The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets

by Nancy Springer

  Setting my cup of tea aside, I stood, crossing the room to have a better look. The poppies must have been forced in a hothouse—all flowers except snowdrops came from hothouses at this time of year; nothing remarkable in that. But that the asparagus should have been so cultivated—most peculiar. Explicable, perhaps, if someone had a boundless yearning for the vegetable—but the hawthorn? Who on earth would trouble with such a useless prickle-bush as hawthorn in a hothouse, when like a weed it grew everywhere in the countryside?

  Upon studying the hawthorn more closely, I saw that its jagged branches were wound round with tendrils of a delicate vine whose white flowers had already wilted.

  Bindweed.

  A sort of wild trumpet-flower, bindweed would be as common as sparrows in country hedgerows come summertime. But like the hawthorn, this early in the year, it must have been forced indoors. More, it must have been cultivated with the hawthorn, to entwine it so.

  Bindweed? More correctly known as convolvulus, the plant indicated something convoluted—something stealthy, entangling, twisted.

  And this ominous bouquet, it seemed to me, had come from quite a twisted mind. I had to find out—

  But as I turned to question Mrs. Watson in more detail, the parlour door burst open and, without waiting for the maid to announce him, a tall, impeccably clad yet vehement gentleman strode in, almost swooped in, his manner as hawklike as the keen profile of his face: Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH

  I REGRET TO SAY THAT I GASPED ALOUD, BOTH IN terror and in admiration—those two emotions seem always to attend my dealings with my renowned brother. To me his craggy features were the most handsome in England, his grey eyes the most brilliant, and if circumstances were different…but there was no time for pointless dreams. I fully comprehended all the peril of my situation, and I admit that I felt a strong inclination to flee. Luckily, in contemplation of the bizarre bouquet I stood so near the wall that it checked my impulse to back away. Had I made such an ill-considered move, I am sure my brother might have noticed.

  But he barely glanced at me, although it took me several thudding heartbeats to comprehend why, for there I stood in plain sight, his tall, gawky, long-nosed sister Enola—until I realised that my disguise had kept him from really looking at me. Indeed, the moment he saw a winsomely coifed and attired young woman in the parlour along with Mrs. Watson, he turned his attention elsewhere. One might think he disliked to be in company with such a woman.

  And if I gasped aloud, he did not hear it, for at the same time Mrs. Watson jumped up with a cry. “Mr. Holmes!” She stretched both hands towards him. “Have you—is there—any news of John?”

  To judge by his taut and sombre face, not any good news. As if capturing two fluttering doves he took Mrs. Watson’s hands in his kid-gloved grasp, but he did not speak, only made a shushing motion with his lips and threw a warning glance in my direction.

  “Oh! How thoughtless of me!” Hardly what he meant to convey; he wanted her to get rid of me, but she seemed to feel that she had been rude, forgetting to introduce me. Freeing her hands, she turned to me. “Miss, um…”

  If one is literally trembling with ill-mixed emotion, one might as well make the best use of it. Relieving Mrs. Watson of the necessity of remembering my name, I squealed, “Is this really Mr. Holmes, the great detective?” Simulating great girlish excitement, I hurried forward, smiling, nay, grinning like a skull. “Oh, I am so thrilled!” I squeaked, my voice a full octave above its usual level. Even as I quaked in fear that my brother might recognise me, I grasped one of his gloved hands in both of mine. “Oh, just wait until I tell my aunt that I met the famous Mr. Sherlock Holmes!”

  My effusions had the effect I desired: If a sewer rat had crawled upon Sherlock it might have repulsed him less. He could not bear to look me in the face, turning his head away as he said frostily, “Miss, ah…”

  “Everseau. Miss Viola Everseau,” I burbled.

  “Miss Everseau, will you kindly excuse us?”

  “Of course. Absolutely. I know you and Mrs. Watson—that is, you have important matters to discuss—I am frightfully honoured and delighted to have met you—” Twittering inanities, I allowed myself to be ushered away by the faithful parlour-maid Rose, who had appeared for that purpose with my wrap in her hands.

