She had told me about this place. In spring the churchyard was full of flowers. ‘I want to be buried amongst flowers,’ she had told me. But as it was still winter, I carried a bouquet of flamboyant hothouse roses. I believe she would have loved them.
But we were not the first. Though it was early, and damp and cold, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones and freezes your heart, others had got there before us – two men.
One was in his forties, fair, thinning brown hair blowing in the breeze, thin shoulders huddled into his black coat. The man beside him was older and taller. His hair was white, uncovered, his hat in his hand. His face was deeply lined, his hook nose prominent, and he looked as massive and ancient as the tombstones around him. He stood there, gazing at Emma’s grave. Judging by the younger man’s impatience, they had been there a while. I recognized the older man. I had seen pictures in the papers.
Lord Ernest Howe.
‘Wait,’ I whispered to Mary. Lord Howe did not move, nor speak. He had brought no flowers to lie on the grave. There was no expression on his face. He merely looked at Emma’s tombstone, but I could not tell what he was feeling.
The younger man looked up and whispered to Lord Howe. He looked up sharply and saw us.
‘Who are you?’ he commanded. This was not a man used to disobedience.
‘Mrs Hudson,’ I said, coming forward. ‘I was in hospital with Miss Fordyce. I wanted to pay my respects,’ I said, holding out my flowers.
He nodded.
‘I expect you’re wondering why we’re here,’ the younger man – obviously Lord Howe’s son – said, but Lord Howe interrupted him.
‘It’s none of their business why we’re here,’ he snapped.
‘We know she was your mistress,’ Mary said, coming forward. He demanded how, and she told him she had read it in a newspaper. He nodded.
‘Newspapers,’ he said sharply. ‘Bane of my life. I’m not ashamed. She was a fine woman. Everyone did it in my day.’
‘She told us stories,’ Mary said, trying to probe.
‘Not about me, I guarantee it,’ he said. Mary shook her head in agreement.
The younger man shifted nervously, but Lord Howe remained stock still. He glared at me. The man had power. I could feel it ripping across the graveyard. This was a man who not only got exactly what he wanted, but saw no reason why he should not.
‘So she told you things, did she?’ he said to me.
‘Not about you,’ I told him. He grunted, satisfied.
‘Very sensible of her,’ he said, looking down at the grave. ‘She was always sensible. Strong and clever too. Not like the milksops I married.’
‘One of those milksops was my mother,’ the boy snapped.
‘And look at her!’ Lord Howe snapped back. ‘Mad then dead. What was the point of her? I should have married Emma Fordyce.’
‘She’d never have had you,’ Mary said. ‘Nor any man.’
He laughed, once.
‘Well, can’t say I loved her. Never loved any woman,’ he said, but a quick glance at his son showed where the love had gone, obsessive and strong, invested in his heir. He glanced back at the gravestone. ‘But she is the only woman to give me a great gift.’
He nodded sharply, and the two men walked away into the fast-thinning mist, towards the river. I watched them go.
‘So that’s the son that cost so much,’ I said softly.
‘Dead wives and mad wives,’ Mary said. ‘No price too high for Lord Howe’s heir.’
‘No, no price . . .’ I murmured. ‘Unless it came as a gift.’
I laid the roses on Emma’s grave, and we walked back to the station.
‘Imagine you wanted a son,’ I said to Mary. ‘Not you as you are now, I mean you as a grand lord with a long line of ancestors.’
‘All right,’ Mary said.
‘You’ve married twice, and nothing has happened. Then you marry a third time, and this one is young and physically strong and likely to last a while and yet still no son.’
‘How long were Lord Howe and his third wife married?’
‘Ten years before the boy appeared. Listen. Suppose your mistress fell pregnant?’
‘Emma never said she had children.’
‘And then, let’s suppose,’ I continued, ‘that all three of you go away to the Continent at the same time – Italy, they were all in Italy.’
‘Everyone goes to Italy at some point,’ Mary objected, but I continued.
