The Women of Baker Street

by Michelle Birkby

  ‘No signs of struggle, no rictus, no convulsive marks, perhaps laudanum or opium,’ John said. ‘Injected straight into the vein, it would have been a very peaceful death.’

  ‘So he just slept?’ I asked, as Mary walked towards me, wiping her hands on John’s handkerchief.

  ‘Yes,’ John said, as the wooden boxes for transporting the bodies arrived.

  ‘Murdered, but gently murdered,’ Mary said. She started to take off John’s greatcoat to hand back to him, but he shook his head.

  ‘I’m going back to 221b,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Holmes you’re on it. Make sure you solve it, won’t you?’ He kissed Mary quickly. ‘It’s good for him to have rivals.’

  She nodded, and he walked off.

  ‘Look,’ I said to Mary, pointing towards the boating lake. The mist had lifted completely now and we could see the woman clearly. ‘Look who’s been watching.’

  It was Mrs Turner.

  By the time we reached her it was obvious she was in great distress. She clutched her thin shawl to herself and she was shaking.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded.

  ‘I heard, through the air vent,’ she cried. Damn it, I’d forgotten I’d reopened it. ‘Inspector Gregson said the boys . . . he said they were dead . . . he came for Doctor Watson. I should have gone, but I knew the doctor had sent for you before they left. Is it my boy, is Stephen there, is it my boy?’ she begged.

  Lie, I told myself. You lie so well, lie now, tell her no!

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. They were all the right age. We didn’t know what four of them looked like. ‘Perhaps.’

  She crumpled to the ground, sobbing. We knelt beside her, Mary throwing John’s coat around her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I repeated. No words had helped after my son had died, but I could think of nothing else to do.

  ‘Mrs Turner, you have to help us now,’ Mary said gently, lifting the woman’s face to us. ‘You have to help us find who did it.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ she whispered.

  ‘Maybe not; we don’t know who those boys are,’ I said.

  ‘And besides, there are other boys. Other mothers,’ Mary said firmly. Mrs Turner nodded.

  ‘You’ve been seen with the Pale Boys. Talking to them, even leaving food for them.’

  She nodded, weeping quietly.

  ‘I thought if I was nice to them, they’d help me,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘They’d tell me where Stephen was, or if he was safe. I hoped one day it’d be Stephen that’d come to me. I’d bring them food and tell them who was looking for them. I tried to help. But they just mocked me, and laughed at me and told me I was stupid.’

  ‘Where did you take the food to them?’ I asked. ‘Here, in the park?’

  ‘Yes, but they don’t live here,’ she said quietly. ‘They live in these empty houses, all over London. Those big houses no one likes any more. They’ve got dozens of them. If someone finds them, they move on. They only hunt in the park.’

  Hunt?

  ‘Why did you keep helping them?’ Mary asked.

  ‘I had to!’ Mrs Turner cried. ‘Just in case, one day, they took me to Stephen. Just the slightest chance. I gave them all my money and they said they’d bring him, but they never did.’

  ‘Did you ever see the woman?’ Mary asked. Mrs Turner shook her head.

  ‘You made their clothes for them, didn’t you?’ I asked. It was a guess, but I was right.

  ‘Yes. They left the materials at my house, and I was to make up the suits and leave the packages. They collected them from my house.’

  ‘How did you know what size to make?’ Mary asked.

  ‘She can size up a person by looking at them, can’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Even a photograph will do, if there’s something in it for scale,’ she told me. Mary and I looked at each other. She had photographs?

  ‘We need to see those pictures,’ I said gently.

  ‘They took them back,’ she said, rising, calmer now. ‘But I still have one. The last one they gave me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this?’ Mary demanded. ‘You know I’ve been looking for your boy. This is all helpful.’

  ‘They said they’d kill him if I told,’ Mrs Turner told her.

  ‘I don’t know how they found out I’d been talking to you, but they did, and they said I had to keep quiet, and tell me everything you did, or they’d cut Stephen up and put his head on my doorstep.’ She looked out over the park to where the graves were. ‘I don’t know if that’s true or not now.’ She seemed certain in her belief that Stephen was one of the boys in the graves.

