The Women of Baker Street

by Michelle Birkby

  Except that he didn’t grow up. One day he was tired and stayed indoors, quietly watching me do my work. Poor fool me, I was glad of his company. One week later, he died – his last, great adventure – leaving me behind, as his father had done on that godforsaken battlefield.

  I don’t want to talk about what my boy’s death did to me. Not yet. Not now. I will just say that I could not stay there, where every object, every sound, just the light in the trees, reminded me of what I had lost. I moved to London then. I became a landlady and looked after my properties efficiently, all those rooms in all those houses. All those bright young men and lovely hopeful young women in my rooms became ill and old and bitter. London can do that to some people, when they are alone, and poor, and lose all hope. It’s not kind to everyone. London can be cruel. I did not find friends. I did not find love. I did not find my place.

  However, I did learn to balance account books and make agreements with tradesmen and haggle for the best prices and everything else that came with running a business. I learnt how to appraise a maid or a tenant on sight, and how to get rid of them too. I learnt how to offset loss with profit, and what was a good investment, and what bad. Whilst Parliament argued over whether women had the mental ability even to own their own clothes, I quietly administered an empire – and no one noticed.

  I also discovered cooking. As Hector’s wife I’d had nothing to do except tell the servants what to do for me. As the landlady of all of these properties, I had to be capable of doing any work required, at any time. Therefore, I learnt to do every job of every servant. Cleaning bored me, laundry I loathed, but cooking I loved. Taking the ingredients one by one, all looking so simple, and then combining them and cooking them and using all kinds of secrets to make them into something delicious, I felt to be a form of magic. With all these discoveries about myself I changed and grew and became not Martha Hudson, grieving widow, but Mrs Hudson, formidable housekeeper and successful landlady.

  As I got older, I gradually sold all my properties and moved into what I was sure would be my final home: 221b Baker Street. It was a very elegant new building, rising several storeys above the busy street, with a smart black door edged in white woodwork and red brick. There was room for me, and a suite of rooms for a pair of gentlemen, and I settled down for my long and inevitable slide into old age.

  The first few men who rented my rooms were nice and polite. They had reasonable hours and required only breakfast and the occasional cup of tea, and kept themselves to themselves. They were the perfect tenants. Other landladies envied me.

  But I was so bored.

  They didn’t need me, they needed an automaton. I did not need them. We were perfect strangers living under one roof.

  Then he came. On a rainy night in September, he rang my bell and asked if my rooms were still vacant.

  He was so tall and thin that at first I thought he was quite elderly. Then he stepped into the light and I saw his face was young and lean, with restless dark eyes. He looked around then smiled and raised his hand, but oddly, as if he was remembering he was supposed to be polite. Those hands were covered in sticking plaster, and his jacket was strangely stained.

  He was soaked to the skin, so I invited him in and said I would bring him tea and, in the meantime, he could pop upstairs and view the rooms.

  I knew he’d like them. They were nice rooms, though I say so myself. Comfortable, but not shabby, well furnished, with plenty of space for my gentlemen to keep their books and suchlike, with two large bedrooms and all conveniently situated near the centre of London. The question was: would I like him?

  When I brought in his tea, I found him standing in the middle of the carpet – the exact middle – looking around curiously, with a certain intensity. I felt sorry for him then. There he was on a rainy cold night, all alone, nowhere to go, wet through, searching for a home. He turned to me as I entered, and took the tea and drank it gratefully. I felt he too had looked at me and studied me and come to his conclusions.

  ‘You keep a very clean house, Mrs Hudson,’ he said. I liked his voice. It was low, but expressive and strong.

  ‘I do, and a very private one,’ I assured him. He struck me as a man who treasured his privacy. ‘I will supply your meals and do your washing and clean your rooms, of course, but I won’t impose or interfere.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I may have many visitors, Mrs Hudson, in connection with my profession. Will that be an inconvenience?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I told him. Though I would regret that in years to come, running up and down those stairs to show in some very odd visitors, at all hours of the day and night. ‘May I ask . . . ?’

