by A S Croyle
My aunt loved such games and she and Uncle were quite good at it, but I had failed miserably each time I tried. Brows furled, my nose in a pinch, I tried for several minutes to work it out. I heard Sherlock say, “What’s keeping you, Poppy? I am famished.”
I looked up and then held the note out to him. “It’s a game Aunt Susan is forcing me to play to find a gift. A riddle of sorts.”
He took the note. “Ah, yes. Doublets. I’ve heard of this.” He took a pen from his pocket and scribbled on the back of the note. A few moments later, he said, “Ah! I’ve got it.” He handed the note back to me. He’d written the following words: Noel, Angel, Carol, Song, Sing, King. So he’d taken the ‘e’ from Noel and used it in the word Angel; then he took the ‘a’ in Angel and used it in the word Carol. And so on.
“King?” I asked. “But I’m to use only Christmas words.”
“Isn’t Christ the King? As in King and Queen. Components of the game of chess. I believe you are receiving a chess set. Look there, in the large box on the left.”
I quickly opened the largest present. Inside was a beautiful chess set made of ebony and ivory with another note. “You do not do very well on the ebony and ivory in this room. Perhaps you shall excel at this pastime. I look forward to the challenge.”It was signed ‘Uncle Ormond.’
“Oh!” I cried. “Oh, my heavens. Sherlock, do you play?”
“I have a time or two.”
“Splendid. We shall have a game after dinner.”
“If you don’t hurry along, I shall be dead before your Uncle carves the goose.”
I told them about my patients during dinner. “My last patient reminded me of Fantine and Cosette,” I said.
“Who?” Sherlock asked.
“The mother and daughter in Les Miserables.”
He looked totally mystified.
“The novel by Victor Hugo about the French Revolution. Have you not heard of it? It was just published here in London. Fantine is forced into prostitution when she loses her job so that she can support her daughter Cosette. My patient has a little girl. She was as thin as a rail and came to me because of a cough and other symptoms. I am wondering if she has consumption like Fantine did. Maybe I misdiagnosed her. Consumption causes weight loss, fever, and a cough. But I blamed it on the fog.”
“Laënnec died from it,” Uncle said.
“Laënnec?” Sherlock asked. Suddenly he was interested in the conversation. “The man who invented the stethoscope?”
“Yes, and he used it to support his findings about pulmonary diseases before he died,” Uncle explained. “If this young woman is suffering from consumption rather than bronchitis, she needs to go to a sanitorium. One just opened in Falkenstein... it’s a place where patients can rest and get fresh air and their food intake can be monitored.”
“I don’t know anything about her, Uncle. She said her name is Penelope Potash but I don’t know where she lives. But she promised to return for more vibratory treatments for a female problem.”
“Hopefully she will return soon, then,” Uncle said. “If she suffers from this illness, time is of the essence.”
Then the conversation drifted, of course, to the fog, always the fog.
“I just heard today from my friend Dr. Mitchell.” Uncle said. “He’s compiling statistics to submit an article to the Journal of the Scottish Meteorological Society. The penny post is a marvelous thing, isn’t it? We can give each other updates almost daily on statistics regarding mortality rates as well as atmospheric measurements that Sherlock provides. Dr. Angus Smith has been measuring the noxious qualities in the air near Manchester as well. He has an uneasy feeling about the situation.”
“I have also,” Michael said. “Most expect it to linger for several more weeks. And if the fog does not abate-”
“Many more will die,” I croaked, tossing my napkin on my half-eaten dinner.
“I hope that this horrible weather does not adversely affect Her Majesty,” Michael said. “She is getting up in years.”
“She is but sixty,” Sherlock said.
“Which is not young,” Michael replied.
“I plan to live to be a hundred. Or forever!” Sherlock answered.
“At any rate, I hope she does not fall ill,” Michael said.
“Nor do I,” I said. “I do not relish the thought of Prince Edward becoming King just yet.”
“You besmirch the Prince?”Michael asked.