  Even after I heard the front door of the Watson residence close behind me, I could not quite believe my escape. Mincing down the stone steps, I expected at any moment to hear Sherlock shout, “Wait a moment! Enola? Enola! Constable, stop that girl in the wig!”

  But instead I heard his voice speaking to Mrs. Watson: “There is no very good news, I am afraid.” The words, although quietly and gravely spoken, carried clearly to me through the partially opened parlour windows. “But I have found something. I have found Watson’s medical bag.”

  I stopped on the pavement where I stood. Oh. Oh, my goodness, I couldn’t simply leave; the sound of my brother’s voice acted upon me like a magnet upon needles and pins. I had to know more—but what if I were caught listening?

  Pretending to search my pockets for something, I glanced up and down the street, which lay quiet except for a milkmaid making her deliveries and a cab or two. London is odd that way; slum streets brawl always with women standing in open doorways shouting at one another, children running amok in the muck, beggars, vendors, drunkards, idlers—but the better residential streets lie almost empty. There, scrubbed doorsteps lead up to closed doors flanked by windows without a single broken pane of glass—instead, one sees potted geraniums, a canary in a hanging cage, a meek little “Room to Let” sign, lace curtains.

  But one cannot tell whether one is being watched from behind the lace curtains.

  Holmes spoke on. “I found it at his club, where someone had stowed it out of sight behind a davenport. It remained unnoticed until today.”

  “But…John would not have left…” Mrs. Watson’s quiet voice struggled against tears.

  “Exactly.” My brother’s voice also repressed strong emotion—my heart swelled when I heard such controlled anguish in his words. “No doctor, least of all Watson, would ever willingly be separated from his black bag.”

  Wary of my own feelings, I realised I was quite likely to betray myself with a whimper or some equally undignified involuntary utterance. Enola, you silly chit, I mentally scolded myself, get away!

  I moved, however, only a few steps, just enough so that Holmes and Mrs. Watson would not see me if either of them happened to glance outside; I put myself on a line with the corner of the house and of the parlour. There I stood fiddling with my gloves while trying to calm my breathing and the pounding of my heart.

  I could still hear my brother speaking. “Therefore, I think we can now rule out the possibility of accident. Watson was purposefully lured or spirited away by some person or agency unknown.”

  Mrs. Watson’s soft reply was inaudible to me.

  “I cannot be certain, but it seems to me that the anti-medical elements, yammering as if surgery were vivesection, tend towards hysteria and are unlikely to act with such organised decision. Yet, although improbable, it remains just possible, as do other hypotheses. Some enemy from Watson’s army days, perhaps; I have been looking into that possibility, but my instincts tell me otherwise. Above all I continue to suspect the criminal underworld, but my informants so far have been able to tell me nothing. It is as if one moment Watson were playing billiards at his club, and the next, the earth opened up….”

  With a tattoo of hooves on cobbles a delivery-van rattled past, the driver glancing at me curiously, probably wondering why I was standing there. In London, any unchaperoned woman who pauses even for a moment to blow her nose puts herself in danger of being taken for a “social evil,” the polite term for a lady of the night.

  “It is this silence, this hiatus, that I cannot understand,” Sherlock was saying when the noise had passed. “If Watson was kidnapped, why no demand for ransom? If taken by some enemy, why no gloatin
g message of revenge? We should have heard from such a tormenter by now. Have you anything to report? Anything at all out of the ordinary?”

  Her reply was brief.

  “Flowers?” said Holmes with dismissive impatience. “But surely such social gestures are to be expected. No, if we are to involve the police, we need something more than a black bag and an anonymous bouquet. Please think. Is there nothing—”

  Mrs. Watson said something in broken tones.

  “It is true, logic suggests no reason why murder might not have taken place.” My brother’s voice had tightened to the breaking point. “And in that case there would be no communication. Yes, I have thought it too. Yet I cannot give up hope. One must not give up hope! And,” he added with black fire flaring in his tone, “I will not rest until I have got to the bottom of this affair.”

