Mrs Hudson and the Spirits’ Curse

by Martin Davies

  Watson was examining the box, a small square object of polished wood inlaid with an intricate pattern. Two small holes had been punched through its lid.

  ‘Some sort of tropical timber, Holmes. It would appear the curse …’

  ‘Nonsense, Watson! Although these events justify Moran’s fears, it was a hand made of flesh and blood that punched those holes and a human hand that dispatched it to Carruthers.’

  He turned to Gregory, his eyes full of bright energy. ‘As you correctly surmised, Inspector, Dr Watson and I know something of this case already. I shall be happy to lay the facts before you. But first there are two men who must be warned of tonight’s events at the earliest opportunity. A moment’s delay may cost them their lives. Unfortunately I have only a forwarding address for one of them. Would you be so kind as to dispatch a man immediately to the offices of the Rangoon & Occident Shipping Line? They are holding mail for one Nathaniel Moran. It is imperative that his whereabouts are discovered and that he is informed of what has occurred here tonight.’

  ‘Please, sir!’ Timid though I was, I felt it important to intervene.

  ‘Not now, Flottie. Watson, can I ask you to take the news at once to Neale at Brown’s Hotel? Warn him that he is likely to be the target of a similar attempt. And make haste. The man’s life is at stake.’

  ‘Of course, Holmes. I’ll go at once.’ He indicated the heavy wooden chest he had brought with him. ‘Shall I …?’

  ‘I will have one of Gregory’s men return it to Baker Street. Your enthusiasm is admirable but I hardly think this it is appropriate to conduct experiments at a moment such as this.’

  ‘Please, sir …!’ I tried again.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Holmes smiled benevolently. ‘You must go with Watson, my girl. Now, if you will all excuse me, I always prefer to analyse the data while it is still fresh. I shall return to Baker Street on foot and give these matters my careful consideration.’

  The next twenty minutes or so passed in a blur; a last fleeting look at the murder scene before the body was moved, a hasty passage through the soft corridors to the hotel lobby, some last rushed words with Gregory and then a fretting wait while a cab was sought. It was not until Dr Watson and I were in motion, a cabbie rushing us dazedly through the night, that I had another chance to express my concerns.

  ‘Dr Watson, sir, Mrs Hudson says that Mr Moran lives in New Buildings in Portman Street. If it is very urgent to contact him …’ Now that we were safely on our way and there was a moment to relax a little I noticed that the doctor’s head had begun to nod and his breathing was becoming heavy.

  ‘Dr Watson?’

  ‘Er, what?’ He looked slightly alarmed. ‘Oh, yes. Mrs Hudson. Of course.’ He took my hand and patted it fondly. ‘Mrs Hudson is a very fine woman, Flottie. Must have misunderstood. Chap told me himself he didn’t have an address.’

  And with that he settled his head back and shut his eyes. He still held my hand and now he gave it another pat.

  ‘I knew a girl like you once, Flotsam. Out in India. Long time ago. Eighteen, she was. Used to wear her hair up like you did tonight. Vicar’s daughter. Beautiful when she laughed. Died of a fever in Peshawar in ‘82. Still think of her though. Dashed shame. Such a dashed shame …’

  The doctor’s head drooped again and somehow, for all the danger to Mr Moran, it seemed wrong to bring him back to the rushing, turbulent present.

  *

  Our arrival found Brown’s in a state of genteel repose. Although lights still burned on the ground floor only the to-and-fro of the doorman, like the breathing of a gentle sleeper, gave any indication of life. His progress was interrupted by our headlong arrival, and he leapt to attention as the cab pulled up, then held open the door with a smart salute while Dr Watson handed me down. Inside, the profusion of red and gold was oddly reminiscent of the hotel we had just left, but here there was none of the unwonted activity we had found in Knightsbridge. However Dr Watson struck the bell with such urgency that in a few minutes the manager himself had been roused and, accompanied by a liberal assortment of staff, was greeting us with a respectful bow.

  ‘I have heard something of your work with Mr Sherlock Holmes, sir. If Brown’s can offer any assistance …’

  ‘It is imperative that I speak to Mr Neale at once. Please show me to his room. It is a police matter of great urgency. I would also be obliged if you would ensure that no other callers for Mr Neale are allowed past the lobby until Inspector Gregory of Scotland Yard has interviewed them.’

