The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘Interviewing chorus girls, no doubt,’ said Mary Watson. The idea seemed to give her no pleasure.

  ‘Such is the onerous life of an investigating detective,’ agreed Charlotte. ‘But a man must do his duty, however unpleasant.’

  ‘Your tone is not cheerful,’ Mary observed. ‘You were there, were you not, when Violette Leduc was shot? Nancy Flood is, I believe, her real name.’

  ‘I was there,’ Charlotte told her. ‘But the enthusiasm of Sherlock and Inspector Lestrade was such that I faded into the background.’

  ‘Unlike you, Charlotte.’

  Charlotte nodded. ‘In the ordinary course of events. But, much as I should have liked to have assisted with the investigation, the combined might of Scotland Yard and Sherlock Holmes overwhelmed me. It would have been easier to have turned back a charge of wild buffalo. Well, the sun is shining, and I’ve concluded that one’s skull gives no clue about whether one is destined to murder or not – so – more tea?’ And she lifted the teapot in the direction of Mary Watson’s cup.

  It was at this moment that Inspector Lestrade appeared through the french windows leading from Charlotte’s dining-room, carrying his bowler hat. He was wearing a dark suit and a stiff white collar. Even his virile black moustache appeared hot and listless.

  ‘Tea, Inspector?’ enquired Charlotte.

  Mary thought she detected an unfriendly gleam in her eye.

  Lestrade accepted and sat down with relief.

  Charlotte gave him tea and a scone, then embarked on general conversation, mentioning her recent acquisition of a roll of celluloid film, so much easier, she said, to use than camera plates. Then she spoke of the weather and enquired where Lestrade planned to take his holidays. Hearing he had no particular plans, she recommended a visit to Norvius and a walking holiday in its vicinity. She was describing animatedly the climate of Kravonia in all its moods when Lestrade broke in.

  ‘You have not asked me yet how we are getting on with the Hackney Empire case. I should have thought you might have been interested in the death of Nancy Flood since you were present when the murder happened.’

  ‘Oh,’ Charlotte said with feigned lightness, ‘I thought you and Sherlock were keeping that little affair to yourselves. I felt it wrong to appear to intrude in any way, Jules. I had no idea you would come and discuss it with me. I am sure I can make no contribution, with such great detectives – ’

  ‘Charlotte!’ he interrupted. ‘Do not play with me. Here is a dreadful crime – murder. It is no laughing matter.’

  ‘No, Jules,’ Charlotte said more seriously. ‘It is not – but Mary and I have been spending a pleasant afternoon. We have not discussed the crime, nor have we wanted to. Now – I must confess to a certain chagrin when you and Sherlock took the murder so firmly into your own hands, ignoring me. But I recognise that much of my irritation sprang from childish memories of having been run away from by my brothers. I was reminded of being a child, younger than Sherlock and Mycroft, and of chasing them on shorter legs, calling out, “Wait for me, wait for me,” while they raced off to whatever part of the woods or fields they planned to go to. But,’ Charlotte said firmly, ‘I have put away childish things and memories, Jules. I don’t want to go detecting over the dead body of poor Nancy Flood. I have not read the newspaper reports about it. I will ask no questions. In fact, Jules,’ Charlotte told him gravely, ‘I have wondered for some time what we are doing, playing detectives, as if people and their lives were a marionette show we had been taken to watch, as a treat. I don’t mean you, Jules. You are a professional policeman. It is your living, and your dedication to represent the law and stabilise society. But, for myself, I question if I have turned the misfortunes of others into a sort of hobby, a means of amusing myself.’

  ‘You have been known to help others, Miss Holmes,’ Jules Lestrade said gruffly, ‘and to put a few villains behind bars where they can no longer injure others. In any case, the conversation takes a philosophical turn, and I have no talent for philosophy. My trade is catching bad men – and women, too, sometimes. All I do is not beautiful, nor are all the places I go to, or all the people I have to associate with. And now I must attempt to catch the murderer of poor Nancy Flood who, as far as I know, did no harm to anybody and gave pleasure and entertainment to thousands. You can afford your scruples, Miss Holmes. I cannot. I have a job to do.’