  A considerable silence followed, during which another vehicle trundled past, this time a brougham, the driver and occupants eyeing me askance. I felt like a target set up for marksmanship practice.

  Finally my brother spoke again. “We must persevere; we cannot do otherwise. Can you think of nothing to help me?”

  Silence.

  “Have you had visitors? Other than that syrupy young woman who left just now? Who was she, by the way?”

  Oh, my goodness. My nerves could take no more; I left, walking down the street in the manner recommended by Ladies’ Moral Companion, “self-possessed and quietly, with not too much lagging and not too swift a step, looking as if one understands what one is about…” Only after I had rounded a corner did I let my breath out.

  I wondered whether I had now been added to Sherlock’s list of suspects.

  I certainly hoped not. I did not want him interested in the “syrupy young woman.” All the more so because he must not waste his time while trying to find out what had happened to Watson—

  But he was wasting his time, I realised as I entered a crowded thoroughfare of shops and businesses. (“Avoid lounging about the shop-windows; resolutely forego even the most tempting displays of finery. Pass men without looking at them, yet all the while seeing them…”) Brilliant as my brother was at unravelling many sorts of perplexities, he continued to err by neglecting the women’s sphere: in this case, the messages conveyed by flowers.

  It seemed to me that a gloating message of revenge had indeed arrived in the form of hawthorn, poppies, convolvulus, and the oddest of greens: asparagus.

  The asparagus I did not at all understand. Nevertheless, I felt fairly sure that the bizarre bouquet had not come from the criminal underworld, nor from anyone Watson had known in the army. No, I thought, it had come from someone who would not last long in either of those organisations, someone too odd for them. Someone eccentric, petty and spiteful in quite a creative way, someone enjoying an interesting “garden” variety of gleeful madness. And someone so dedicated to the pursuit of botanical malice that he—or she—grew hawthorn in a hothouse.

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  BUT HOW TO FIND THIS INTERESTING PERSON?

  Three possible schemes came to mind, and while one (locate and investigate hothouses) would take too long, another seemed more hopeful. I immediately put it into action, finding a place to sit down and write.

  As it was a fine day, I chose a bench near one of West London’s new public drinking-water fountains, quite as big as most war memorials and surmounted by winged figures; halfway up its magnificence flared a basin intended, I think, to look like a scallop shell but more resembling a fungus jutting from a tree, with a porpoise-shaped spout giving forth refreshment for ladies and gentlemen. Lower down a similarly ornate trough was provided for the pleasure of horses, and lower yet, near the pavement, a smaller trough for the use of dogs and, I supposed, cats, rats and street urchins. Sitting, as I have said, where I could view the intermingled species enjoying this monument to benevolent hygiene, I drew paper and pencil from a pocket and composed a message to be placed in the personal columns of all the London newspapers. After several attempts, I distilled it to greatest simplicity:

  “Hawthorn, convolvulus, asparagus and poppies: what do you want? Reply this column. M.M.W.”

  The initials stood for Mary Morstan Watson, as if the query had been posted by her.

  Satisfied, I recopied this numerous times for London’s plethora of publications. Then, by hopping onto a passing tram (which, as a modern urban woman, I had learned to do without stopping the horses), I paid my penny and was rewarded with a ride to, eventually, Fleet Street.

  Many a time I had visited the Fleet Street offices of the various news publishers, and had been waited upon politely but indifferently by various male clerks. This time, however, while even more than usually polite, they seemed far from indifferent. Preoccupied as I was by concerns other than my appearance, I did not at first realise the reason for the change.

  Oh, for goodness’ sake! I fumed to myself when I remembered I was wearing a great deal of hair and lady-be-fair artifice. What fools.

  After I had delivered and paid for all my advertisements, the day was turning to night and I was getting quite tired. But I could not yet rest, for I needed immediately to pursue my other scheme to identify the sender of the bizarre bouquet. One does not cultivate hawthorn, twined with bindweed yet, in a hothouse just for a single triumphant moment; such a spiteful person, I believed, would continue to send his or her messages of hatred in floral form. And when the next one arrived, I wanted to be in a position to observe and intercept.