  ‘Go home,’ I said. ‘Collect the photograph, and your things. You’re moving into 221b,’ I continued firmly. ‘You’ll be safe there. Because, quite frankly, I don’t think you’re safe in your home.’

  I called a constable over, one of the ones that knew Mr Holmes, and asked him to escort Mrs Turner home and then to 221b, and to let Mr Gregson know we had some information. Then I looked over to the edge of the park, to Eleanor Langham’s home.

  Wiggins lounged there, beside the park gate. It was his turn to watch over Billy today. Perfect.

  ‘You know what we must do now?’ I said to Mary.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘We’re going to get Billy.’

  THE WRONG PATH

  We gave Wiggins a brief precis of what we had found in the park, and told him we were getting Billy out right now.

  ‘He’s not safe in there, I’m convinced of that,’ I told him. ‘Besides, I have questions for Eleanor Langham.’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon you’re right,’ Wiggins said. ‘You go in; I’ll wait out here for you. Lucky there’s a park full of rozzers right behind me, innit?’

  As soon as the dignified but slow butler opened the door, Mary shot past him and up the stairs. I followed more sedately, as befitted my status (and my still-sore stomach wound). As I passed him, I requested the butler bring the boot boy to Mrs Langham’s rooms.

  ‘The boot boy?’ the butler queried.

  ‘The boot boy,’ I confirmed, as if surprised he questioned me. Mr Holmes always said that if you acted like you expected everyone to do exactly what you asked, most of the time they did.

  I arrived at Eleanor’s rooms just in time to hear Mary accuse her.

  ‘You saw, I know you saw!’ she cried. ‘You saw those graves in the park.’

  Eleanor looked distressed, but not by Mary. Her hair was wild, her hands grasping each other convulsively. The blanket on her knees had slipped halfway down. The telescope was pointed directly at the park. Up here, we were above the mist.

  ‘Saw what? I saw nothing,’ Eleanor said, but her voice was querulous.

  ‘The graves,’ Mary insisted. ‘The boys in the graves. They were found this morning. I know you saw.’

  ‘You see everything, I think,’ I said calmly. I wonder what impression I made in Eleanor’s mind, coming in like that, all in black, so wonderfully still next to Mary’s anger, making that statement? Because Eleanor saw me, and confessed.

  ‘I saw,’ she snarled. ‘I saw them dead and buried and rotting. Just like my boy. Just like the boy next door. He killed them all, you know. I kept his secret, but he can’t stop himself, he can’t help it, he has to rip their tiny innocent bodies apart, bit by bit, tear them from limb from limb, dripping with blood.’ She’d lost her sanity. Her mouth dripped drool as she outlined the horrors the dead boys must have gone through.

  ‘But they weren’t—’ Mary started to say.

  ‘Who?’ I asked, stopping Mary before she could say the boys weren’t torn at all. Maybe it was cruel of me, but Eleanor had her story, and we had to let her tell it in its entirety.

  ‘Him,’ she cried, throwing out her arm in a gesture. ‘Can’t you see it? Everyone else can. He’s evil. He kills boys. They haunt me.’

  ‘She means me,’ said a weary voice from the door. I turned to see Mr Langham standing there. He was still tall,
still with that military air about him, but now he leaned a little, his hand resting on Billy’s shoulder.

  Billy. Thank goodness. Was he different? Was he safe? I looked at him, and he shook his head a little. He wasn’t afraid of Mr Langham. He wanted to be his support at this time.

  ‘Forgive me, sir,’ I asked. ‘But do you mean she thinks you killed the boys?’

  ‘I’m afraid she does,’ he said. He went to Eleanor, and with infinite tenderness straightened the blanket on her knees. ‘I’m sorry you had to see her like this.’

  Billy came and stood beside me. He looked very serious, but I could not restrain myself from grasping his hand just slightly, and squeezing it.

  ‘Billy told me who you are,’ Mr Langham said, straightening up. ‘Just now, in the kitchen.’

  ‘I asked too many questions,’ Billy admitted. ‘I gave myself away.’

  ‘Did Mr Holmes arrange all this?’ Mr Langham asked. I looked at Billy, who looked a little shame-faced.

