splutter. Across the way, Orville was opening the door of his Rolls for Gloria and Teddy watched impassively as the Hon. Member settled himself behind the wheel and purred off.
‘Happy endings all round, then,’ he murmered.
‘Not for Louis Boucard,’ Fizzy said.
Teddy pursed his lips, but only briefly. ‘True, but let’s face it, the world’s one scoundrel lighter and none the worse for it, and what odds the police make six wrong arrests before they stuff the file in the “Unsolved” archive and forget it?’
‘Is that your definition of happy ending?’
‘Ask Chilton. He’ll make four times as much dosh with his prodigy dead and how fortunate there was no scandal to come out, that velvet-covered easel being nothing more than a practical joke and all that.’
‘Oh, that sort of happy ending.’
Teddy leaned against the brickwork and stuffed his hands into his pockets. ‘Actually,’ he said quietly. ‘I was rather thinking of Chilton’s missing exhibit and the matter of true love running smooth.’
‘There was no portrait, remember?’
‘Not under the velvet, no. I meant the one you stole when everyone was crowding into the room when Bubbles found Boucard’s body.’
Fizzy reached into her handbag for a cigarette and attached it to the holder with a surprisingly steady hand.
‘I don’t even like Louis’s work,’ she said. ‘Why would I steal one of his beastly paintings? Cubist mixed with Symbolist —’
‘— and just the merest smidgen of the draughtsmanship one sees in Migliorini. Yes, I know. Ghastly, aren’t they? Especially the portraits of masked nudes with one brown eye and one blue.’
A lighter clicked in the darkness and suddenly Fizzy’s hand was anything but steady.
‘I saw it in his studio when I went round to persuade him to lay off my brother. Unfortunately, our French friend was out, so I never did get chance to exercise my knuckles. Shame, that.’
‘Maybe that was another practical joke,’ she said evenly. ‘I mean, we’ve all been searched. Thoroughly, as I recall.’
A soft laugh echoed into the night. ‘Ah, women! What cunning and devious creatures thou art, is it any wonder we men are in thy thrall? Gloria —’
‘How did you know it was her?’
‘Don’t tell anyone, but His Majesty’s Intelligence Service relies more on guesswork than they’d like people to think. But in this case, Miss Potter, I know Boucard, I know his type and more importantly —’
Before she’d even realised what had happened, she found herself in his arms.
‘— I know how human minds tick. Not to mention,’ he added an eternity later, ‘that there are widgets designed to stop ladies’ hats from bowling down Mayfair that are called, strangely enough, hat pins.’
‘And the panther?’
‘Who else would cover up another person’s murder? I suspect they’ll both view each other differently from now on. A rather more balanced relationship, one would hope.’
‘So that’s what you meant by happy endings and true love running smooth.’
‘Hadn’t quite got to that last bit,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘Only it strikes me that Fizzy Potter is a nice enough name, whereas Fizzy Hardcastle tends to run off the tongue rather more smoothly, don’t you think?’
She couldn’t be hearing this right. ‘Edward James Hardcastle, are you actually asking me to marry you?’
“Not tonight. Far too late to knock up a vicar. But yes. That seems to be the general consensus.’
But...Fizzy pulled away.
‘What about the painting?’
‘What about it?’ he rasped, drawing her back, and when they finally came up for air, he said, ‘I don’t imagine you’ll make a habit of stealing. I mean, the logistics of bringing the kids to visit you in the clink would be an absolute nightmare.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she stuttered.
He gave her nose a little tweak.
‘Like my kid brother, darling, we all have siblings.’
He tilted her chin up to face him.
‘The eyes were the wrong way round, Fizzy. Yours,’ he said kissing them in turn, ‘are blue on the left, brown on the right and trust me, artists of Boucard’s calibre don’t get such details wrong.’
For the first time in her life, Fizzy knew what it was to be floating on air.
‘I suppose I might consider marrying you —’ she began, though her actual thoughts ran more along the lines of wild horses.
‘Very kind.’
‘— but what about money? Neither of us earns very much —’
‘True,’ he agreed, ‘but don’t you think this,’ he whisked off her cloche hat and pulled out Woman in a Mask, ‘should get us off to a good start?’
‘Do you mind!’
Fizzy snatched at her sister’s naked image and stuffed it back under the brim.
‘It’s worth a fortune on the black market,’ he rumbled.
‘Teddy Hardcastle, you aren’t seriously asking me to weigh my sister’s morals against cold hard cash?’
