The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets

by Nancy Springer

  Mrs. Watson, I noticed, took a few moments to pat the cab-horse; rare was the woman who would do that, especially at the risk of besmirching her Sunday best. I regarded Dr. Watson’s winsome wife with mingled admiration and pity; she wore black, as if already she were in mourning.

  After the churchgoers had gone indoors, nothing at all happened for an hour or so.

  Eventually a bent old woman in a shawl limped from door to door, selling violets from a large flat basket.

  That was all for the next half hour or thereabouts.

  A water-wagon passed at a trot, the horse with tail handsomely lifted, pleasing to watch until one realised the nag was littering the length of the street with horse-apples. Ironic, as the purpose of the water-wagon was to clean London’s streets, typically covered with muck a respectable slug would not have crawled in. The labour of clearing it could not pause even for Sunday rest, for there were a great many horses in the city, and each one produced forty-five pounds of waste per day, or so Mum had once told me—

  Don’t think of Mum.

  To distract myself, I tugged at the tasteful opal brooch centered upon my dress front, thus drawing the slender dagger sheathed in the busk of my corset, the opal being its pommel. Hefting my weapon by its hilt, I felt reassured. I had used it once, on a garroter. Although once an attacker of a different sort had used a knife on me—but my corset had foiled his attempt to stab me. Thus convinced of the value of corsets, I had provided myself with several specially made so that their metal ribs did not nip my waist or jab me under the armpits, only protected me from the likes of Jack the Ripper, while supporting the bust enhancer and hip regulators which disguised my stick-like figure while serving as carryalls, containing emergency supplies plus a small fortune in Bank of England notes—courtesy of Mum.

  Do not think about Mum!

  Hastily slipping my dagger between the buttons on the front of my dress, returning it to its sheath in my bosom, I set myself to taking mental inventory of the other items therein. Bandaging, scissors, iodine, spare stockings, needle and thread—

  In her best blue cape and bonnet a nanny walked past on the street below, pushing a parasol perambulator with one hand while with the other she led a toddler in a lacy pink dress and white pinafore.

  Yawn.

  —head-scarf, hair extensions, pince-nez eyeglasses for disguise, lorgnette by way of magnifying lens, smelling-salts, sugar candies, biscuits—

  Around the far corner of the street appeared a small, ragged boy carrying a bunch of flowers nearly bigger than he was.

  Inventory and ennui at once forgotten, I grabbed for my opera glasses and peered through them, trying to identify the blossoms in the bouquet. But the boy, confounded ignorant street urchin, carried it under his arm, head down, as if it were likely to bite him otherwise. I could hardly see the flowers at all, and had to content myself for the moment with memorising the boy’s scruffy plaid clothing and rather stupid face. He paused with his mouth open to study each house number.

  Very possibly he might not be looking for the Watson residence at all, might not concern me whatsoever.

  My heart pounded in protest at the thought. Nonsense. It has to be—

  It was.

  After studying the number beside the door at inordinate length, he turned to ascend the steps of the Watson residence.

  Only then, as he put his back to me, could I catch a clear look at the flowers in the bouquet.

  Laburnum.

  Harebells.

  Convolvulus again.

  Wispy sprays of asparagus again.

  Sprigs of yew.

  Ye gods.

  Dropping the opera glasses, I sprang up, popped my wig (hat and all) onto my head, snatched my mantle and ran out of my temporary lodging and down the stairs, intent on catching that boy as soon as he had completed his delivery.

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

  LABURNUM, YOU SEE, WHILE A VERY PRETTY FLOWER, hangs down in yellow cascades, “weeping.”

  The blue harebell, long associated with faeries, bad luck and fey events, means “submission to grief.”

  The yew is a graveyard tree, signifying death.

  So even if it were not for the convolvulus and the asparagus fronds, I would have felt sure: These flowers came from the same spiteful source as that other bizarre bouquet, and might not this evil-minded person be responsible for the disappearance of Dr. Watson?