  ‘Of course, Jules,’ said Charlotte. ‘I did not mean to offend you. I spoke of myself and to myself.’

  ‘And of your brother and my husband,’ said Mary Watson, who had listened silently, but not without irritation, to this conversation. ‘I think it quite strange of you, Charlotte, to be measuring skulls and taking photographs while that poor girl’s killer walks about free as air. She appears to have been a young woman of admirable character, apparently lacking all the vices so often indulged in by other members of her profession, at the heart of a large, devoted family, poor but respectable, which she has done much to support.’

  ‘There is one blemish on the family escutcheon though,’ Lestrade remarked. ‘It comes in the shape of a brother – Rory Flood – who is at present serving twelve years in Pentonville for involvement in the Fenian bomb plot which resulted in an explosion on the London Underground last year. A woman’s leg was blown off, as you might recall.’

  ‘Goodness me,’ Mary said. ‘And was that the work of Nancy Flood’s brother?’

  ‘So C Division, CID, reported,’ Lestrade told her drily.

  ‘Hm,’ Charlotte commented. She also sounded sceptical. ‘More tea, Jules?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said, rising. ‘I must confess I came to pick your brains. Sherlock’s trail has taken him, with Dr Watson, of course, to France for a few days. But,’ he said, picking up his hat, ‘if you are taking a holiday from detection, then that’s all there is to say about it.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s a holiday, Jules. It may be permanent retirement. I am so tired of making superficial arrivals in the lives of people who are suffering, for one reason or another, then, like some deus ex machina, solving all and disappearing. And I know, as you do, Jules, that the day always comes when one accuses the wrong person and they are punished. No one is infallible. Then as a result of a faulty piece of detection, an innocent man is hanged or languishes in jail. We are only mortal, Lestrade. We make mistakes.’ She paused, as if to think, then went on earnestly, ‘I now believe the most useful contribution to the detection of crime will come from science. No detective, however brilliant, will catch as many criminals, for example, as the individual who has developed the method of checking and comparing fingerprints.’

  ‘A process in which you have played no small part,’ said Jules Lestrade. ‘So it’s to be forensic science in future?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Perhaps that’s a little more suitable for a lady anyway,’ he said and, kissing Charlotte’s hand in the foreign manner, he left the garden.

  ‘I must say, I’m quite disappointed in you, Charlotte,’ said Mary. ‘Because of a few moments of pique when Sherlock and Lestrade took over the detection of the murder of Nancy Flood, you’ve stamped your foot and declared you’ll abandon detection. It’s like a boy being given out at cricket, tearing up the stumps and declaring the game’s over. It’s nothing short of childish. In any case,’ she went on more plaintively, ‘I’ve always been so interested in what you were doing. It’s been exciting – and such a secret pleasure to think a woman in detection could do almost as well as a man. Please, Charlotte, if only for the family of the murdered girl, who must be desperate to see the killer of their daughter brought to justice – please change your mind.’

  ‘I’ll visit them, to express my condolences,’ was all Charlotte would say.

  Mary, to tell the truth, was disappointed and she secretly hoped the visit to the bereaved family would stir up Charlotte’s desire to reenter the world of practical detection.

  *

  Charlotte, quietly dressed in a grey costume
, got off a tram in Brixton and walked through a crowded Brixton market, where such things as fish, combinations and saucepans were all being sold from a variety of market stalls. Not far along, she went into a public house where one or two traders in leather aprons stood drinking. She went up to the bar. ‘I’m looking for Mr and Mrs Flood,’ she said. ‘My name is Charlotte Holmes. I was there when Nancy was killed and I wished to express my sympathy.’

  ‘They’re upstairs but they’re not seeing anybody,’ the barmaid responded. ‘I’ll send up a message, though.’ She called over the young man who was washing tables.

  ‘Please say I shall understand if they would prefer not to see me,’ said Charlotte.

  The boy, though, brought back a message that the Floods welcomed Charlotte’s visit. She went up a narrow staircase leading from the back of the bar and joined the family in their sitting-room. The blinds were drawn. Mr Flood, a big ruddy man, sat in an armchair, Mrs Flood, scarcely any smaller or less rosy-cheeked, sat in another. At the dining-table a tall young man was eating his dinner, meat and two veg.

