The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes

by Hilary Bailey

  There was the sound of a tread on the stairs leading to the room they were in. The door opened. Charlotte, behind it, now saw the figure of the murderer leap forward and Lestrade rush from the window to clinch with him. The two men swayed to and fro in darkness as Charlotte stood frozen, though knowing it would be only seconds before the policemen concealed downstairs came to help. But the two figures, gasping and grappling, went on with their fight and there was no welcome interruption – no feet on the stairs, no cries, only the silent deadly battle. Then came a sickening crack, as Lestrade fell over, his head hitting the floor. The figure turned to Charlotte, trembling against the wall. She knew how she would have to defend herself against this man who had killed so many women, for it was plain that he had disabled the helpers downstairs in some way. As he came towards her she pulled out her pistol from behind her back and fired – but he still came on.

  Suddenly there was a crash as the window broke. A lean figure pulled himself in over the sill. This figure launched itself over Lestrade’s prone body at the murderer. Charlotte watched as the two wrestled together, then, even as cries broke out downstairs and feet began to pound upstairs, one of the figures, with a choking cry, fell to the ground.

  The light was lit on the landing. It illuminated a room in which Lestrade lay unconscious, another man lay on his face with a knife protruding from his back, Charlotte stood, gasping, a pistol in her hand – and in the middle of the room, breathing only a little hard, stood – Sherlock Holmes!

  ‘Sherlock! Thank you,’ Charlotte said. She was still trembling.

  ‘Not at all, dear Charlotte,’ said the detective. ‘I could not rest, observing the fog growing thicker and realising the Ripper might take advantage of it. Moreover, I was not entirely sure of Lestrade’s competence in this matter, which I will now not comment on …’ He paused, turning to look at Lestrade, unconscious on the floor next to the dead body of Jack the Ripper. Lestrade stirred and blinked. ‘I see you are back with us now, my friend,’ Holmes said kindly. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘made anxious by all this I decided to pay you all a visit here, through the window. When I saw what was taking place in the room I was forced to break it and burst in. Well, Charlotte, foolish and reckless as you’ve been, I must congratulate you on formulating the theory that the murders were not mere insane killings but the clever covering-up of a crime by a murderer of no small cunning. A very pretty piece of reasoning.’

  ‘Thank you, Sherlock. I am more grateful to you for saving my life than for your compliments about my intellect,’ responded Charlotte.

  Stanley Wilkinson, in the doorway with the police constable, now came in. ‘We had better look at the body. But as no stranger has come to the house tonight, I fear I already know who it is,’ he said in a desolate voice.

  When they turned the body over – Lestrade, back on his feet, having carefully removed the knife in the man’s back – they found they were gazing down at the face of Stanley Wilkinson’s nephew, young Albert, the former seaman.

  ‘How can it be?’ Wilkinson asked. ‘How can it be? Not Albert, the best young man that ever lived?’

  ‘More than that,’ Charlotte said. ‘He told us he was at sea when most of the murders took place.’

  ‘No doubt that could easily be disproved,’ said Sherlock Holmes. ‘It is enough, for now, to say that there are dark mysteries in the minds of all of us, often buried too deep for many of us ever to find them out.’

  Charlotte, unnerved by her terrible experience, gazed at her brother’s face, tears running down her cheeks.

  4

  Who killed the Little Cockney Nightingale?

  Charlotte left Britain next day.

  That morning, Betsey, her maid, called on Mary Watson with a note from her mistress. Betsey was quite shaken, handing over the note and telling Mary, ‘She went off early to get the first boat to France. Last night, when she came in, she got me and Mrs Digby out of bed to help with her packing. She’s gone off, all by herself, and now I’m taking notes all over the place to say she’s gone and she’ll let people know when she returns. She was upset, too, ma’am. She was ever so pale.’

  Mary, alarmed, asked the maid, ‘Did she say where she was going and when she’d be back?’

  Betsey shook her head. ‘She said Constantinople, but I don’t think she was too sure about it herself. It’s not like Miss Charlotte to behave like this. And she never said anything about coming back.’

