The Women of Baker Street

by Michelle Birkby

It was a scrap about an inch wide, and three inches long. Not much, but possibly enough. I handed a cup of tea over to the inspector (milky, one sugar) as Holmes read the writing on the paper.

  ‘ “. . . do anything you ask, give you money, my body, my soul, do not tell my secr—” Well, we can imagine that last word is “secret”,’ he said, handing the paper back over. I gave him his tea (strong, only a splash of milk, three sugars). ‘The man’s clearly a blackmailer, then.’

  ‘Still a murdered man, Mr Holmes,’ Inspector Lestrade said. I held out the shortbread to him. He always loved my biscuits.

  ‘You assume murder where I can only see a possible murder,’ Mr Holmes snapped. ‘It could also be an accident, or even suicide.’ He took some of the shortbread.

  ‘No man burns himself to death,’ Inspector Lestrade insisted.

  ‘I’ve known cases,’ Mr Holmes said shortly. ‘Cases where the man’s guilt was so great he had to expiate it in the most painful way possible. Blackmail is vile. Blackmailers are the scum of the earth. If this man suddenly realized what he was, and felt the only way to pay for his crimes was to burn along with his papers, then I feel obliged to let him rest in whatever peace he can find.’

  I ought to have left, but I dared not. I wanted to not just hear. I wanted to see them too. Men can say one thing, and mean another. Words would not be enough this time, I needed to see their thoughts on their faces. I placed myself in the background of the dim, dark room, and listened. Mr Holmes saw me, standing behind Inspector Lestrade, but did not say a word. If he had merely glanced my way, I would have left, but he studiously ignored me.

  ‘And to be honest, if one of his victims had done the same to him,’ Mr Holmes continued, ‘I would not blame them, nor help you hunt them down.’

  Inspector Lestrade laughed uneasily.

  ‘That’s not an attitude that would go down well at Scotland Yard,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t work for Scotland Yard,’ Mr Holmes said. They stood there, these two men, close to being friends, on either side of a huge divide. Inspector Lestrade gave in first.

  ‘Well, well, we won’t argue over this,’ he said, handing the cup back to Mr Holmes, who handed it to me. ‘I’ve got other leads to follow.’

  ‘Follow them if you must,’ Mr Holmes said. ‘I think you’ll find it’s an accident in the end.’

  ‘Maybe. I just need to satisfy my curiosity,’ Lestrade said. ‘As you said, always check the cabs.’

  Cabs: I had taken a cab to the man’s house. The cab driver had sworn secrecy, thinking we were working for Mr Holmes, but would he tell his secret if the police questioned him?

  ‘Of course. Well, good night, Lestrade,’ Mr Holmes said, holding out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Lestrade shook it, then left before I had a chance to offer to see him out.

  ‘Well, it seems Lestrade is finally learning the lessons I’ve been endeavouring to teach him,’ Mr Holmes said dryly, before draining his tea cup. I set about replacing the crockery on the tray.

  ‘It had to be for this particular case, didn’t it,’ I said bitterly. ‘Maybe I . . .’

  ‘No,’ Mr Holmes as good as snarled. ‘I am right, aren’t I? He was a blackmailer?’

  ‘I thought you already knew?’

  ‘I knew some. Not all.’ It was an old trick of his that I heard him use a hundred times before. He would pretend to know more than he did, and then people would talk freely. I hadn’t quite fallen for it, I hoped.

  ‘Yes,’ I said softly. ‘He was a blackmailer, and of the vilest sort. Not just money, but power, and control. And a murderer too.’

  ‘Murder I can understand, usually. Blackmail never,’ Mr Holmes said. ‘Just to put my mind at ease, neither you nor Mrs Watson were . . .’

  ‘Victims? No,’ I reassured him. I smiled a little to myself. ‘Mary says we were “vengeance”.’

  ‘There’s a reason vengeance is always painted as a woman,’ he said, looking at me curiously, as if seeing something new. I stirred uneasily.

  ‘It was an accident, nothing more,’ I said, picking up the tray. ‘But I would rather not explain myself to Inspector Lestrade.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Holmes said, opening the door for me. ‘But I shall do my best to make sure he does not have reason to question you.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ I said.