  Charlotte entered. ‘I came only to express my sympathy. I was there when Nancy died. And I believe my brother Sherlock and my friend Inspector Lestrade are involved in the investigations.’

  ‘Not getting anywhere, though,’ Thomas Flood, father of the dead Nancy, said. ‘Don’t seem to be, anyway.’

  ‘They’re doing all they can, I’m sure.’

  ‘Are you helping them?’ Mary Flood asked.

  ‘No, I’m not. But my help isn’t necessary. There are years of experience and the whole police force behind the investigation.’

  ‘So – what are they doing?’ asked Tom Flood.

  ‘My brother is in France, trying to find the magician, the Great Marvo, who apparently disappeared not long after Nancy’s death.’

  ‘Is that all?’ he challenged.

  ‘They have, I suppose, questioned the performers and all the theatre staff,’ Charlotte said, but her voice was trailing away. These people had been blessed, it was said, with a daughter whose beauty and talent had been matched by her virtue and kindness (how many boys’ clubs had she not endowed, how many private acts of charity had she not done?), but they at present seemed only to express dissatisfaction with the progress of the investigation. Understandable as these complaints might be, Charlotte wondered – where was their grief for the loss of this young, bright life?

  She glanced at the man stolidly eating his dinner, Nancy’s brother, she assumed. How could he, she wondered, go on eating his food, paying no attention to the conversation, just as if a loved sister had not been cruelly murdered only a few days before? Yet the room, the parents, the brother, even the silver-framed family photographs showing weddings, children in their best (boys in stiff collars, the younger Nancy herself with a big white bow in her hair), all looked and felt quite normal. A son in prison, a daughter murdered, Charlotte thought, and yet there were no obvious signs on the faces of the family or in their speech, of the pain they must be enduring. Were they showing the utmost stoicism or a repellent callousness, Charlotte wondered?

  ‘I’m sure the detectives and police are doing all they can,’ Charlotte said. ‘I believe they will catch the villain soon.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Mary Flood. ‘Now, would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No. I must be going. Once again, my condolences,’ Charlotte said. She stood up.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Miss Holmes,’ said Tom Flood.

  ‘Yes, indeed, it is very kindly taken,’ added his wife. She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Ah, my poor girl, my poor girl,’ she said.

  And Charlotte left, feeling uncertain and dismayed by her visit.

  It was just as she was opening her own front door with the key, that the truth burst upon her. She closed the door, turned round and went straight back to Brixton.

  Mary, arriving some weeks later with new-laid eggs for Mrs Digby’s kitchen, was let in by Betsey who told her that Charlotte was out, but would be back in just a few minutes. ‘She’s popped out for some chemicals,’ reported the young woman, who was sporting a saucy lace cap above her uniform, from which a red hair ribbon peeped coyly. ‘She’s working on photography now. I spend half my time lying down impersonating corpses in the garden.’

  ‘Good gracious,’ Mary said.

  ‘Yes. From what she says she reckons if you could take pictures of the place of the crime exactly how it was, including any dead bodies lying about, it would come in very handy. You can see the point. My idea is,’ confided the uninhibited Betsey, ‘she should get it all worked out, then start going round taking the pictures. But she can’t carry all the equipment, cameras and such herself. So she’ll need an assistant.’

  ‘Yourself?’ suggested Mary.

  ‘Got it in one,’ remarked the maid. ‘But that depends on her – Miss Holmes, I should say – actually getting a case and getting on with it. And at the moment she’s turning people from the door – won’t talk to them, won’t answer letters from anybody asking for help. She just sticks in that laboratory all day, with smelly chemicals and that.’ She broke off. ‘Sorry, madam, I know you think I didn’t ought to be gabbling on like this. Only she’s worrying me – and it isn’t just because she’s around and about all day.’

  ‘And you and Mrs Digby have your own little routines.’

  ‘Right again, ma’am. No, it’s not just that – she seems to have lost a lot of her spirit.’

  ‘You’re right to speak to me, Betsey,’ Mary told her. ‘If you’re worried about your mistress it’s only sensible to tell a reliable friend, such as, I hope, I am.’