She rammed the cloche back over her bob.
‘Because if you are, you ought to know right now that I won’t use something as tawdry as this to pay my electricity bill!’
She adjusted the cloche and thought, silly cow. Shouldn’t have posed for him in the first place.
‘A honeymoon, on the other hand...’
Teddy’s laughter echoed into the darkness. ‘Which do you fancy, you wicked, wicked child? A fortnight in Antibes? Or would you prefer to see Venice?’
Fizzy snuggled back into his muscular arms. ‘Don’t care,’ she murmured.
Because with that painting they could afford both.
<
* * * *
Christopher Fowler
The Lady Downstairs
What annoys me most is that he doesn’t notice.
There are so few females in his life, and the ones that he does meet are usually in distress or hiding something. They’re titled, or troubled, or - well, one wouldn’t use the word in polite company, but it also begins with a T, and may be preceded by the word ‘Bakewell’. I
see them all, because I see all of his clients. I open the door to them, I send them away or ask them to wait, or show them up the seventeen stairs to his room. You don’t let a stranger into your house without noticing something about them, and there’s usually something to notice. The ladies may have red-rimmed eyes and damp handkerchiefs, or may adopt a disdainful air to make me think they are the mistresses of their situations. The gentlemen are more obvious still, their rage barely concealed as they hop from one foot to the other, their eagerness to see my lodger brushing aside the most common courtesies. Sometimes our visitors are fearful, and search the street to make sure they have not been followed. These ones rush inside as if they have been scalded, and once my door is safely closed behind them, apologise for their behaviour, wringing their caps and glancing to the top of the stairs, half-expecting him to pop out of his rooms and solve their problems right in the hallway, as if I would allow such a thing.
I shouldn’t complain, for a landlady’s life is rarely interesting, and the comings and goings are a small price to pay for housing such a famous London figure. There are annoyances, of course; the infernal scratching of that violin, the muffled explosions from unstable compounds in the laboratory he has rigged up in my back room (without my permission), the immovable stains that appear on the carpets, the ghastly burning-cat smells that waft down from the landing, invariably at tea-time when I am about to tuck into a kipper, the unsocial hours kept by a man who finds sleep a stranger. Yet I am fond of him because his enthusiasm leaves him so unprotected. He knows the doctor is concerned for his well-being. But he never notices me.
Of course, he is the Great Detective, and I am only the landlady. To hear him pronounce judgement you would think no one else was born with a pair of eyes. We don’t all have to shout about it from the rooftops. But my job is to notice everything, though I get little thanks.
Allow me to present you with an example. Only last week, on a drizzling Tuesday night at half past ten, as I was readying myself for bed, there came a knock at the door. The girl had gone up to bed, and I was left to greet the caller, a frantic lady of some forty summers, in a dripping fur hat, clutching a wet fox-collar about her throat.
‘Is this the house of Mr Sherlock Holmes?’ she asked, without so much as a good evening.
‘Why yes,’ I replied, ‘and I am his landlady, Mrs Hudson, but Mr Holmes has left strict instructions not to be disturbed.’
‘I must see him,’ said the lady. ‘It is a matter of the utmost urgency.’ I say lady, for I assumed her to be one though she was not wearing gloves, and the wetness of her clothes suggested that she had not alighted from her own carriage, or even a Hackney. She had a bearing, though, and a way of looking that I have seen too often when ladies look at landladies.
‘If you’d care to wait in the front room I’ll see what can be done,’ I told her, and trotted off upstairs. I am nervous of no one in my own house, but sometimes Mr Holmes can be alarming. On this night he spoke to me rudely through the door, and finally opened it a crack to see what was amiss.
As I explained that a lady waited downstairs, I could see my lodger hastily rolling down the sleeve of his shirt, tidying something away and complaining that it really was too bad he should be disturbed in such a manner. Knowing him, I took this to be an agreement that he would see her.
‘Is she in need of medical attention?’ he asked briskly. ‘Dr Watson is still away.’
‘No,’ I replied, ‘but she is quite distraught, for she has run here in the rain without stopping to dress for visiting.’ And I showed her up. As she passed me, I smelled essence of violets on her clothes, and something else I recognised but could not place, a nursery smell.
I stood on the landing, listening. She introduced herself as Lady Cecily Templeford, but then the door closed and I heard no more. Still, it was enough. I read the women’s weeklies, so I knew that Lady Templeford’s son recently married beneath him. It was quite the scandal among the leisured classes, which I am not part of, but I make it my business to read about their small sufferings, who is engaged to whom, and why they should not be.
