by David Marcum
The wall-paperer did not require a second suggestion. He fled the scene. Mrs. Hughes was more interested in examining the substitute necklace, which Holmes permitted.
“Holmes! You seem to have had a good grasp of the situation before you left your arm-chair!” I said.
“Although the main points were relatively straightforward, it was merely a matter of filling in the details,” said Holmes.
“These ain’t paste!” exclaimed Mrs. Hughes, looking up from the diamonds in her hands.
“Indeed, they are not,” said Holmes, retrieving them gently. “Just as our friends had difficulty in accessing premises which were so heavily occupied ‘round the clock, I, too, would have had difficulty in hunting these down and performing a substitution without exciting attention. And I especially did not want to do anything that would make Munby suspect anything was afoot. It was easier to leave them in place and allow others an opportunity to direct us to their location. Come along, Watson. I noted a German seller of sheet-music the next street over. Perhaps he may have something of interest for solo violin.”
The Song of the Mudlark
by Shane Simmons
Before you says a word, I’ll tell you I know. My writing ain’t so pretty as what Doctor Watson puts down on his pages, but then I’m not a learned medical man, am I? So why’s he not writing up this adventure of his friend and fellow, Sherlock Holmes, you’re likely to say. Well he don’t know half as much about it as I do, and even Mister Holmes don’t know all the details, smart as he is, knowing everything as he usually does. But me, I know the whole lot. I was there from the start and to the finish. Who am I then, to be so well informed? If you say, as people do, that Doctor Watson’s always been Mister Holmes’s right-hand man, I expect that makes me his left-hand man. Or boy. There’s a few years to go yet before people see me as a man, even though I’ve been on my own, taking care of myself and my mates, since I was old enough to walk and run the streets of London.
The name’s Wiggins. I’d tell you my given name, but then we ain’t so well acquainted, you and me. I’m writing up this here story, and you’re reading it, which is all well and good. But if I don’t know your name, you only get “Wiggins” for mine and that’ll have to do.
I might have writ this tale earlier, only my words weren’t so good then as they is now, which is to say they was a whole lot more horrible back when these events first happened and was fresh to me. Nah, don’t you worry. I remember all the whys and wherefores just fine, like it were only yesterday. I remember because nobody ever forgets the time they brought a big mystery to the doorstep of the great Sherlock Holmes. How big a mystery? Well, let’s just say it was so mysterious a mystery, Mr. Holmes agreed to look into it right away, and that don’t happen much. It’s got to be quite a teaser to get him interested, otherwise he’ll take one look and solve it, quick as a fiddle, and where’s the fun in that, I ask you.
It was early one morning when me and the boys dropped by Baker Street. Mr. Holmes had a package come in on one of the ships at the dock, and he had sent me, personally, to fetch it. As it so happens, it was two packages I brought back - the one he was so anxious about, and another I hoped he would take on once I explained the situation.
I left the rest of the boys waiting in the lane out back. Mrs. Hudson was the name of the landlady, and she didn’t much care for any of us tracking dirt inside and all over her nice clean floors. She was always claiming she’d just mopped them, even though I never saw her lay a hand to a mop or a broom except to chase us out of her rooms.
“He’s upstairs and he’s in a mood,” she said when she saw it was only me coming in and my shoes weren’t in such a sorry state.
She pointed the way, like I didn’t already know it, like I hadn’t been up there a hundred times before.
“Enter!” I heard Mr. Holmes shout after my first knock on the door.
He didn’t sound none too patient. I didn’t bother announcing it was me who’d come up. He would’ve already deduced that ages ago.
“Ah, Wiggins, at last,” he said when he saw the wrapped bundle tied up under my arm.
“The package you been waiting on, Mr. Holmes,” I announced.
He took it from me right off and tossed a shilling I had to grab out of the air.
“What package is this, then?” Dr. Watson wanted to know as he looked up from the morning paper.
“Oh, merely something for my chemistry experiments,” Mr. Holmes told him. “A perplexing puzzle in its own right, and something to occupy my mind while London is beset with this wave of inexorably dull, unimaginative crime.”
He cut the string on the package with a pair of scissors and brought it over to his work bench that was stacked high with all sorts of glass bottles and tubes filled with who-knows-what for reasons I couldn’t guess at.
“All the way from South America is what the cabin boy told me,” I said.
“Barring one side trip to Germany for refinement, but yes, quite right.”
Mr. Holmes looked in one of his drawers and came up with a small leather case. He opened it and I spotted a needle inside, the kind I’d expect to see in a doctor’s hand, not a consulting detective’s. I figure maybe he swiped it from Dr. Watson without asking first because he seemed to not want the doctor to see what he was up to.
“Off you go, Wiggins. You have your shilling. I will send word if I have anything else for you.”
I nearly left right when he told me to, but stopped in the door. I didn’t want to waste his time, but then I weren’t so sure if what else I brought him was a waste or not, was I?
“Mr. Holmes, there’s something more.”
“Is there? Well, out with it, Wiggins. What do you want?”
“It ain’t what I want. It’s what I have for you. A mystery.”