  I scooted downstairs, out the front door and onto the street as quickly as possible, but only to find the confounded fish-mouthed boy—who had approached the Watson residence so very slowly—now trotting off at a goodly pace, just disappearing around the opposite corner.

  Oh, no. No, he was not getting away from me. Snatching up the front of my skirt with both hands, I ran after him.

  I am long of limb and love to run—I have always been the disgrace of my family, running, climbing, and generally acting like a biped—but that accursed skirt slowed me down even as I hoisted it to my knees, for doing so denied me the proper pumping action of my arms. Other parts of my personage compensated so that my head wobbled and I swayed from side to side, altogether, I am sure, resembling a tall Paris-green goose in a tremendous hurry.

  Onlookers regarded me with shock. I remember speeding past a lady who stood like a pillar of salt with both silk-gloved hands to her gawking mouth, and as for gentlemen, how my display of my lower limbs affected them I can scarcely say, for, let a lady in an evening-gown show ever so much bosom, still not an inch of ankle must ever peep from beneath her skirt—but I did not care what I looked like or what anyone thought, for as I sprinted around the corner I spied the street urchin cavorting along not too far ahead of me.

  “Boy!” I called to him.

  Pleasantly enough, I thought, and I fully expected him to turn, and stop, and we would have a nice little talk, and I would give him a penny—but instead, he took one look at me over his shoulder, his lackwit eyes widened, and he tore off like a hare before the hounds.

  The stupid little bounder, whatever was he frightened of?

  “Boy! Nincompoop, wait! Come back here!” Without breaking stride I sped after him, gaining on him easily, stunted little slum-bred brat. I should have caught him within a moment if he had not made towards Covent Garden and dodged into streets filled with traffic. Rather than keeping to the pavement, he took to the cobbles, dashing between potato-wagons and carts and cabs and almost under the hooves of coach-horses; here, being born and weaned in the city, he had a great advantage over a country girl who had never been much accustomed to ducking omnibuses! He led me a jolly good chase until finally I lost sight of him entirely.

  Stopping at the corner where I had last seen him, I stood hot-faced and panting, one hand hauling up my skirt while with the other I disciplined my wig, which felt as if it were about to take leave of my head—confounded thing, no matter how annoying, I should have put it on beforehand and secured it with hairpins—too out of breath to mutter the naughty phrases that came to mind, I looked about me in every direction, with no idea which way to turn.

  I nearly gave up. Actually, I did give up. With a sigh of exasperation and defeat I let my skirt—such parts of it as were not already sodden with horse muck—drop at last to decently cover my ankles. Then, ignoring the stares of dressed-to-be-seen Sunday strollers, I applied both hands to the problem of the slipping wig. Trying to restore some order to my appearance, I lifted it to straighten it—

  “Don’t!” screamed a high-pitched voice.

  Startled, I looked for the source of this terrified plea and discovered the street urchin, the selfsame boy I had been chasing, staring at me huge-eyed from his hiding place inside one of the crates (meant for displaying dry goods) flanking the closed door of the corner chandler. Standing where I was, I had unknowingly blocked his escape, but I might never have seen him had he not cried out.

  “No, please, don’t!” he wailed.

  I stood, immobilised by astonishment, with a hand at each side of my wig. �
��Don’t what?” I blurted. I could not imagine what he was so afraid of.

  He shrieked, “Don’t take yer ’air off! Don’t take yer nose off either!”

  “Oh,” I said, nodding slowly and wisely, as if he had explained everything. Obviously the boy was a halfwit and needed to be approached cautiously. Taking care to make no sudden movements, as if faced with a cornered animal, I let my wig lapse back onto my head in whatever fashion it so desired. “All right,” I added in easy, soothing tones. “No harm done. Would you like a penny?” Reaching into a pocket, I pulled out a handful of coins.

  Hearing the jingling sound and catching sight of the shiny metal, the lad seemed to calm, or at least to shift the focus of his anxiety, as I had thought he might.

  “I just want to talk with you a moment. Will you come out?” I coaxed.

  “No!”