  ‘Not kind,’ he said, snorting with a sudden burst of laughter. ‘Self-preservation. If Lestrade investigates you, he might move onto me next, and God knows what he’d find then.’

  A LITTLE BIT OF GOSSIP

  We’d arranged, via Grace, to meet Nora in a tea shop in the Strand that was supposed to have excellent cakes. All the way there I had sensed the same prickling on the back of my neck I had felt before. I saw no one follow me, yet I had the same uneasy awareness of my surroundings. It made me uncomfortable, and reminded me that people had died in this case. I had seen it. In fact, I remembered, I was possibly the only living witness, definitely the only reliable one, and certainly the only one currently out of hospital, and out on the streets daily. If this case had been Mr Holmes’, he would have insisted I be protected. Eventually, I decided not to ignore that feeling. Sending a telegram to Wiggins was done in an instant (he didn’t have an address, but all the telegram boys in Baker Street knew him) and only then was I able to judge properly the excellence of the cakes along with Nora’s deductions.

  The tea shop itself was a little crowded, but we found ourselves a secluded seat in the window. It was quite a charming little room, with red check curtains at the window, and bright, clean white tablecloths. The waitresses bustled about in mobcaps and print dresses – someone’s idea of healthy country girls – and steam rose reassuringly from the floral tea pots. The cakes, on delicate silver stands, were small, but perfect, and there was a wide choice of them. I was reassured to see none of the cakes was too brightly coloured, which should mean their colouring was natural, not some harsh, possibly poisonous, dye. It was still morning, but the light outside was dim. The window ran with condensation, and it was difficult to see clearly who was on the street.

  ‘Do you still think we’re being followed?’ Mary asked, as she perused the bill of fare whilst waiting for the sisters.

  ‘I think so,’ I told her. ‘It’s just a feeling really.’

  ‘Well, I trust your feelings. Who do you think it is?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I admitted. ‘It could be anyone.’

  I wiped the condensation away from the window so I could see outside. The Strand was, as usual, crowded with people of all kinds, businessmen marching to Charing Cross, ink-stained journalists hurrying to Fleet Street, harassed women shopping, running into tea shops to shelter from the cold, street children weaving in and out of the crowds, occasionally into people’s pockets, stolid policemen strolling up and down. The tea room itself was full of women, from the very well-dressed, very loud sort ordering as many cakes as caught their eye to the quieter, poorer women spending carefully saved pennies on one cake and cup of tea for a treat.

  ‘But I’ve telegraphed Wiggins,’ I said. ‘I have an idea.’

  That was when Grace and Nora arrived, Grace supporting Nora. Both had changed out of their nurses’ uniforms but were wearing plain grey almost like a uniform. Nora looked pale, with a bandage over her forehead.

  Grace helped Nora sit opposite me and she herself sat anxiously beside her sister. Now they were together, I could see the difference. Not just that Nora was taller or Grace had slightly dissimilar eyes. It was the way they carried themselves: Nora, even now, with her head held high, ready to take on the world; Grace merely happy to take the world as it was.

  A pot of tea and a plate of cakes arrived as I was asking Nora how she was, and she was assuring me that she was recovering nicely and would be back to work in a week. The hospital had investigated the incident and decided that it must have been one of the patients that attacked her, in a moment of disorientation.

  ‘I’ve accepted that
as it means I can go back to work, but I don’t believe it,’ Nora said, peering at the cakes. ‘Oh, there’s no lemon.’

  ‘Martha can make you a lovely lemon cake,’ Mary said, as she took a huge bite of a cream bun. ‘Who do you think attacked you?’ she asked, with her mouth full. Nora frowned, and took a slice of Victoria sponge.

  ‘It wasn’t the other night nurse, she was on her tea break on the other side of the hospital. I know it can’t have been Sister Bey, because I saw her in the other ward just before I was attacked,’ she said. ‘And I asked the other staff, they didn’t see her leave. But I do think that whoever attacked me had something to do with her.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

  ‘Nora’s never liked her, have you?’ Grace said, pouring her sister’s tea. ‘She never does any of the work.’