“While I wish she had not withdrawn from public life after Prince Albert’s death,” I said, “it certainly shows the depth of her love and commitment, whereas her son is an adulterer. He has not inherited his mother’s moral fiber.”
“Poppy!” Uncle said. “Those are rumours.”
“Oh, I think it is more than rumour. The prince has built a little love nest for his mistress, Lily Langtry,” I retorted. “Oscar Wilde knows her and he told me of this.”
Michael shrugged. “They are royalty,” he said. “They are different.”
“Why? Why are they different? And why should we look the other way? I shall not apologize for the fact that it bothers me that there are so many poor and homeless and wretched on London’s streets and the monarchy does so little about it. They are privileged. They are born privileged. I have far more respect for the commoner who pulls himself up by his bootstraps and carves out a living or manages to get a good education despite the odds against it. Like Uncle.”
“You have concerns about the prince, Poppy,” Uncle said. “About his disregard for his wife’s feelings and the Crown’s reputation... I understand that,” Uncle said. “But unfaithfulness does not necessarily equate to an inability to rule justly. Though the Prince may suffer from some moral ambiguity, this does not mean he abandons fairness and justness. People cannot be neatly nor uniformly sorted into kind, tolerant, and trustworthy on one side, and lying, venal, unfaithful and bigoted on the other. Mankind is complex. So the prince’s moral deficiencies and his ability to rule are separate issues.”
I wanted to agree with Uncle. I loved his humour, his intelligence, his wisdom and kindness... his ability to lift you with a word or his capacity to fell you with a look. The intransigence which made him the great surgeon that he was because he settled for nothing less than the highest standard. I loved his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I had learned a lot from him. But on this point I disagreed.
“Are they separate issues, Uncle? I think they are linked. I think that one’s moral compass guides an individual in all things, and if good judgment is lacking in one place, then it may also be deficient in another.”
My dinner companions were saved from further discourse because Genabee brought dessert to the table. I think I saw all three of them heave a sigh of relief.
Sherlock joined me after dinner for a game of chess. I knew the rudiments of the game, but it became clear quite quickly that it would take a long time to excel at it. I admitted this to Sherlock, who said, “To excel in chess is the mark of a scheming mind. You are too altruistic to be much of a schemer, Poppy.”
I set about to prove him wrong, of course, but in no time he bested me. He castled the King’s rook and announced, “Mate in two moves.”
I mentally retraced his last several moves. Uncle undoubtedly would have known how to keep Sherlock from being able to castle on the King’s side. With a huff, I laid down my queen and crossed my arms.
“What are you doing?”
“Conceding,” I groaned.
He tipped over the king and said, “You don’t lay down the queen. You lay down the king. Another game?” he asked, grinning.
I shook my head. “Absolutely not!”
Michael came into the library with two glasses of sherry and handed them to us. He
sat down next to Sherlock. “I received a letter from Victor. He heard from a friend of his in the military that things are heating up in Afghanistan. His friend is a doctor who had just set up a charitable dispensary in Kabul. It sounds very bad. Syphilis, leprosy, especially amongst the Hazaras. And many other diseases like asthma. The hospital was ransacked, but we have regained control and apparently it will be up and running again by next month. They have treated a number of wounded as well.”
Sherlock abruptly excused himself and I turned to Michael. “What of your friend John? The doctor who went off to Netley last year?” I asked. “Have you heard from him?”
“Oh, yes, Watson. He wrote that he expects to join the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers or the 66th Berkshire Regiment.”
Sherlock returned with a small package and gave it to Michael.
“What is this, Sherlock?” Michael asked.
“Something I picked up at Morse Hudson’s gallery. A small picture frame. I thought perhaps you could frame a photo for your son.”
Michael’s face shown his surprise. “That was very thoughtful, Sherlock. Thank you.”
Sherlock waved in the air. “Do go on. I did not mean to interrupt.”
Michael looked down.
“What is it, Michael?”
“According to my friend John, they are about to deploy to Kandahar. And Ayub Khan hates the British and wants to expel them completely and set himself up as the Amir. Things could get very ugly.”
“I shall pray for him.”