  ‘Of course, sir. If you will allow me one moment …’ and with another small bow he retreated to the desk where the hotel’s large leather register rested.

  Watson turned to me with a frown. ‘Heaven send that we are in time, Flotsam. To think that only yesterday Carruthers was telling me of the threat that hung over him. He was right to be afraid, Flottie. There’s devilry at work tonight.’

  Over at the desk, the manager was conversing animatedly in undertones with a uniformed young man, his face troubled and his hands gesturing nervously. ‘Dr Watson, sir,’ he said, advancing with a nervous cough. ‘It seems there is some mistake. Mr Neale checked out an hour ago, shortly after receiving Mr Holmes’s message.’

  ‘Mr Holmes’s message?’ For a moment Watson looked puzzled, then his expression changed and the colour began to drain from his face. ‘Good God, sir! There was no message from Mr Holmes! I have been with him myself for the last hour or more. Tell me what has happened!’

  The uniformed young man shuffled forward meekly, flushing as the eyes of the room fixed upon him. ‘If you please, sir, someone came with a message for Mr Neale from Mr Sherlock Holmes. She was most insistent that it was delivered straightaway, despite it being so late. Said it would cost her half a crown if it wasn’t and she wasn’t going away till he got it. She made a right racket. I mean a great deal of noise, sir.’

  ‘She? It was a woman?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A flower seller, sir. Had a few flowers in her basket and one of them squashy shapeless hats. Said a gent had given her half a crown to deliver an urgent note to Mr Neale and promised her another one, to be collected from Baker Street tomorrow, if he got it before dawn.’

  ‘Great heavens! What did she look like? Would you recognise her again?’

  The young man looked concerned. ‘I don’t rightly know that I would, sir. She was rather ordinary, sir. Not a young woman, sir, a bit untidy, a bit shapeless, you know the sort, sir. You walk past that sort on every street corner. Normally, I’d have sent her on her way, but the note coming from Mr Holmes, sir …’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘No, sir. It was written on the note. ‘From Mr Sherlock Holmes. Urgent.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I sent the note up, sir, then tried to move the woman on. But before she’d gone, sir, Mr Neale came running down in a right state. Breathless, he was, and eyes open really wide. “Where is she?” he shouted. He caught her up at the door and the two exchanged a few words. And that was it, sir. He came straight over and settled his bill and he was gone inside half an hour. It was all so sudden I forgot to tell him about the parcel.’

  ‘The parcel?’ Dr Watson and I exchanged startled looks.

  ‘Yes, sir. A lad arrived with a parcel for Mr Neale at about nine o’clock. A tough looking type he was. Asked for the parcel to go right up, but Mr Neale had left instructions not to be disturbed so I told him it would have to wait till morning. Turned quite nasty, he did. Swore and cursed, but he wouldn’t leave the parcel. Said Mr Neale wanted it urgently and that I’d just talked myself out of a job.’

  ‘My God!’ Dr Watson was badly shaken. ‘Flotsam, we are too late! Their first plan failing, they hit upon another. That note was Neale’s death sentence!’ And with a groan of honest anguish, he sank, head in hands, into a chair of exquisitely upholstered cinnamon leather.

  *

  It was a weary journey home through the bitter lees of the night. The city had turned an in
determinate grey and when we reached Baker Street the rain had become a sporadic sooty sleet that would have stained all it touched had its predecessors not already done so. Even the cheerful lights still burning in our windows did little to alleviate our gloom. As we mounted the stairs in solemn silence, my body ached and I longed for sleep. But Sherlock Holmes was waiting for us at the top of the stairs, his eyes alight with restless energy.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded sharply when we reached the landing. ‘What news? I expected you before this.’

  ‘I have let you down, Holmes,’ muttered Watson. ‘Neale is gone, tricked from his hotel in your name and vanished into the night.’

  Briefly, in terse, weary sentences, Watson told him what we had found, while I stood beside him swaying slightly, too cold to listen and too tired to despair. Holmes had become still, the vitality draining from him as he heard Watson’s tale.