  ‘I mentioned Mr Holmes’ name and he just assumed . . .’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time I shielded myself with Mr Holmes’ name. ‘What were you asking questions about?’

  ‘The room upstairs,’ Mr Langham said. ‘The room where my son died.’

  ‘Where you killed him,’ Eleanor insisted. He only touched her shoulder. He loved her still.

  ‘He had been ill for a while; vomiting up everything he ate, when he could eat, terrible bloody diarrhoea,’ he explained. ‘She had been caring for him for days. I made her get some rest while I stayed with him. It was only for an hour, but in that hour, he died.’

  ‘He poisoned him,’ Eleanor said. ‘The bottles are still there; you can test them.’

  ‘They have been tested,’ he said, ‘three times. My child was given a post-mortem. He was even exhumed and tested again. There was no poison. It came on so slow,’ he said, looking at Eleanor and I understood he was talking about her instability, not his son’s death. ‘She wasn’t like this at first. She was sad and broken-hearted, but accepted the death of our boy as God’s will. We took comfort in each other. We even had other sons.’

  ‘They’re still alive because I watch,’ Eleanor said, shrinking away from him.

  ‘That is when this started,’ Mr Langham said. ‘When the boys were born. She wouldn’t let me be alone with them. She wouldn’t let me play with them, or go into the park with them, and after a while, she tried to stop me seeing them at all.’ The old soldier’s voice cracked.

  ‘She suspected you of killing your boy,’ I said. ‘And now she suspects you of killing the boys in the park.’

  He looked puzzled, and Mary gestured towards the window. He peered out for a moment, then, sadly, he turned the telescope away from the graves.

  ‘I didn’t hurt anyone,’ he said softly.

  ‘Children don’t just die,’ Eleanor cried.

  ‘Mine did,’ I told her. ‘He just lay down and died. I did blame myself for a while but . . .’

  ‘Oh, you and Florence Bryson, glorying in your dead sons,’ Eleanor said, and I swear she enjoyed her cruelty. ‘They don’t hold a candle to mine.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Mary breathed into the heavy silence.

  ‘She is unstable,’ Mr Langham replied. ‘She’ll need to go back into hospital for a while. Please tell Mr Holmes there never was anything to the rumours.’

  I looked at him, and I believed him. He was just a sorrowful man.

  ‘You follow other boys,’ Eleanor said. ‘You follow our sons into the park. I know. I followed you.’ Well, that explained the leaf mould on her shoes.

  ‘They’re my sons, Eleanor,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t like me spending time with them, but they are mine too. Please believe I would never hurt them.’

  ‘I didn’t think you could walk far,’ Mary said.

  ‘No. I made sure you all thought that,’ Eleanor said triumphantly. ‘They think I can’t follow them either, but I will, one day.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘The dead boys,’ she said. ‘The ones he killed. They walk past the house at night. I see them.’

  ‘That’s only in your imagination, my love,’ Mr Langham said. He was in tears. It was time for us to leave. There was a great sorrow here, and a shadow of death, but not murder.

  Mr Langham showed us out, pausing in the hall.

  ‘She was wonderful once,’ he told us, needing to explain, though I felt guilty I had ever intruded. ‘Such a bright woman, always inquisitive, always asking questions. She wanted to know about everyone. I used to love that about her. Now it’s become twisted, as if she has ice in her eye, like the fairy tale.’

  Wiggins met us outside, and he and Billy walked behind us, conferring in low voices. Mary and I were silent.

  ‘I feel awful,’ Mary said eventually.

  ‘Me too,’ I admitted. ‘I was so sure it was her, and all the time . . .’

  ‘She was insane,’ Mary said, ‘and blaming her husband too.’

  ‘He still loves her. That’s utterly heartbreaking.’

  We walked on a few steps before Mary began, ‘What she said, about the ghost boys.’

  ‘What about it?’ I asked.

  ‘Pale boys all in black, out at night – wouldn’t that suggest ghost boys to you?’

  ‘It would,’ I said. ‘I have to admit, it’s strange how her name kept popping up in this investigation. It seems every path led to her.’

  ‘When every path goes one way, try another way,’ Wiggins called from behind me. ‘’Cos someone’s trying to lead you on.’