  ‘A consulting detective. The only consulting detective,’ he said, with a touch of pride.

  ‘How interesting,’ I said politely, as my heart stirred inside me. A detective! The things that could happen in those rooms, what I might see and hear, the kind of people who would visit – the lost, the lonely, the curious, even the dangerous . . .

  Excitement, of a sort, even just second-hand – but still, excitement!

  ‘I work with the police, but not for them, so discretion must be guaranteed,’ he warned.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I have odd habits,’ he admitted. He almost seemed to be warning me against allowing him into my home. ‘I keep strange hours. I can be very messy. I do chemical experiments that always seem to smell,’ he said ruefully. ‘There may be noise . . . ’

  I raised a hand to stop him.

  ‘None of that will be a problem,’ I assured him. Oh, how I longed for noise and mess in my pristine home!

  ‘Other landladies have found me difficult,’ he warned. ‘In fact, I have been thrown out of my rooms three times – the latest just two hours ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  He took a breath, determined to admit it all.

  ‘I poisoned her cat. It was entirely accidental . . . ’

  I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. His contrite face, his bizarre admission – it was all so ridiculous! He stared at me, and then smiled. I looked up at him, this man tramping the streets searching for a room. He seemed to have no family, no friends to turn to in his hour of need, nowhere to go, never quite fitting in anywhere, no place he belonged to, and my heart just went out to him. He was a lost soul, just like me.

  ‘I don’t have a cat,’ I told him. ‘Do as you will, sir, as long as you pay for any damages.’ I was not a soft touch, after all. He nodded, serious again.

  ‘The rent . . .’ he started to say. His coat was patched, his bag worn. Consulting detectives were, I imagined, paid by results, and how many results had there been so far?

  ‘There are two bedrooms. I would have no objections to your bringing a companion to share the rooms and the rent.’

  ‘I have no companions,’ he said, his face turning from me towards the windows. ‘I have not that nature.’

  ‘You can have the rooms half-rent for a month whilst you find one,’ I told him. I could not let him go back alone into that dark and damp night. ‘London is full of men looking for a refuge. Perhaps a soldier returned from the wars? They always need a place to stay and an understanding companion. Just be sure and tell them about your bad habits first.’

  It was three weeks later that he brought him home. He’d followed my advice and found an ex-soldier, a doctor, with a pleasant smile, a hearty handshake and haunted eyes. He badly needed a place to stay, a task in life and someone to care for him. Although he thought he needed only one of those things.

  In the first days they were there together the doctor fixed my kitchen door, the detective had sharp words with the butcher, who had been cheating me (I had suspected as much) and I made them the best meal of their lives.

  They sat in their rooms and smoked and talked into the night, and I sat in the kitchen and listened to them through the air vent and there we all were. Sherlock Holmes, John Watson and Martha Hudson. Three lost souls who had found each other.

&
nbsp; Michelle Birkby has always loved crime stories, and read her first Sherlock Holmes book when she was thirteen. She was given a beautiful collection of all the short stories and has been hooked with the wonderful, gas-lit, atmospheric world of crime and adventure ever since. A few years ago Michelle was re-reading The Empty House and a blurred figure in the background suddenly came into focus. It became clear to her that Mrs Hudson was much more than a housekeeper to 221b and she’d always been fascinated by Mary Watson’s character. So she set about giving the women of Baker Street a voice and adventures of their own . . . The Women of Baker Street is the second book in the series, following The House at Baker Street.

  Also by Michelle Birkby

  The House at Baker Street

  First published 2017 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2017 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5098-0971-4

  Copyright © Michelle Birkby 2017

  Cover Images © Roy Bishop/Arcangel Images & Shutterstock

  The right of Michelle Birkby to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are hereby used by kind permission of Jonathan Clowes Ltd., on behalf of Arthur Conan Doyle Characters Limited, holders of the Arthur Conan Doyle European Trademarks.

  Sherlock Holmes, Mrs Hudson, and are trademarks of the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd.®

  Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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