Perhaps because Sherlock could see that I was uncomfortable with this talk of the war, he said, “Let us not engage in discussion on the follies of mankind over land, religion, title and profit. Poppy, let’s talk about the swans.”
Chapter 6
Having no idea what Sherlock was talking about, exhausted from the day and with an early call to duty in the morning, Michael bid us good night and went upstairs to the guest room.
“So,” I said, “swans.”
“Yes, swans. I finished testing the blood of the swan in the lab. It was, in fact, poisoned before it was slaughtered. The Queen may rest easy tonight. It died a merciful death.”
“How so?”
“My chemical analysis revealed the presence of Datura stramonium. The swan was drugged with it.”
“Datura... is that deadly nightshade, Sherlock?”
“Yes. Datura is a genus of nine species of poisonous vespertine flowering plants which belong to the family Solanaceae. It’s known as devil’s trumpets, moonflowers,
Jimsonweed, devil’s weed, hell’s bells, thornapple, and many more. It’s rather like Shakespeare said in Romeo and Juliet... a rose by any other name.”
“You’ve read Romeo and Juliet?” I gasped.
“My mother forced it upon me,” he grunted. “I believe the swans were drugged with thornapple.”
“Are you sure? Thornapple here? In England?’
“Granted, it is rarely found here. It originates in South and Central America, but it will grow in any open, sunny situation. It flourishes in moderately good soil, but it does best in rich calcareus soil or good sandy loam with leaf mould added. But it has shown up in southern England in rich, waste ground usually near gardens. Sometimes it is planted here in private gardens as an ornamental plant, and it does have a history here, Poppy. It was cultivated in London towards the close of the sixteenth century. In fact,” he said, tapping his head while he paused to think, “King Henry VIII was well-known for his medicinal concoctions. This plant may have grown in his herbal gardens. Some may be lurking near the royal household itself. It was often present in gardens devoted to plants used in medieval magic.”
“Magic?”
“Yes. As you said, it occurs more rarely herein England. It was first imported from Central America to Italy and then to southwestern Europe. In early times, the thornapple was considered an aid to the incantation of witches, and during the time of the witch and wizard mania here, it was unlucky for anyone to grow it in his garden.
“To some, it can be very appealing, I suppose,” he admitted.”The buds are a pale, luminous yellow and pure white trumpet flowers when it’s in full bloom. The flowers open in the evening and they emit a powerful fragrance.”
“Hence, the term deadly nightshade. But wouldn’t animals be repelled by the disagreeable odour?”
“Moths are attracted to it but yes, browsing animals would turn away and refuse to eat it. Accidents do occur, however. Children have become deathly ill when they eat the half-ripe seeds, which have a sweet taste. So, if the seeds were mixed with something else or dipped into something... what do swans eat?”
“Aquatic vegetation, which they eat while swimming... like underwater plants and algae,” I explained. “Grasses found along the banks. They will eat small insects and cultivated grains in open fields. People sometimes feed them bread, corn, grain, oats. They like brown rice, lentils, split peas and smallish seeds.”
“Seeds,” he repeated. “And what would be toxic to them?”
“Chocolate. That can be fatal to a swan. Also salt. Apple seeds because apple seeds contain trace amounts of cyanide. Let’s see, what else? Uncooked beans. Mushrooms cause digestive upset, and even liver failure. Caffeine and alcohol. And some stems and vines and leaves are highly toxic. Like the leaves of the nightshade variety. Even tomato leaves are toxic to them.”
“So,” Sherlock said, rubbing his chin, “if one fed swans the leaves of the thornapple... or seeds...”He paused, lost in thought for a moment. “I read one case... a child, a toddler, swallowed a hundred seeds. He started to act like an intoxicated person. Then he started to vomit, his pupils dilated, and then he lost his voice and the ability to swallow. He died within twenty-four hours. Another person, an adult, consumed a similar amount and died within seven hours. Another ingested an alcoholic decoction of the seeds and rapidly fell into a coma. So now imagine a very large dose fed to a swan.”
“But it’s poison. How is that merciful, Sherlock?”