  It was to be over two years before Charlotte returned. Mary received stained postcards from China, from Ethiopia, from Haiti and many other places. There were several letters from Kravonia, to which Charlotte apparently returned frequently. But during those more than two years she never, to anyone’s knowledge, set foot in Britain.

  And then she came back, with many trunkloads of curious bronzes from Africa, fossils from everywhere and some pieces of jewellery she told Mary came from the excavations at Troy, and then asked her hastily to forget what she had said. What was plain was that Charlotte did not intend to reveal why she had gone away so suddenly or very much about where she had been during her absence. A true friend does not press for answers when it is plain the other person does not wish to give them. So Mary did not persecute Charlotte with questions, though she could not help, particularly after Charlotte first arrived back in the country, seeing something in her face and eyes which had not been there before.

  Among those delighted to see Charlotte Holmes back was Inspector Jules Lestrade of Scotland Yard, which is why there came an evening when they were found together at that popular music hall, the Hackney Empire.

  The elbow of the Inspector dug sharply into Charlotte’s ribs as she sat, sleeping lightly beside him in the stalls. Her momentarily astonished eyes crossed the pit where the orchestra, its conductor in full evening dress, was playing a noisy version of ‘Anchors Aweigh’. Behind the naphtha lights at the front of the stage a young brassy-blonde lady in pink tights and a short tutu was skipping about. She was surrounded by a good many small dogs. There were fox terriers in little red coats, scotties in sailors’ jackets and, dancing on their back legs, three white, heavily clipped poodles wearing tutus round their waists. Coloured balloons were attached to their collars. Even as Charlotte watched, in horror, all the dogs lined up at the front of the stage. The young woman was in the middle. She shouted, ‘Stand!’ and, on this order, the dogs stood on their hind legs and barked their way unmusically through the closing verse of ‘Anchors Aweigh’.

  ‘Oh!’ groaned Charlotte weakly, as a five-hundred-strong audience, from the refined people in the stalls to the hooligans and hobbledehoys in the gallery, burst into applause, shouts, stamps and whistles. Some of the cries were of ‘Encore!’

  ‘Not that! Please, no encore,’ Charlotte pleaded to no one in particular. Already she had endured Madame Ivy Costello, the contralto, performing seals, the blue jokes of Charlie McGinnis and the Great Marvo sawing in half his assistant Kitty. ‘Was it for this,’ she wondered, ‘that I returned from my travels?’

  She began to stand up, but Lestrade pulled her down. ‘Don’t worry, Charlotte – soon it will be time for the performance of Miss Violette Leduc, the Little Cockney Nightingale,’ he promised.

  Charlotte tried to rise from her seat. ‘I don’t think, Jules, I can endure much more…’

  He pulled her down. ‘Wait – wait for the Nightingale,’ he said enthusiastically.

  Charlotte weakened. ‘All right, Jules. My God – will those dogs never stop barking?’

  The dogs had now formed up patriotically in their red, blue and white get-ups, and were marching off stage, barking to the strains of ‘Hearts of Oak’. The blonde in the short tutu marched behind, smiling proudly.

  ‘Good, strong legs,’ Jules Lestrade remarked appreciatively.

  ‘Indeed,’ Charlotte said. Already the assembled apprentices, milliners, shopgirls and clerks in the gallery had forgotten Cochrane’s Intelligent Canines and were crying, ‘Bring on Violette! Violette! Th
e Little Cockney Nightingale! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!’

  Charlotte stifled a yawn as the band struck up the music, which Inspector Lestrade informed her was closely associated with this, his favourite artiste, Violette Leduc. He informed her also that this tune was entitled ‘Pinch Me Nicely, If You Pinch Me’.

  Thinking wistfully of home, her Berliner gramophone and the music of Paderewski, ‘Mystifying,’ Charlotte said. Lights flared at the edge of the stage, the gallery whistled and stamped and now the curtain rose: there stood Violette Leduc, dressed in a frock more suitable for a little girl, and showing plenty of white stocking. She was blonde, with big blue eyes and a perfect figure. Her white hat was trimmed with violets.