I went to the parlour and searched through the periodicals in the fire bucket. I soon came to the story. The Honourable Archibald Templeford married Miss Rose Nichols after a brief engagement. His mother refused to attend the wedding nuptials on account of Miss Nichols’ former profession, namely performing as a songstress in the twice-nightlies, where she was known as ‘The Deptford Nightingale’. Miss Nichols subsequently gave birth to a baby boy named Godwin. I was still reading this item when the door to Mr Holmes’ apartment slammed open.
‘If you do not help me, I do not know what I shall do,’ she said loudly enough to wake up the serving girl on the top floor. ‘I have no one else to whom I can turn, and need not tell you what this would do to our family should the news be made public.’ And with that she swept past me once more, almost knocking me flat, her grand exit only marred by her struggle with the front door latch.
‘Allow me,’ I offered, squeezing past to shove the lock, for the wood swells in wet weather, for which help I received a look that could freeze a pond in midsummer.
‘The poor lady seemed very distressed,’ I ventured, wary of my lodger’s reluctance to discuss his clients. ‘I do hope you can help her.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ said Mr Holmes, ‘but it is nothing you should concern yourself with, dear lady,’ and with that he shut his door in my face. This does not bother me, for I am used to his ways, and I am just the landlady. I open the doors and close them. People pass me by. I stick to my duty, and they to theirs.
The next morning Mr Holmes went out, and did not return until five. He appeared haggard, in low spirits, and I gathered from his mood that the investigation he had undertaken was not going well. I knew he had visited the home of the Honourable Archibald Templeford because I heard him giving the cab driver the address, which was published in my weekly along with a fetching painting of the drive and grounds in Upper Richmond.
‘How was your day, Mr Holmes?’ I asked, taking his soaking great-coat to hang in the hall.
‘Somewhat less productive than I had hoped, Mrs Hudson,’ he replied, ‘though I venture to surmise not entirely without purpose.’ He often speaks like this, saying much but revealing nothing. Most times, I have little interest in my lodger’s cases. He does not vouchsafe their details, and wishes to discuss them with no one but the doctor, but sometimes I glean a sense of their shape and purpose, although I see them through the wrong end of a telescope, as it were, the clients coming and going, the snatches of hurried conversation, the urgent departures late at night, the visits from policemen like Inspector Lestrade, full of cajoling and flattery, and when those tactics fail, threats and warnings. It is like being backstage at some great opera, where one only glimpses the actors and hears snatches of arias, and the setting is all around the wrong way, and one is left to piece together the plot. Like any stagehand I am invisible and unheard, but a necessary requirement in the smooth running of the performance.
My lodger spent the next morning locked in his rooms, banging about, the ceiling above my dining room creaking like a ship in a tempest. Resolving to see what caused his agitation, and knowing he had not eaten, I took him some beef broth, and was gratified when he accepted it, bidding me enter.
‘I worry you are letting this business with Lady Templeford tire you,’ I ventured, only to have him fix me with a wild stare.
‘What on earth do you mean, Mrs Hudson?’ he snapped, sipping at the broth before setting it aside with a grimace.
‘I noticed that because she arrived here in such agitation, you were compelled to deal with her case, despite being busy with other work.’
To my surprise he raised his long head and gave a great bark of laughter. ‘Well Mrs Hudson, you will surprise us all yet,’ he said. ‘First Watson, and now you. I shall start to wonder if my investigative technique is catching. So tell me, what do you discern about the lady in question?�
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‘It’s not my business to voice an opinion,’ I said, wary of incurring his displeasure.
‘Let’s say for a moment that it is your business. It would be intriguing to know the female point of view.’
‘I know she is upset by the marriage of her youngest son to a girl she considers to be of low morals,’ I replied, ‘and is shocked by the early arrival of a child. More than that I cannot tell.’
‘But you have said much, perhaps without even realising it.’ He inclined his head, as if seeing me through new eyes. ‘The night before last, Lady Templeford’s new grandchild was snatched from his cradle, and no one has seen him since. What do you make of that?’
‘Its poor mother must be quite mad with grief,’ I said, remembering the picture of Rose Nichols in my paper. Then I considered the enmity that existed between the bride and her mother-in-law, and how the son must be caught between them.
The Best British Mysteries 3 - [Anthology] Page 9