  ‘Well, that’s not why I don’t like her,’ Nora qualified. ‘I mean, she doesn’t give medicine or straighten out beds or talk to patients or empty bedpans, but she’s the sister, she doesn’t have to do all that. I’m not sure why I don’t like her, really. I just know I feel tense whenever she’s around.’

  ‘There’ll be a reason,’ I said to her. ‘You just don’t realize what it is. Something she says or does puts you on your guard.’

  Nora thought for a minute.

  ‘Maybe it’s that second logbook,’ she said. ‘It’s not the official one, it’s personal, and she writes in it all the time.’

  ‘Lots of nurses and Sisters keep a personal logbook,’ Grace pointed out. ‘Notes of experiences and things they’ve learnt and so on. Notes that aren’t suitable for the official logbook but that they want to remember.’

  ‘But we share those. No one’s ever allowed to see Sister Bey’s logbook,’ Nora insisted. ‘And of course, there’s her past.’

  ‘Her past?’ I asked. Now we were getting somewhere.

  ‘I shouldn’t gossip,’ Nora said.

  ‘Please do,’ I begged. Gossip was life and blood to a detective. ‘It may be important.’

  Nora looked around to make sure no one could overhear, then pulled her chair into the table and leaned over close to us.

  ‘It was a few years ago,’ she said, in a very low voice. ‘She was a Sister on one of the day wards then. Bit of a rising star, they said. Could have been Matron in a few years.’

  ‘What was she like, back then?’ I asked, curious to know if she had always be the silent, closed-off woman I saw.

  ‘Nice, people said,’ Nora said, as if surprised. ‘Shy, but trying hard not to be. Eager to learn.’

  ‘What happened?’ Mary asked.

  ‘It was a dosage mistake,’ Nora said. ‘It could have happened to any of us. The decimal point was in the wrong place on the prescription, so she administered 30 instead of 0.3, something like that.’

  ‘It’s easily done,’ Grace said. ‘It’s happened more times than doctors admit. The thing is, she shouldn’t have been administering the drug at all. It should have been the doctor.’

  ‘The doctor said he’d trusted Sister Bey to get it right,’ Nora continued. ‘The Sister said he’d written the dosage down wrong.’

  ‘Who died?’ Mary asked.

  ‘A tramp,’ Nora said. ‘No one of any consequence or family, the hospital board said, which was lucky for both Sister Bey and the doctor. He was sent to Edinburgh. She stayed in the hospital, but as a night Sister now, on the understanding she’d never rise any further.’

  ‘And never to administer medication again,’ I added.

  ‘Well, not without supervision,’ Nora told me, sitting back now the worst of her story was done. ‘But she’s taken it further than that. No medication, no talking to the patients, no talking to the other staff except to give and take orders.’

  ‘Why does she stay?’ Mary asked. ‘And how does the hospital let her stay?’

  ‘I don’t suppose she knows any other life,’ Grace said. ‘It’s not just that hospital she stays in, it’s that particular ward. She never allows herself to be moved.’

  ‘Maybe she has some influence with a governor of the hospital,’ Nora said. ‘Or maybe she knows some scandal. Or maybe it’s just easier to let her stay.’

  ‘You think she knows something,’ I said, peering at Nora’s eyes over the rim of her tea cup as she sipped. ‘Something about that ward?’

  She put her tea cup down.

  ‘I just don’t like it there,’ she said. ‘I’m going to ask to be moved to one of the public wards. Soon.’

  ‘But in the meantime, you think something odd is going on in your ward.’

  Nora raised her hand to her head. She had gone even paler.

  ‘Grace, you had better take Nora home,’ Mary said. ‘Head wounds aren’t to be trifled with.’

  Nora rose, supported by Grace. As she left, she leaned over and whispered to me, ‘There’re too many deaths on that ward.’

  AMONGST THE BACK STREETS

  ‘Nora’s well and truly smashed your theory about Emma’s death being the only suspicious one, hasn’t she?’ Mary said, helping herself to another cake. ‘These cakes aren’t as nice as yours.’

  ‘You’ve eaten five,’ I pointed out. ‘Nora hasn’t quite smashed my theory; she’s just shaken it a little.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Mary said, wiping the crumbs from her hands. ‘You believe Eleanor Langham, on behalf of Lord Howe or Richard Pembury or some other rich, powerful friend of hers, killed Emma Fordyce to keep her from telling her secrets about her past, using one of the Pale Boys gang which you believe she runs?’