“Because a swan that ingested a large amount of such a concoction would lapse into a coma and die very, very quickly. I found seeds and leaves throughout the entire length of the intestines.”
“Dear God.”
“So you see how I have reached my conclusion. I believe that the swan... likely all of the swans were poisoned prior to the mutilation. I think first off, the person knows a great deal about the creature. Second, he has access or knows how to gain access; and, third, he does care about them. But he has a grievous dispute with Her Majesty.”
“What do we do now?”
“We?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and turning his lips into a gentle smile. “I thought you didn’t care about the swans.”
“I never said that, Sherlock. The swans are lovely creatures. But I do care more about people.”
“I must talk to everyone in Her Majesty’s Royal Household,” he said. “To the Keeper of the Swans, of course, but everyone else I can interview, everyone from the Master of the Barge to the Paymaster at Buckingham.”
“The Paymaster?”
“One Mr. T. C. March, so Mycroft tells me. Who knows? Perhaps someone was shorted his compensation.”
“Sherlock, hundreds of people serve in Her Majesty’s royal household. You cannot possibly speak to all of them.”
“Poppy, I can leave no stone unturned.”
“I thought you did not care about the swans.”
“I do not - per se. But it’s not about the swans. It is about the case, dear Poppy, the case.”
Chapter 7
Over the next several weeks, more dead swans appeared and Sherlock continued to interrogate half the Queen’s household. The pernicious effects of the fog lingered still longer, so I continued to treat patients, including the mystery lady who said her name was Penelope Potash, a n
ame I was certain was false because of the way she’d stumbled over it. She came only for the ‘female treatments,’ as she called them, and claimed her bronchial issues were better, but she was still reed thin and coughed a great deal. I spoke to her about going to a sanitorium or seeking a specialist’s help, but she would have none of it. “I don’t have Her Majesty’s income,” she would always reply.
Often as I made my way to and from my office to home, Regent’s Park was enshrouded, as if fixed by some supernatural influence. The prodigiously large volume of the deathly mist that floated from every chimney and factory in and near London was held in a kind of thralldom by oleaginous ingredients.
The worst day of all was 26 January, when a thick, slow moving fog draped over the city. Over the next three days, almost twelve thousand lives were lost. In the seven weeks that followed, according to Uncle’s friend Dr. Mitchell, the number of fatalities due to the fog was astounding: 1754, 1780, 1900, 2200, 3376, 2495, and 2106.
As I was busy with patients and Sherlock was busy with swans - and, I was about to discover, many other things - I did not see Sherlock again until the end of March when he asked me to have lunch with him. Though the fog had abated to some degree, it was still a struggle to keep the soot from one’s clothes. The grime, the obstinate black mixture saturated everything. Uncle had even covered the keyholes of the house with metal plates in an attempt to keep it out.
I did not want to be late, so I set out a bit early to make my way through the pea soup to Simpsons Grand Divan Tavern where I’d agreed to meet Sherlock.
Formerly, it was Simpsons-in-the-Strand, and Sherlock had a penchant for the place these days, because it was well-known as a chess club and coffee house. It had transitioned to the continental preference for haute cuisine, and now boasted lavish décor and a host of waiters. But remnants of its humble beginnings and a plethora of chess memorabilia remained. Master Cook Thomas Davey delighted the customers with his bill of fare, especially wheeling a roast beef to the patrons. In the early days, I’d have been out of place, for this had been a place for gentlemen to smoke cigars with their coffee, browse the daily journals, indulge in long conversations about politics, and sit on the establishment’s comfortable divans while they played. Chess matches were played against other coffee houses in the Metropolis and top-hatted runners carried the news of each move. Sherlock called Simpson’s a ‘poor-man’s version” of the Diogenes Club, the private gentleman’s club where his brother Mycroft spent much of his time. Mycroft Holmes was the supreme and indispensable brain-trust of the British government, full of government secrets, and we were well aware that the Diogenes was likely some kind of façade at which government officials shared intelligence with those, and only those, in Mycroft’s inner circle.