‘The mistress has the child, and hands him over to the lord and his wife, to raise as his own, as his heir.’
‘That’s . . . that’s . . . why would Lady Howe agree?’ Mary asked, stopping in the middle of the street. ‘Come to that, why would Emma agree?’
‘Emma never wanted children, and besides, the baby would have had a much better life with his father than his mother,’ I said quickly. ‘As for Lady Howe – she would have been too scared of Lord Howe to disagree. She had failed in her wifely duty.’
‘And the guilt of raising a child drove her mad?’ Mary asked. ‘She was supposed to have said the child was not hers . . .’
‘Maybe now, on her deathbed, Emma wanted to see her son,’ I speculated. ‘But that could destroy it all, and hence . . .’
‘Lord Howe had her killed,’ Mary said softly, then shook her head as if waking herself up. ‘No, this is ridiculous!’ she pronounced, walking on. ‘It sounds like a bad play.’
‘Years of living with Mr Holmes has taught me even the worst melodrama isn’t as ridiculous as real life can be,’ I replied.
We went back to 221b, Mary to the kitchen and me upstairs to have a doze before our second task.
I awakened when the door opened and Mrs Turner came in, carrying a tray, and with a black dress draped over her arm. She wished me good morning in her quiet voice, and laid the tray on the bed. (Scrambled egg – soft food for the invalid!)
‘Can I please try this dress on you, to make sure it fits?’ she asked.
‘Is that one of mine?’ I asked, surprised. It looked quite different – not in colour, but in style.
‘You lost some weight whilst you were ill, and I noticed your dresses were a little loose,’ she said, blushing fiercely. ‘I took the liberty of altering one to fit, if that’s all right. I can put it back . . .’
‘It’s perfect,’ I said quickly, getting out of bed and allowing her to slip it over my head. She had made the dress neat and smart, and updated it subtly, altering the cut to make me appear slimmer and a mite taller.
‘The bustle’s gone,’ I said.
‘No one will be wearing bustles by next year,’ she promised, as she hovered around the dress, pulling a thread here and seam there. She seemed more confident now she was focusing on the dress, and not me.
‘I’ll be ahead of fashion for once,’ I said, amused, as she pulled it off. ‘It fits perfectly, thank you.’
‘Not quite perfect,’ she said. ‘I’ll make a few alterations and get it back to you. I might fasten some lace to the neckline, if you have some?’
I nodded, and pointed to a drawer. As she drew the fine lace (given as a present and never worn) through her hands, I decided to take advantage of this more relaxed mood of hers. Obviously clothes were to her what was cooking was to me, and I was always at my best when cooking.
‘You were a lady’s maid, then,’ I said. Only lady’s maids and dressmakers could judge how a dress would fit by eye alone.
She nodded, holding a piece of lace up to the light.
‘I loved that work,’ she said softly. ‘If I could have had my son with me it would have been heaven.’
‘You came back for him though?’ I probed gently. She put the lace back and chose another piece.
‘The woman I’d been maid to died and left me enough money to open a little shop. I came back – and he was gone.’
She froze for a moment, staring into mid-air. I looked at her face, expecting to see tears, or a trembling lip, but she was as stone, every mus
cle in her straining, her expression utterly blank. Only her eyes were alive, staring into space, seeing something utterly beyond these four walls, something that tore at her inside, something she was struggling to control. Wherever she was, she was not here, and she suffered in utter silence. I thought I’d lost her, but after a moment she shook her head, as if shaking off the pain, and turned back to the lace. She’d had a breakdown, Mary said. Perhaps she was afraid if she expressed her pain, if only for a second, she’d break down again. She had to be strong for her boy. She had to control her feelings utterly.
‘The workhouse said you’d already taken him?’ I queried gently.
‘They did. Some woman turned up and claimed to be his mother, and she was allowed to take him. No questions asked. They were just glad to be rid of him. They’d have asked more questions if it’d been a man.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a man might claim a child to be his apprentice, or his servant. If that’s so, they want money. But what woman would take a child but his mother?’