  ‘They could tell us little more, Holmes. A common-looking woman and a rough-looking man. We shall find neither. Neale is surely dead.’

  Before Holmes could reply, a voice cut through the darkness from the kitchen door.

  ‘What nonsensical creatures you gentlemen are! There’s a young girl dead on her feet and you two wringing your hands about things there’s no changing. You should be thoroughly ashamed.’ Mrs Hudson was advancing on us out of the darkness with bustling energy and the same formidable combination of nightdress and overcoat that she had sported earlier. In her hands she held a small envelope and a large blanket, and it was only after she had nudged Mr Holmes to one side and wrapped the latter tightly around my shoulders that she deigned to offer him the former.

  ‘This arrived tonight, sir, after you had all gone out. I thought it could wait till morning, but since we’re all up … Now, Flottie, into the kitchen and out of those things. Whatever these gentlemen may think, there’s more folk perish from the cold than die from Oriental curses.’

  And with that I was once more whisked into a kitchen where the warm orange firelight defied the encroaching dawn and the smell of cloves curled round the kitchen from a promising pot on the stove.

  But my night was not quite over. As Mrs Hudson put me to bed, a part of my mind was trying to fight the rising tide of sleep.

  ‘I found a snake,’ I told her dizzily. ‘It was under a footstool. The footstool was made of dark wood and pink satin.’

  ‘You can tell me in the morning, Flotsam.’

  ‘But we didn’t warn Mr Moran, ma’am. I tried but Dr Watson fell asleep. He was dreaming of a girl with hair like mine.’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Flottie.’

  ‘But they tricked Mr Neale. He must be dead by now.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Flotsam. Mr Neale’s alive and well and tucked up in a boarding house in St Pancras. Now you need to sleep. And if you want something to think about, think about this: tomorrow I’m arranging your first chemistry lesson.’

  The Guard Watch

  †

  It is perhaps an unnatural child that sleeps untroubled within hours of attending a scene of violent death, but it was fully eight o’clock before I awoke on the following morning. Even then it was not a harrowing memory of the previous night that first filled me but a panicking realisation that, in Mrs Hudson’s household, to sleep beyond six on consecutive mornings was not so much a sin as an acceptance of inevitable perdition. Nevertheless, Mrs Hudson was unconcernedly washing the gentlemen’s breakfast things when I emerged and she greeted me with an almost approving nod.

  ‘For a girl not too fond of the dark, you’ve taken to spending a lot of time running around at the dead of night, young Flotsam.’ She paused for a moment to attack a darkened pot with a sudden flurry of vigour. ‘However, today we’re going to get back to normal. There is work enough for ten to be done this morning, errands galore for the afternoon and tomorrow you and I are going out into society so an early night wouldn’t do either of us any harm. In the meantime, get yourself some breakfast and while you eat it I want to hear every little detail about last night’s goings-on.’

  And so I told her everything, from the colour of the cows in the painting to the dark blue and pale blue markings on the dead snake. I was glad of my diligence because the examination proved searching.

  ‘And where exactly was the wooden box, child?’

  ‘Under a small table near the upturned footstool, ma’am.’

  ‘Near the door?’

  ‘No, ma’am, on the other side of the room. Near the bedroom.’

  ‘Describe it to me.’

  ‘It was made of dark wood with white inlay in a pattern like the one on the front of the Mecklenberg Hotel, all squirls and squiggles.’

  ‘What did the gentlemen say about it?’

  ‘Dr Watson told me he thought it was from Java, ma’am. They were all quite sure it was from those parts.’

  ‘Hmm … You say it was only half unwrapped. Was the paper around it arranged so that it might have hidden the design of the box from the person who opened it?’

  ‘No, ma’am. The pattern was clear to see.’

  ‘And it was delivered when?’

  ‘At about half past eight, ma’am. That’s what Inspector Gregory told us as we were leaving. He says the boy remembers taking it up.’

  ‘Isn’t it all a bit strange, Flottie?’

  I considered for a moment. ‘It’s all very strange, ma’am. But do you mean it was strange that the box had been unwrapped?’