  Extending her arms to the audience, the tiny blonde – she can have been no more than five feet in height – began her first song, a sad ballad entitled ‘The Last Kiss’. In spite of Charlotte’s complete indifference to the music hall she could not help admiring the strength and control of the Little Cockney Nightingale’s true soprano, her stagecraft, and the rapport between the artist and her audience. This first song, a sad ballad concerning a girl abandoned by her false-promising lover, was met with great applause. That over, the band struck up a jolly tune. Violette Leduc sprang into a dance and carolled out a more cheerful song, then launched into her well-known (though not to Charlotte) ‘Pinch Me Nicely If You Pinch Me’, a ditty full of double entendres, the last verse concerning an amorous policeman, a not-unwilling girl, and a play on the words ‘Pinch me’. The curtain went down – the audience was delighted – then rose again, dropping and rose again and again as Violette Leduc took her bows. She gestured to the orchestra, soliciting applause for them. Meanwhile Charlotte began to dream of a hackney carriage, her home and her bed. Then, as the star took her sixth bow, a shot rang out.

  The Little Cockney Nightingale dropped in a froth of white petticoats, to the stage. A red stain spread across the bosom of the white dress. As shrieks and exclamations broke out the curtain fell. In a flash Lestrade was through the orchestra pit and mounting the stage. Charlotte followed him, pushed her way through the dusty curtains, and joined the group on the stage around the crumpled body. The Cockney Nightingale had been shot right through the breast.

  A group of about twenty on the stage now clustered round the body. There were stage hands and other theatre staff, the chorus girls in tutus, and several other performers, some now dressed to go home. There, too, was the red-nosed comedian Cheerful Charlie McGinnis, still in his too-tight tartan suit and brown bowler. The group was silent, but for women’s sobs. From offstage somewhere came the panicky barking of Cochrane’s Intelligent Canines, and from beyond the curtain the sounds of the alarmed audience being urged out by some member of the theatre staff. Lestrade elbowed his way through the group on stage. He said, ‘Someone fetch the theatre manager. And close the doors. No more of the audience must leave.’

  A man in his shirt-sleeves said, ‘Can’t close the doors. Fire regulations. Manager’s in the pub across the road.’

  ‘Who’re you?’ demanded Lestrade.

  ‘O’Connor, stage manager. Who are you?’

  ‘Lestrade, Scotland Yard,’ Lestrade said shortly. ‘If you can’t get the people back, then take their names at the door.’

  ‘Half the audience has probably gone,’ O’Connor said, ‘and if one of them shot Nancy Flood he isn’t going to give his correct name, is he now?’

  Lestrade, with a furious exclamation, next dropped on his knees beside the body. A chorus girl sobbed. Madame Costello, who was in street dress, asked, ‘Can I go home, Inspector?’

  ‘Poor bitch,’ said one stage hand to another.

  ‘Where’s the manager?’ demanded Lestrade again. And, ‘No, madam, will you stay for the present. Has anyone sent for the police?’

  ‘Thought you were them,’ O’Connor said.

  ‘I sent a boy for the police,’ Cheerful Charlie McGinnis said. ‘And I told him to get Mr Standish, the manager, out of the pub while he was at it. That do for you?’

  On such occasions a policeman will always find at least one individual present to be trustworthy. Charlie McGinnis looked to Lestrade as if he were such a man. ‘Did you see her fall?’ he asked.

  ‘I was in the wings,’ he responded. ‘She must have been shot from the front of the house. Someone in the audience did it – it looked as if the bullet hit her straight in the chest.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might have done this thing?’ Lestrade asked.

  In response, Charlie McGinnis shrugged. If he had been about to say anything else he could not, for the manager of the theatre had arrived, hurrying on stage, shouting, ‘My God! It’s true then. Who can have done this? No one must leave. Why weren’t the doors locked?’ He looked, briefly, at the body and said, ‘My God,’ then turned to Lestrade. ‘You don’t belong here. Who are you?’

  ‘Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard,’ responded Lestrade.

  ‘And you?’ Standish asked Charlotte, who was now standing beside the young woman’s body.

  ‘Miss Holmes is a detective. Also my companion for the evening,’ Lestrade told him.