So, a woman. A woman had taken him.
‘It had happened before,’ she said, laying the lace she had chosen against the dress. ‘I asked. I spent all my money asking people and paying them to tell me. I never got the shop. I just stood outside the workhouse all day, waiting for him to come back. May I use this?’ she said, holding up a small piece of very white lace.
‘Please do,’ I said. ‘You said she’d done it before?’
‘I found people: other mothers like me. They’d lost their sons, too. This woman just walked up and took them,’ she said, not looking away from the dress, as if the material in her arms was the only real thing in the entire world and all she had left to hold on to.
‘Did anyone see her? What did she look like?’ I asked, perhaps a little too eagerly.
She looked up slowly. ‘A woman. Just a grey-haired, nice old woman,’ she told me. ‘She looked like a mother.’
That was all I dare ask her. I didn’t want to upset her any more. She never said a word about it when she gave me the finished dress later. The lace collar was a perfect touch. I looked five years younger. She would have made a fortune in her shop.
Despite Grace’s disapproval, Mary and I left again, though this time I insisted we catch a cab for our second task of the day. Sarah Malone’s home was just at the other end of Regent’s Park, a brisk thirty-minute walk, but I was still tired from the day before. As Mary held out her hand for a cab, I pulled back.
‘Not the first one,’ I told her. ‘Nor the second one.’
‘That’s Sherlock’s rule for when he thinks he’s being followed,’ Mary commented. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I have no idea,’ I told her. I had felt a tingle on the back of my neck, just a slight one, as if someone was watching me steadily. But, when I turned to look, no one was there.
Well, I say no one. Baker Street was never entirely empty. A grocery boy was arguing with the telegraph boy. Several businessmen marched up and down, not as important as they thought they were. A one-legged veteran sold matches. A woman huddled up in a plaid shawl hurried along the street. Two of Wiggins’ boys were following a corpulent man with a gold watch-chain. A dainty woman in purple stepped around the horse manure as she crossed the street. A young woman swaddled in three shawls walked up and down selling ham sandwiches. ‘I thought someone was watching me.’
‘They’re more likely to be watching for Sherlock than us,’ Mary said reasonably. ‘Come on, here’s the third cab.’
I couldn’t shake the feeling though. As the cab turned out of Baker Street and into Park Road, I thought I saw a familiar face. I peered out of the window, but she had gone in a flash.
‘What?’ Mary asked. ‘Who did you see?’
‘Lillian Rose,’ I told her. The clever, wily prostitute I’d met when tracking down the blackmailer, half his victim, half his cohort. We’d sent her to Scotland. What was she doing back here, in London?
THE HOME OF SARAH MALONE
Again following Sherlock’s rules, we got off a few streets away from our final destination. As we strolled to Sarah’s house, taking the opportunity to see if we were being followed, or if anyone else had got there first, I looked around. We were on Henry Street, near the north end of the park.
‘I thought I knew this area,’ I said to Mary. ‘I used to own several houses here.’
‘Boarding houses?’
‘No, these were mostly homes I rented out. That was one of mine. And that one.’ I gestured to a three-storey dovegrey house, set back from the road, surrounded by a garden. It was one of the stylish, huge houses built during the Regency for newly rich families to entertain, but the family that had owned it had long ago lost their money, and the house. I had bought it very cheaply, though I had never really been able to find tenants for such a place. It had been a neat, clean house when I owned it. Now the ‘To Let’ board was lying in the ragged garden, covered by brown decaying leaves, and the house was dishearteningly silent.
‘Martha,’ Mary said, pulling my arm. I walked on, but something was niggling me about the house.
Sarah Malone, the woman who had died so agonizingly in the bed next to me, had never left my mind. Her suffering had been as much mental as physical, and her confession had lifted a great weight. I had to know what her secret was.