  ‘Is that one of Mr Holmes’ rules?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Nah, it’s one of mine,’ Wiggins said. ‘Now, you gotta go back to the beginning and see where you took the wrong path.’

  ‘Back to the hospital,’ I said wearily. ‘But tomorrow. I’m so tired now.’

  It’s very demoralizing when you take the wrong path. But tomorrow, we would find the right way. We had to, before the silent death of another boy.

  THE PHOTOGRAPH

  John was just leaving as we arrived at 221b. He saw Mary’s misery – she was very upset at the scene at the Langham’s – and insisted she come home. She didn’t argue. I saw them standing in the hall, as he adjusted her hat, and though they talked of nothing more than what to have for dinner, they looked as if they spoke words of deep, passionate love to each other. I turned away, a little lonely and a little envious, but happy for them. If any two people deserved love, it was John and Mary.

  I offered Wiggins a bed for the night, but he refused, as I knew he would. He had to go back to the Irregulars.

  ‘We got somewhere warm to sleep,’ he said, when I objected that it was freezing.

  ‘Where?’ I demanded, but he merely tapped the side of his nose and disappeared into the mist. It was twilight already by then, and the gas lamps were just a pale glow.

  Grace and Mrs Turner were in the kitchen. Mrs Turner slept in the chair by the range.

  ‘Let her sleep,’ Grace whispered. ‘She needs it. She’s been very upset. Goodness knows what happened today,’ she said, looking at me sternly. I nodded, and prepared Mr Holmes’ tea.

  I felt at peace for the first time that day as I carried it up to him. This was what I knew how to do – not just the tea, but dealing with Mr Holmes. Be he angry, happy, busy or in a drug-induced haze, I knew what to do, and he knew what I would do. It was something solid in a world that was changing fast – and Mr Holmes didn’t always deal well with change.

  I had listened through the air vent while cooking and heard nothing but the rustling of papers and the crackling of the fire. That meant he was sorting through his clippings, and would likely forget to eat. There was no point making him something hot – it’d cool down by the time he got to it. Instead, I made a pile of mutton sandwiches.

  He was on the floor – scissors in hand, a yellowing newspaper in the other, surrounded by all sorts of papers �
� when I got in there.

  ‘I’m busy, get out,’ he said, almost automatically. I ignored him, laid the tray on a table and went to close the blinds. It would rain later, that heavy black rain London seemed to specialize in, and even the street lights were just a dim glow.

  ‘I brought you some sandwiches,’ I said to him. The room was lit only by the fire, and I lit the oil lamps on the table.

  ‘Take them away, I’m not hungry.’ He was in one of his contrary moods. I was used to that.

  ‘They’ll keep,’ I told him calmly. ‘I also need to tell you Mrs Turner is staying.’

  ‘Who?’ he asked impatiently, flinging the cutting over his shoulder and riffling through the pile of papers beside him. I knew he was listening, though he gave the impression he was not.

  ‘The woman who’s been helping me since I came back from the hospital,’ I told him. ‘I know you’ve seen her. You see everything.’

  ‘What, that pale, grey woman?’ he said, a little bit flattered by my praise, as I knew he would be. ‘Why is she staying?’

  ‘To help me clean and look after this house, and do the things I don’t want to do any more, such as lay your fire every morning,’ I told him. I had just planned to ask her to move in to keep her safe from the Pale Boys, and herself, but the more I thought of it, the better the idea seemed. Mr Holmes glanced at the fire as if it had never occurred to him that someone had to spend half an hour raking it out and rebuilding it, and getting thoroughly filthy in the process, every morning.

  ‘Can she be trusted?’ he asked, sitting back on his heels and looking at me. ‘You know the kind of cases I take on. They cannot be discussed in the street by kitchen gossips.’

  ‘As if anyone in this house would,’ I replied, not quite snapping, but firmly. ‘She can keep a secret; you can take my word on that. And I suspect she would be rather good at mending knife cuts in suits.’

  ‘Hmm, well, yes, then,’ he said, as if I needed his approval. He went back to his papers. ‘I suppose you have better things to do now.’

  I nodded and left him to it, but as I reached the door, he said, in a quite different tone of voice, ‘Lestrade was questioning all the cab drivers in the street today.’