  ‘Accompanied, also, by her brother,’ said a clear, composed voice from the edge of the stage. Charlotte turned. ‘Sherlock!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I am a student of the Great Marvo,’ said tall, imposing Sherlock Holmes, who was attired in immaculate evening dress. ‘I often take a box for his performances. I admit one of his tricks this evening almost baffled me. And now, here lies poor Violette Leduc, or Nancy Flood, as I believe she’s really called.’

  The manager was ordering everyone to leave the stage. ‘And someone quiet those dogs.’ There were protests. One of the chorus girls said, ‘We can’t leave her lying there alone.’

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ the manager said. ‘Will you get Cochrane and tell him to do something about those dogs! Oh, my God,’ he then exclaimed. ‘I suppose I’ll have to tell her family.’

  ‘Just as bad, you’ll have to tell her theatrical agent,’ Charlie McGinnis said. ‘He’ll be desolated. She’s made his fortune.’

  ‘In the meanwhile, will you all stop gaping and get out,’ the manager ordered.

  But at this point Sherlock Holmes stepped forward. ‘I’m sure Inspector Lestrade will agree no one present should leave the theatre until the police arrive.’

  ‘I’ve got to get back to Balham,’ Madame Costello protested. ‘My landlady’s looking after my boy.’

  ‘Shut up, Ivy,’ said one of the chorus girls. ‘This is a murder.’

  ‘Oh God, yes, murder,’ she said too loudly. ‘Murder – oh poor Nancy. Who can have done such a wicked thing?’

  There was a silence, broken by the manager’s rushing to the wings and crying out, ‘Mr Cochrane! Miss Cochrane! Please stop those blasted dogs from barking.’

  ‘Ladies present,’ reproved McGinnis.

  ‘She didn’t have an enemy in the world,’ said Madame Costello.

  ‘Heart as big as a bucket,’ confirmed Charlie McGinnis. The silence was broken by a loud sob.

  The manager, coming back from the wings, said, ‘Sherlock Holmes, or no Sherlock Holmes, Scotland Yard or not, we must move the girl.’

  ‘I must insist we wait for the police,’ said Holmes. He leaned over the body. ‘A little bunch of forget-me-nots,’ he said. ‘Just visible under all this blood. Who knows where they came from?’ He peered about him keenly and asked the stage manager, ‘Do you?’

  Charlotte, seeing herself eliminated from the process of detection being carried on by Inspector Lestrade and her brother Sherlock, slipped unobserved, in a practised way, to the back of the stage, into the orchestra pit and from there to the back of the theatre.

  Her last glance as she left the theatre showed the group on stage – the contralto, the comedian, chorus girls, the stage manager and stage hands – all grouped round the body of the dead music-hall star, Nancy Flood. Lestrade and brother Sherlock were
plainly firmly in control. As she left the foyer a group of policemen almost ran past her towards the auditorium.

  Next day Mary Watson, paying a call, found Charlotte in her laboratory measuring a skull with a tape measure.

  ‘Gracious, Charlotte,’ said Mary, appalled.

  Charlotte said, ‘Mary. Just a minute,’ as she put the skull on her scales, adding one tiny brass weight after another until the scale pan, containing the skull, dropped. She added a note to a sheet of paper on her laboratory bench, then turned. ‘That’s the last skull you’ll see in my hands,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Of all the futile theories ever invented, that which proposes criminality can be discovered by measuring the dimensions or weight of the skull must be the most futile. So let’s have tea.’

  They took tea in the garden. ‘So can one tell in any way if a man has criminal propensities, do you think?’ asked Mary, taking one of Mrs Digby’s featherweight cheese scones, and buttering it.

  ‘Perhaps we shall never know,’ Charlotte responded. ‘Or many factors may be involved. Until then we must accept that none of us can ever be given a medical certificate stating we will never commit a crime. Or that we certainly will. Perhaps it’s better so. We shall go on in uncertainty, as in the days of Cain and Abel. First, a crime will be committed. Then there will be a hunt for the perpetrator and our intelligent police will or will not find the culprit. And, if my brother is in charge, in all probability he will be discovered. John will write it up and the readers will enjoy the happy feeling that by the exercise of human intelligence the world’s evil can be kept at bay. Apropos of that,’ she added, ‘I imagine your good husband is, even now, somewhere in the vicinity of the Hackney Empire.’