  “Why, then, I’ll come in, if you don’t mind.” I simply plopped myself down to sit on the pavement in front of the crate within which he cowered. Fatigue alone, I think, would not have made me do this—although I was indeed quite fagged from running—but I found the absurdity of the situation irresistible. All around me I heard horrified gasps arise from onlookers, and I sensed how they stepped away, as if my extraordinary conduct might spread some sort of contagion. Just two years before, during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, a lady had sat down on one of the pathways within the Crystal Palace in order to place a sprig of fir into the top of her boot; not long afterwards she had been committed to a madhouse.

  By her husband. Not uncommonly a woman might be put away in a lunatic asylum for insane conduct such as reading novels, going to spiritualist meetings, quarreling, failure to obey, et cetera. Having one’s wife taken off by “body snatchers” in a black barouche was a respectable recourse should her presence become onerous, whereas divorce was a scandal.

  It was quite a good thing that I planned to have no husband, I thought, smiling and still panting from “running mad.” Seated knee-to-knee with my quarry as if we were two children playing teatime, I told the filthy little street savage, “How do you do. I am very pleased to meet you.” As if selecting a bonbon, I lifted a penny between my fingers. “I could not help observing your taking quite a lovely bouquet of flowers to the Watson residence just now.”

  Warily the boy countered, “Don’t know no Watson,” but his gaze had fixed on the copper coin.

  “How did you know which house, then?”

  “The man told me the number.”

  “What man?”

  “Why, the man ’oo took off ’is nose.”

  My mind began to feel as fagged as my legs, but I only nodded slowly and sagely once more, deciding to circumvent the nasal improbability for the time being. “And how did you happen to meet this man?”

  “’E called me over.” The lad demonstrated a beckoning gesture such as any person of any consequence might use to summon any boy loitering in the street if the latter was wanted to carry a parcel, take a message, hold a horse by the reins or render any simple service.

  “Was he in a gig or a dog-cart?” I inquired.

  “No! ’E were in a right shiny carriage, ’e were, wit’ orses.”

  Refraining from telling him that a dog-cart was also a horse-drawn vehicle, I merely asked, “A phaeton? A brougham?”

  “Don’t know ’bout no broom. A fine black carriage it were, with yellow spokes to the wheels.”

  A description which could apply to half the vehicles in London. I tried again. “Did you see a coat-of-arms?”

  “Sure, ’e had a coat on and harms too. Both harms, and ’ands. ’E give me the posy wit’ one and tuppence wit’ the other.”

  Losing his fear of me, the lad was becoming more loquacious—a good thing, as I found myself rather at a loss, trying to question this boy with a head too large for his stunted body and intelligence too small. “Um, what did this man look like?”

  “Wot like? Wot’s any toff like? Just a long-faced tove in chin-whiskers ’n a top-’at, except that ’e took ’is nose off.”

  There it was again.

  “He took his nose off?” I strove to keep incredulity out of my tone.

  Apparently I succeeded, or else the horror of the memory had taken such hold of the boy that he could not help but speak. All in a rush he said, “Knocked it off against the door, like, when ’e stuck ’is ’ead out t’ give me the flowers. It fell on ’is lap, an’ I don’t know wot scared me worse, that nose lyin’ there or the way ’e grabbed it and cursed me and shook it at me, tol’ me take the flowers right smart or ’e’d come after me and do the same to me and pull out me eyes into the bargain.”

  “Um, did you see any blood?”

  “No!” The lad started to tremble. “No more’n if ’is face wuz made of wax.”

  “What did he have where his nose should have been?”

  “Nothin’! Wot I mean, ’e was just ’oles, like a skeleton.” The boy shivered.

  “Holes?”

  But the lad had gone into a convulsive fit of shuddering. “Please, don’t take yer ’air off or yer ears or nothin’!”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, why would I? Did the man put his nose back on?”

  “I don’t know! I ran! I took ’is flowers just as ’e said and then you come chasing me!” The street urchin started sobbing, not the usual forthright roar of a young barbarian, but a wail of soul-felt distress. His odd encounter, apparently, had upset him considerably. “What were ye chasing me fer?”