Mary had gone into the hospital records – with no trouble: apparently the clerks were quite ready to do anything for her – and found Sarah Malone’s address, as well as the fact that there appeared to be no next-of-kin. Whilst solicitors for the Crown searched for one, her home was left undisturbed.
As for how we’d get in, Mary had been taking lessons from a friend of Wiggins, and now had her own slim wallet of lock picks.
Sarah Malone’s home was in a tall, narrow building of red brick and white stone. It was pleasant, and quiet, and felt like the kind of place where people kept to themselves.
The front door opened quite easily, it had been left on the latch by a careless resident, and we walked up to the second floor to Sarah’s apartment. A young man passed us on the stair, but we simply carried on as if we had every right to be there, and nodded to him. He nodded back. Irene Adler had taught us that trick well.
Mary had been a good pupil, and we were through the door of the apartment in moments. It was a nice set of rooms, even now, when it was dusty and cold. The rooms were airy and light, and very neat. The front room was well-furnished, with a pretty green wallpaper and velvet curtains to match the seats, but looked unused. There were no books lying around, no sign of any meals, not even impressions on the cushions. It all looked as if it had been bought yesterday. We walked through to the bedroom.
This room was painted in plain white, the only decoration a crucifix hung above the bed. The bed itself was a narrow wooden one, and it creaked when I sat on it. Beside the bed on a cane chair lay a Bible and a prayer book.
‘It’s very simple,’ Mary said. ‘Like a maid’s room.’
‘Perhaps she was a maid at one time,’ I said, picking up the Bible and leafing through it. Nothing fell out. The pages seemed stiff, though they were cut. ‘Sometimes people from poor backgrounds who make good cannot sleep amongst luxury. They’ve grown too used to the servants’ room.’
Mary nodded. ‘She was religious. You said she prayed in hospital?’
‘She muttered all the time, I assumed it was prayers,’ I said, picking up the prayer book. ‘But newly religious, I think, or remembering the religion of her childhood. These books and the crucifix are new.’
‘Ah,’ Mary said, spotting the desk in the corner of the room. It was a beautiful piece of marquetry with a lid that dropped down to make a writing area. It seemed out of place in that sparse room, like a duchess in a nunnery. ‘Eureka.’
Mary opened the desk, and delved into various pigeonholes. She glanced through a bundle of letters then held them out to me.
‘References, I think,’ she said. ‘We’re right: according to these le
tters she was a lady’s maid.’
‘A good one, these references say,’ I said, as I read. ‘They were all sorry to lose her.’
‘Mrs Forrester, my last employer, said a good lady’s maid was worth her weight in gold.’
‘They can certainly earn a lot. She seems to have moved every two years, going up the social scale each time,’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’
Mary had pulled out some of the little drawers and was feeling around the back.
‘Desks like these always have a secret compartment,’ she explained, slightly breathlessly.
‘Try the drawer on the left,’ I suggested. ‘I had one of these desks too.’ Well, my mother did. She kept my father’s love letters in the secret compartment. I used to love to curl up under the desk and unwrap the faded ribbon and strain to read the pale writing.
‘Got it!’ Mary said, as a piece of wood popped out of the side of the desk, and another drawer slid out. There were letters in there too. Mary picked up the first one.
‘Well,’ she said, reading it. ‘That explains why she could afford an apartment like this.’
She held out the letter, and I read it. The handwriting was strong, but feminine.
Dear Miss Malone,
I am sorry to hear you are ill. I have arranged a bed for you in St Bartholomew’s hospital. It is quite a private room, and you will only be sharing with a few other ladies, of great probity and high class.
‘Well, most of them are like that. Emma Fordyce will be there. Remember her? We spent an entire summer years ago trying to puzzle out some of her secrets. She didn’t spill a drop. Well, she’s spilling now, pouring secrets like a waterfall. Get some for me, will you, dearest Sarah? Usual rates, of course.
Patrick West
‘Him again,’ Mary said, as I folded up the letter. ‘For a blind man, he writes a lot.’
The Women of Baker Street Page 13