I saw Mr. Holmes swap a look with Dr. Watson, and for a moment I thought they might laugh at me. But then Mr. Holmes must have seen how I looked so serious, and knew it wasn’t any childish riddle I was on about.
“Best I introduce you in person,” I said to them.
I stepped out of the room, to the top of the stairs, and whistled loud as I could. The back door opened and I could hear footsteps stomping on up, with Mrs. Hudson complaining about each one. I led my guest inside and shut the door so we didn’t have to listen to the landlady no more.
“Another one!” said Dr. Watson, not at all happy when he saw who I’d brought into their home. “Well, better than him leading in the whole lot as he usually does.”
It was another young urchin to be sure, even more ragged than the ones he’d seen Mr. Holmes deal with before. I was about to explain what was special about this one, but Mr. Holmes was ahead of me.
“Now there’s an irregular Irregular!” he said. “The ranks swell and diminish, Watson, lads come and they go, but this one is quite different. Not your usual recruit I would say, Wiggins.”
“No sir, you’re right there.”
“How so, Holmes?” said Dr. Watson. “He seems to fit right in with the other street Arabs.”
“Several factors exclude him from the rest,” said Mr. Holmes, looking the child next to me up and down. “Firstly, this lad is at least a year or two younger than the rest. The jacket, cap and trousers are considerably rougher than what Wiggins and his crew wear, as though salvaged further down the line of poverty and despair. And there has been some grief of late, I perceive. The tears are not flowing this moment, but the last ones carved twin ditches down those dirty cheeks too recently to have been filled in by fresh dirt. Though the dust is no different than what might be routinely kicked up in a busy London street, the mud on those shoes is another matter. That is not from any puddle or pit in the city. It comes from the banks of the river. I should say this is one of the mudlarks of the Thames standing before us.”
The mudlarks were the lowes
t of the low, and children the lot of them, either with no parents at all, or mothers and fathers too drunk or worse to take care of them. They worked the banks of the Thames when the tide was out, picking through the muck for anything they could sell for a ha’penny. Scraps and rubbish mostly, but worth something to someone somewhere, if only a farthing or a bite to eat. Compared to the mudlarks, we street urchins were the tip-top of high society.
“Right you are, Mr. Holmes,” I said, “though you’ve missed out on one detail.”
“Have I? Do enlighten us then, Wiggins.”
“She ain’t no lad.”
Mr. Holmes raised my companion’s cap off her head and studied the face more closely.
“I do believe you are correct,” he said at last. “An easy enough detail to miss under so much filth.”
“Her name is Beth,” I said. “I’ve seen her working down by the water before, but today I found her in such a state.”
“Me da’s been killed!” Beth cried out when she couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Washed up in the Thames and bleeding money like he were made of it!”
Fresh tears carved new ditches through the dirt on her face.
“Bleeding money, you say?” said Mr. Holmes, picking out the one detail that weren’t all too common. Poor folks drowning in the Thames was hardly worth a mention otherwise.
“The girl is imagining fairy stories, Holmes,” said Dr. Watson and made to stick his nose back in his paper.
But Mr. Holmes, he didn’t look so sure.
“Wiggins, have you seen this yourself?”
“No sir,” I said. “But word is out that a body’s been spat out of the river with the low tide and’s lying on the banks. The mudlarks all know it, but the police haven’t come ‘round for a look. Not yet at any rate. And I figure since you seem to always know so much about dead bodies...”
I had told Beth I knew a man who might help, but I didn’t want to push my luck too far and endanger my job. Without Mr. Holmes paying us a regular salary, The Baker Street Irregulars would have a hard time of it, I know that much.
Mr. Holmes looked back to his work bench and his new experiment and I knew we was losing him.
“No, Wiggins. There is nothing to it for me. Best let the police sort the matter out. It sounds like a routine drowning, or perhaps an altercation that ended in the river.”
Regular wages or not, I didn’t let it stand there.
“Show it to him,” I nudged Beth and she dug deep into her one pocket that didn’t already have holes in it.
“Show me what?” Mr. Holmes wanted to know.
“A clue,” I said.
Beth came up with a small hunk of metal, not unlike the old bolts and nails she scavenged along the water’s edge. At first glance it looked like any other scrap, but Mr. Holmes took it in hand and saw what was so special about it at once.
“Where did you get this?” he asked Beth.
“It was stuck in Da. I shook him and it fell out.”
“What do you make of this, Watson,” said Mr. Holmes, handing the thing over.
“Why, it’s a gold sovereign!” Dr. Watson declared after having his look.
“Yes, I can see that for myself,” said Mr. Holmes. “But what does it tell you?”
“Well, it is certainly mangled. Not the usual wear and tear I would expect to see on such a denomination. And it is far more money than some unfortunate mudlark could ever make.”
“Not in a year or more of hard labour, even if they should they live long enough to procure a better occupation,” agreed Mr. Holmes. “What else?”
Dr. Watson had another look because Mr. Holmes was suggesting he missed something. Something important.
“It’s all rusty,” he said at last.
“No Watson, not rusty, but imbued with the stuff. Gold neither rusts nor tarnishes, yet this piece is absolutely caked with both.”