  ‘Oh, very much so, missis – sorry, madam,’ said Betsey. ‘If you could have a word with her it might help. And then perhaps you could also put in a word about me going along as a proper assistant to help with the equipment.’

  ‘I’ll see,’ Mary said. ‘In the meanwhile, give these eggs to Mrs Digby, with my compliments.’

  Alone in the sun-filled sitting-room, apart from the large Kravonian cat stretched across the top of the piano in a patch of sunlight, Mary pondered about her friend’s state of mind, decided to dismiss her washerwoman, who had again over-starched Dr Watson’s shirts and under-starched her own dresses, then wondered how Dr Watson, now in Paris, was faring, complete with over-starched shirts, in that sinful city. She much hoped their researches were not taking them into the dubious entertainments of Paris – to the Moulin Rouge, for example, where she had heard the dancers danced the can-can without benefit of any underwear other than stockings, garters and their many petticoats. As she brooded on this subject the parlour door opened and a well-set-up man with a head of tousled black hair and a darkly handsome face appeared in the entrance. He wore brown corduroy trousers and a shirt open at the neck. There was a red bandanna at his throat.

  ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I thought Miss Holmes was here.’ Then he quickly withdrew.

  Mary Watson thought no more of this incident, assuming Charlotte had called in an artisan to manage some repairs about the house. She was more concerned that, with the odours of a tasty lunch penetrating the parlour, Charlotte had still not arrived. Mary was on the verge of irritablity when Charlotte rushed in, some five minutes later. ‘Mary,’ she said, ‘I’m so late. Forgive me.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mary said. Charlotte, in a sprigged dress and wearing a straw hat on her head, looked, initially, very fresh and summery. But a closer scrutiny revealed, to the eyes of an observant friend, that her face was thin and drawn.

  As they sat down to lunch, Mary asked, ‘Charlotte, are you working too hard?’

  ‘Not at all,’ responded Charlotte.

  There was a chair at the end of the table, and a plate set there, with no cutlery.

  ‘It’s merely that you seem a little thinner.’

  ‘The heat, I expect,’ Charlotte told her. Yet, though they chatted as amiably as ever, Mary thought her friend not as confident and sunny-nat
ured as usual. However, Charlotte gave no clue that anything might be worrying her and Mary was too tactful to probe.

  Fish was served, one portion being placed on the third plate. It was at this moment that the black cat arrived, sprang up on the chair and began to take small pieces of fish from the plate with his paw.

  ‘I can’t stop him,’ Charlotte said. ‘If I try he just sits on the floor and yowls.’

  ‘Your cat’s habits do not disturb me, Charlotte, but do eat yourself,’ Mary urged. ‘Have you any news from Kravonia?’

  ‘Rudolph is coming here next week,’ Charlotte told her. ‘Perhaps we’ll make a visit to Scotland. I have a man doing some work on my laboratory to make a portion of it into a more satisfactory dark room. It seems a good idea to go away until the work’s completed.’

  ‘London is tiring in hot weather,’ agreed Mary. ‘Scotland would be much more refreshing. I met your workman, I believe, just before you returned.’

  ‘Did you?’ Charlotte asked sharply. ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, here of course,’ replied Mary, disconcerted by her tone. ‘He put his head round the parlour door, briefly, looking for you, I believe.’

  ‘He really shouldn’t be wandering about the house,’ Charlotte said abstractedly. ‘And how are John and Sherlock getting on in Paris?’

  ‘I was hoping you might have some news. Tell me, are your photographic studies compensating you for not actively being involved in the case of Nancy Flood?’

  ‘Amply,’ Charlotte said, somewhat ruefully, it seemed to Mary. ‘I promised myself not to become involved, but strangely enough – ’ She broke off, saying, ‘Well, never mind. I do hope John will be returned to you shortly. I take it there’s no news of the Great Marvo, alias Gustave Lebon, who disappeared just after the shooting of Nancy, thus breaking his engagement at the Hackney Empire?’ She considered for a moment, adding, ‘A handsome man, Marvo, or Lebon, as I suppose one should call him.’