  ‘Strange that it was opened at all, Flottie. We are to assume that Mr Carruthers lived consumed by fear of a vengeance from overseas. We know from Dr Watson that he really was afraid, so much so that it was obvious to the most casual observer. Yet on receiving a box that was clearly Oriental in origin, he showed no hesitation in opening it and he took no precautions against what it might contain. Is that likely, Flottie?’

  I imagined the course of events as Mrs Hudson had described them - the box arriving, Carruthers opening the paper and seeing the design, stepping back in horror.

  ‘Perhaps he dared to open it because he wasn’t alone, ma’am. Or perhaps there was a note inside the paper that reassured him.’

  ‘But the door, Flottie.’

  ‘Locked from the inside, ma’am. So he must have been alone. And we didn’t find a note.’ I ran through it all, imagining the scene again and again. ‘Could it have been that he was just swept along, ma’am? I mean that he knew there was danger but opened the box just because he couldn’t help himself?’

  Mrs Hudson nodded slowly. ‘You are very astute, Flottie. It could have happened as you say. Or it could be,’ she continued after directing another energetic burst of scrubbing at one of the heavy iron pans, ‘it could be that he was afraid of something else altogether.’

  She finished the pan with a flourish and turned to face me. ‘You did very well faced with such a terrible scene, Flottie. Tell me what happened when you left the hotel.’

  I described our journey to Mayfair and repeated the story of the young man who had dealt with Mr Neale’s callers. It was only as I was talking that I found myself recalling her last words to me the night before.

  ‘But, ma’am, last night you told me where he was …’

  I tailed off, suddenly aware of a fractional quiver on the edge of her lips.

  ‘A common-looking woman indeed!’ she tutted contentedly, and I found my eyes drifting to a large bunch of carnations that lay on the window sill. Mrs Hudson allowed the quiver to wriggle into the trace of a smile.

  ‘Well, Flottie, it didn’t take a master detective to see Mr Neale was in danger, so after I’d got you all out of the house I took the precaution of removing him from Brown’s to somewhere a little less conspicuous. I may perhaps have dressed down a little before doing so, but there’s nothing to be gained from drawing attention to yourself and, after all, Mr Holmes is hardly likely to think it is my place to interfere.’

  ‘But what about the note?’

  ‘Oh, just something I rushed of
f on the way. I needed to make sure he would see me, and people seem to find anything with Mr Holmes’s name on it surprisingly persuasive. Once I had explained the danger he was in, he was only too happy to go with me. A distant cousin of mine runs a guest house near St Pancras so I left him there. Although he agreed to avoid all mention of me, I’m afraid he would insist on writing to Mr Holmes.’

  ‘Was that wrong, ma’am?’

  ‘He would do better to disappear completely, Flottie. As it is, I fear we’ll have our work cut out to look after him.’

  ‘On the contrary, Mrs Hudson, you look after me superbly,’ interrupted a voice from the kitchen doorway. The door had been ajar and now Mr Holmes’s head appeared there, his sharp features contrasting with the curve of the pipe that he flourished near his chin. ‘Indeed, I was commenting to Watson only the other day how fortunate we have been in securing your services. And your actions last night were further proof of your admirable qualities.’

  ‘Sir?’ Mrs Hudson was about to start polishing the silver but she stopped what she was doing and looked round sharply, her lips slightly pursed.

  ‘I refer of course to your quickness of thought in keeping the fires burning until our return. There are not many women, Mrs Hudson, who would have borne the disturbances of last night with such equanimity. At my previous lodgings, the landlady succumbed to hysterics whenever a murder was announced.’

  He came into the kitchen and perched on the edge of the table.

  ‘In recognition of your splendid fortitude, it is only right that I should share with you the contents of the note you took in last night. You will be relieved to know that it was from Mr Neale, who last night had the prescience to avoid his pursuers. He is currently at a rather common address in St Pancras.’

  Mrs Hudson, her sleeves peeled back from her forearms, had been about to begin the daily task of polishing the big silver candelabra. But she continued to hold it unpolished above the sink while a small frown appeared between her eyebrows.

  ‘He has sent you his address, sir?’

  ‘Indeed, Mrs Hudson. A most sensible precaution.’