“So what does that tell you?” asked Dr. Watson of his friend.
“What indeed?” was all Mr. Holmes had to say on the matter.
That got him interested. It made him stop and think for a moment, at any rate. And when he didn’t come right back with an explanation, I dared figure I might have him.
“You’ll have a look, though, won’t you Mr. Holmes?”
Mr. Holmes had always done right by the Irregulars, and he gave me a bit of a nod and a smile and agreed.
“Watson, be the good doctor and see to our new client. If Mrs. Hudson has a soup on the stove, pour some into her. She’s all skin and bones. Wiggins and I will take a hansom down to the water and see what we shall see.”
After I dismissed the rest of The Irregulars for that day, me and Mr. Holmes caught ourselves a cab that took us straight down to the spot Beth had told me about. Once we were there, we saw the crowd that had gathered along the embankment. Somebody other than a mudlark had spotted Beth’s dead father, and now the police were there, keeping everyone back.
It only took a word from Mr. Holmes to get past the two Bobbies blocking off the steps to the river. If they didn’t know his face, they knew his name and reputation and that was enough. A third was standing at the water’s edge, next to a fellow lying face-down on the rocks. The man on guard was a big peeler from The Yard - the kind what runs the likes of The Irregulars off the street if they get a notion we’s up to something they don’t approve of. He would have chased me off right quick if Mr. Holmes hadn’t vouched for me.
“My name is Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “and this is my associate, Mr. Wiggins.”
I tipped my hat at the introduction, polite whenever I must.
“Mr. Holmes,” said the officer in charge of the scene, “always a pleasure to hear you’re on the job. Though what interest this sort of vagrant might have for you is beyond me.”
“Even the lowest among us may suffer an intriguing demise that warrants investigation.”
“Take a look as you care, but he seems just another drowned shoreman to me. If anyone’s at fault, I would point at the man who poured him his last drink.”
It didn’t take Mr. Holmes more than a moment to disagree with the policeman once he stooped down and began making all those deductions he’s so good at.
“He is quite soaked through, but not drowned,” he concluded. “No water has been inhaled. Dead men do not gasp for breath, above or below the water.”
The man in charge didn’t look so in charge once he heard it was a killing he was standing over.
“Hello, what have we here?” said Mr. Holmes, brushing aside the sopping tangle of hair at the back of the dead man’s head. Beth had been right. Her father was bleeding money.
There, sticking out of an ugly hole punched through the back of his skull, was a tidy sum of money, all clumped together in a rusty chunk, with every coin stuck to their mates like they was all minted that way.
Mr. Holmes began the messy task of picking the pieces out as they would come. Some coins were loose, but most were massed in groups, with as many as a dozen at a time joined together. You’d need a hammer and long hours to break them all apart to spend. There weren’t no more gold sovereigns like the one Beth had plucked out, but every other coin of the realm, copper or silver, made an appearance. All told, Mr. Holmes figured it to be at least three pounds worth - enough to have bought the eyes and ears of The Irregulars for a good long time, I’ll tell you.
When he was done, the wound lay open and bare and it was sure as anything that that was what killed him. The bobby looked confused, and I’m not one to see eye-to-eye with the police most times, but it didn’t make no sense to me neither.
“Who would kill a man and then, rather than stealing from him, deposit a sum of money in his body before throwing the corpse into the water? Surely he wasn’t trying to sink it.”
It was a foolish noti
on, but Mr. Holmes let it pass.
“Many a murdered man has been weighed down and sent to the bottom of the Thames. But not with only a handful of pocket change. And certainly not stuffed into a wound in his head. I would expect to see stones or perhaps heavy scraps of metal in his pockets, but there is nothing.”
“What’s the truth of it then, Mr. Holmes?” I asked.
“He was a shoreman most certainly, a tosher more specifically, but this has only been his occupation in recent years. The configuration of the callouses on his hands tell me of the tools he worked with. Not a long hoe, as a tosher might employ, but more likely shovels and picks. You can still see the discolouration in his skin from the coal dust to this day. He quit the mines after an injury left him with a broken arm that never set right, and came to the city to pursue a better life he failed to find. Fallen on hard times with a young child to support, he turned to toshing and may have come to more success at it than he wished.”
Toshers were like mudlarks, all grown up but after bigger stakes. Their scavenging took them to much more dangerous, awful places. There were rewards to be had, sure enough, but it took a desperate man to try his hand at it.
“Was it murder?” was all the peeler wanted to know.
“I cannot say for the moment. Another man was involved at least. Of that much I am certain. Observe the heels of his boots, scuffed to the point of very nearly being worn through. The man was dragged here, pulled through the streets by his arms, and deposited along the banks of the Thames by someone in the middle of the night. He is wet, true, but from the morning rain, not the river. And the muck that covers his boots and trousers - how foul and fetid! I know every variety of mud than can be trodden in and tracked anywhere in London. I can tell you precisely which district a sample of soil is from and how fresh it is. But this! This I have never encountered. I am not acquainted with it nor, I suspect, do I wish to be. And yet, it shall be key to discovering the precise location where this man met his demise.”