  Therefore, I needed to return to the scene. So much the better that night had now fallen; darkness was to my advantage, lessening the likelihood that Mrs. Watson might see me as I reentered her street of residence. For additional concealment I hailed a cab.

  I had the cab-driver pull up directly in front of my destination, and I had him wait, so that the cab—a big four-wheeler—stood between me and the residence of John Watson, M.D. The house with the “Room to Let” sign in the window, you see, stood almost directly across the street from the Watsons’.

  Mentally I begged fate or fortune as I plied the door-knocker: Please, might the room in question have a window facing in that direction.

  It did.

  Perfect.

  Perfect, I mean, in that one all-important aspect. In others it was dreadful—chill, bare and cheerless, with a bed as hard as a board and nearly as narrow, and a flinty-eyed, disagreeable landlady who named far too high a weekly cost. Small wonder the shrew’s spare room had remained vacant until now. I haggled with her over rent and terms, but only for the sake of appearances; the truth was, I would have taken the room at whatever price, and ended up handing over my money and receiving my latch-key within a few minutes.

  I needed to be in place by the following morning, you see. Already, during the half-day I had spent away, a second suspicious bouquet might have arrived at the Watsons’ door—a most provoking thought. But even so, I felt no doubt that the malicious sender would eventually provide another, and when it arrived, I must not miss it.

  So I had my cab-driver take me to Aldersgate, where I dismissed him and, after going in one door of the railway station and out the other, I engaged another cab. Such precautions had become second nature to me; I must never forget that cab-drivers can be questioned and that I was a fugitive, with the world’s greatest detective taking quite a personal interest in me.

  I had the other cab, then, take me to an East End street where few if any cabs had gone before: that is to say, to my lodging. And I had the driver wait while I packed the things I needed, meanwhile attempting to explain to a rather dismayed and doubtful Mrs. Tupper, “I am going to visit my aunt for a few days.”

  “Eh?” She lifted her hearing-trumpet to her ear.

  “I am going to visit my aunt.”

  “Eh?” With her watery old eyes widened to their utmost, she still could not understand, yet would not venture nearer to me. Standing in the doorway of my room, watching a lovely young lady throw clothing into a carryall, knowing that f
or the past month a girl who more resembled a scarecrow had barely stirred from the room, I am sure she wondered whether I had gone mad, whether she ought to summon a constable to have me committed lest I constituted a threat to the body public. “Eh? Going where? At this time of night?”

  “Going! Visit! Aunt!” I shouted into her ear-trumpet. With a satchel in each hand I whisked past her out the door.

  The next morning—Sunday—found me applying rouge, birthmark, powder, et cetera, in order to face the day in lovely ladylike guise—quite a nuisance, this new disguise; all over London, women readying themselves for church were struggling less. But at least my wig did not yet need to be restyled; atop a bedpost—for I did wish to put on the hot, heavy thing until necessary—it perched at the ready with its hat still pinned in place. So as not to be seen without it, I made the loathsome landlady bring my breakfast upstairs, leaving it on a tray outside my door. Meanwhile, corseted to simulate an hourglass figure and wearing quite a fetching puffed-and-pleated Paris-green day-dress, I sat in the window with a pair of opera glasses close at hand, watching the street in general and the Watson residence in particular while taking advantage of the concealing qualities of lace curtains.

  As regarded concealment, only my precipitous arrival made it necessary. After a few days it wouldn’t matter if Mrs. Watson saw me about; indeed, I might approach her and tell her how fortunate I had been to see the “Room to Let” sign on my previous visit just when I was looking for a new lodging-place, and was there any news of Dr. Watson?

  On the other hand, I quite hoped this vigil would not last so long as a few days, for even within the first few hours it had become exquisitely boring. “Nice” streets were too quiet.

  A scattered procession of cabs with Sunday licences, scrubbed and shining in order that cleanliness might actually contain godliness, brought various neighbours, including Mrs. Watson, home from worship.