  “Never mind.” I rose to my feet (aware that each well-bred person passing by gave me a long stare and a wide berth) and handed the child a sixpence instead of a penny, for I felt sorry to have caused him distress. Evidently there was no more sense to be got out of him.

  Sense? What sense was there in anything I had learned?

  CHAPTER THE NINTH

  RETURNING AT ONCE TO MY TEMPORARY LODGINGS by the most inconspicuous route, I rang for hot water. While I washed, put on a clean dress, sponged the skirt of the soiled one and tidied my hair—that is to say, took off my wig, combed it out, and pinned it up in an acceptably attractive fashion—I thought.

  Or tried to think, but succeeded only in wondering how the man had lost his nose. I vaguely recalled that, sometime during the Renaissance, there had been a colourful Danish astronomer who had lost his in a duel, but dueling was done with pistols now, not swords, and it was banned in England, although still practised in the more backwards little countries of the Continent. I supposed one could possibly get one’s nose shot off by a pistol. The Danish astronomer—I recalled his name now, Tycho Brahe—after his duel, had worn a nose made of sterling silver. I wondered why he had not chosen gold, which could hardly have been in worse taste, but I supposed people thought differently about such things before the reign of Queen Victoria. I supposed, now that I thought about it, there were likely a number of men in England whose faces had been similarly altered, if not in duels, then in wars: the Indian Mutiny, the Second Afghan War, that sort of thing. Surely they did not wear silver noses, or chins or ears as the case might be. What—

  There came a timid knock at my chamber door, and my landlady’s girl-of-all-work—a wretched wisp of a child who could not have been more than ten years old—asked, “Will you dine, Miss Everseau?”

  “Yes, I will be down directly.” While my current landlady’s disposition was in wretched contrast to Mrs. Tupper’s, the meals she served were far superior.

  Meanwhile I sent the girl out for the evening papers, and when I returned to my room after an excellent dinner of roast lamb with mint sauce, I turned up the gas—what luxury to have such ease and effectiveness of lighting, even though the pipes hissed and muttered like a mumbling lunatic. Seated in the least uncomfortable chair, I read all the papers, checking first to see whether there had been any further developments in the Watson case—none were reported—and second to make sure my personal was included: “Hawthorn, convolvulus, asparagus and poppies: what do you want? Reply this column. M.M.W.”


  It was.

  Interesting, I thought, that the sender of the bizarre bouquets, letting alone the matter of his nose for the moment, should be a man. Flowers were generally considered to be in the female domain, although of course there were always a few eccentric amateur scientists, followers of Malthus and Darwin, trying to cross-pollinate orchids in hothouses. Also, upon further reflection, I supposed that any man who had ever courted and/or married necessarily learned something of the language of flowers. How fortunate for me that both my brothers were confirmed bachelors, thereby remaining ignorant. Undoubtedly Sherlock, keeping an eye on the personal advertisements for any demand regarding Watson, would notice “hawthorn, convolvulus, asparagus and poppies” and be intrigued, possibly even thinking, quite mistakenly, that it had something to do with Mum and me; I doubted he would guess nearer to the truth. In any event, I hoped for a response of some sort from the hawthorn man in the morning.

  Meanwhile, I scanned the newspapers I had been too busy to read this morning and yesterday.

  There were quite a lot to go through, and no particular reasons to do so except for the discipline of keeping up with the news. But after a while I found myself reading without comprehension, and occasionally one must make allowances. Yawning, I decided that after I finished looking at the “agony columns” of the Pall Mall Gazette, which I was reading at the moment, I would go ahead and throw the whole lot into the fire—

  Just then I saw it.

  422555 415144423451 334244542351545351 3532513451 35325143 23532551 55531534 313234554411435432513 31533

  Oh.

  Oh, my goodness. Suddenly wide awake, with my heart thumping I reached for paper and pencil.

  First I jotted down the alphabet, thus:

  ABCDE

  FGHIJ

  KLMNO

  PQRST

  UVWXYZ

  Then I started on the first word. Fourth line, second letter, Q. Second line, fifth letter, J.