  ‘That’s about right,’ I admitted. ‘On practically no evidence apart from a bit of leaf mould, a shape glimpsed in the shadows, and an awful lot of “feelings”. Mr Holmes would be disgusted. What do you think?’

  ‘Well, I think the stolen boys are the Pale Boys,’ she said. ‘I think perhaps they are connected to one of the women in the hospital and I think it’s a mistake to theorize before you have all the data.’

  ‘Stop quoting Mr Holmes to me,’ I said. ‘How will I know when I have all the data?’

  ‘More importantly, how are we going to deal with whoever is following us?’

  ‘Now there,’ I said, ‘I have a plan. Or rather, Wiggins does.’

  I explained exactly what we were going to do next. She liked it.

  ‘Oh, so that’s the game, is it?’ she said.

  We paid the bill and went out into the street. It was one of those cold, damp November days where the chill seems to seep through your clothes and into your bones. The sky was a mass of thick grey clouds that felt oddly claustrophobic, as if it were only a few feet above our heads. I looked around and saw what I needed – a street boy wearing a red bandanna around his throat. He saw me looking and, without acknowledging me at all, darted down a side alley.

  ‘That’s him,’ I said to Mary. ‘We follow him.’

  We walked down the alley at a slower pace, taking us into a mass of buildings and streets between the Strand and the Embankment.

  Five people from the Strand followed us into the streets: two women wrapped in shawls, a dark, tall man in an ill-fitting sailor suit, another man in a deerstalker and tweed coat and a youth, not known to me.

  I didn’t stop to look at them. Wiggins’ boys, far better at keeping invisible than they, would already be all over the streets, staring at them, assessing them, until the boys worked out who was following us.

  The boy in the bandanna turned another corner, and another. He was our guide through this maze of streets. As we followed him, our route would get more convoluted. Hopefully it would winnow out those who had their own business down here from whoever was following us. It was a delicate game though. We had to look as if we had no idea we were being watched, and yet not move so fast we lost our pursuers.

  Another twist, and one of the women veered off into a public house. Down to four.

  ‘I never knew all this was down here,’ Mary said. ‘I thought it had all been cleared away when they created the Embank
ment.’

  ‘It will be soon, I suspect,’ I replied. We were amongst a row of arches, all of them huge and cavernous, dripping with damp. They were dark, but occupied, and men and woman inside shifted uneasily as we peered in. The boy we followed didn’t pause, but ran through here. We went through, as the man in the deerstalker, looking around, went into one of the arches.

  ‘What do you suppose he’s doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Looking for someone he’s lost,’ Mary said. ‘There’s a few hiding places down here; John’s tracked patients here occasionally.’

  ‘Opium dens?’ I asked. I had a hazy knowledge of the darker parts of London streets, but I didn’t expect to find them behind the Strand. Mary shook her head.

  ‘Cheap lodging houses. Not as cheap as Whitechapel, but not pleasant. A lot of respectable people gone to the bad find themselves here.’

  The youth now stopped, and stared at us for a moment. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets, turned on his heel, and walked away, whistling. Just another street boy. Two now. I was worried about the tall man in the sailor suit. He definitely had his eye on us. I wasn’t sure if he was the person who’d been following us, or if he just wanted to rob us.

  I turned another corner, but it must have been the wrong one, because I could see no sign of the boy in the red bandanna. I looked around frantically. We were almost at the river now – the Victoria Embankment was just over the iron fence – but I could see no way out. Then the tall man appeared at the end of the alley and moved purposefully towards us.

  ‘Oh no,’ Mary said. ‘I think we played the game wrong.’ She took a breath and straightened up, ready to face him, but at that moment something crashed somewhere, someone screamed, and a police whistle sounded. The tall man, obviously a street robber, took to his heels and ran.

  ‘Oi!’ a boy shouted. It was our guide. He was pointing towards a gate in the fence. We went through into the pleasant grounds of the Victoria Embankment; the boy didn’t follow, he’d done his part.

  Well, it’s pleasant in summer. Now it was cold and bare, and the wind from the river cut through me so sharply it took my breath away.