“You apologised because you set Dr. Watson’s new boots on fire.”
“Of course not – I apologised because I didn’t think to purchase him another pair first.”
I laughed, not even caring that it was Mr. Holmes who made me laugh. Laughing till fat tears welled in my eyes. And then I wasn’t laughing. And Mr. Holmes’s long fingers were wrapped around my wrist, warmer to the touch than they looked, and my mouth opened and the words came spilling out.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t like me. God, I was going positively spare, I was that angry with you, but you were right enough. A woman all but takes her life in her hands when she marries.”
“To which particular woman do you refer?” he asked almost gently.
“I had a sister.” I shook my head at the tinplate ceiling. “A younger sister by two years, Hannah Lestrade, and we were close as peas, and when she first took up with Verle Crowley, I didn’t see anything amiss with the blackguard. I’ll never forgive myself for that. He was well situated – a manager at a tea importation company – and if he had a few drops too many on holidays, well, who could blame him for a little frivolity? I was such a fool. And by the time they’d married… Hannah lied about the bruises, and when I wouldn’t allow her to hide any more, she said he didn’t mean it cruelly. That she loved him. That it wouldn’t happen again.”
Nodding, Mr. Holmes studied his shirt cuffs.
“I begged her to leave. Go with me to France and stay with our great-grandmother. Hannah only listened to me once – and once was more than enough. The next morning, a group of roughs set upon me. Dragged me into a corridor, beat me until their arms gave out. One of them had a fire iron. I’ve never walked quite straight since.”
Mr. Holmes’s eyes glowed weirdly molten in the firelight. “What did you do?”
Barking a laugh, I passed my wrist over my eyes. “I joined the police force. I knew it was Crowley behind the attack but could never prove anything. Figured that the next time he threatened me, or hurt Hannah, I would know what to do. I’m every bit as prize an idiot as you claim, Mr. Holmes. Nobody ever taught me a damn thing about what to do, and eventually Hannah took to the bottle just to make it through her days.”
“I quite understand, believe it or not.” Mr. Holmes’s mouth twitched oddly. “The slow passage of days, I mean.”
I nodded. “Yes. I never blamed her. And she never did leave him. First their son Jonas came along, which tied Hannah to that bastard all the more closely, and then Crowley converted her savings account to his name, claiming she’d been ‘unstable’ since giving birth. She was a drunkard by that time, so it wasn’t difficult for him to prove. When I finally made detective inspector, it was too late. That was ten years ago – ten years on your birthday, as it happens.”
“God in heaven.” With a quick, firm squeeze of my wrist, Mr. Holmes sat back. “Lestrade, when you say it was too late…”
“He needed funds,” I confirmed hoarsely. “He somehow arranged for their house to burn down, in order to collect the insurance money. Hannah was inside, their son with my parents. Though as bad luck would have it, my father decided to take Jonas to see Hannah just in time for them both to witness the roof cave in and the flames burst through. I don’t know if Crowley drugged Hannah first, locked her in. I don’t know if he was aware she was still inside. I don’t know anything. And I never will, not after a decade, and never a single clue. My nephew Jonas lives with my mum and dad. He draws wildfires. Hellish things. My own sister burned to death and I’ve spent these ten years solving other people’s crimes.”
That’s not the whole scope of what I don’t know. Not by a long shot.
I don’t know why I told Mr. Holmes about the worst thing that ever happened to me.
I don’t know why he sat there, collected and yet somehow simmering beneath his composure. Like a kettle before it whistles. Then another pair of snifters arrived. When I lifted mine, my unlikely companion extended his glass in tribute.
“To your late sister,” he stated with none of the glibness that always rubs my nerves raw. “To peace and to justice for all, not excepting ourselves.”
And after we drank, I don’t know why I stayed there with him. Impossible, maddening, arrogant Sherlock Holmes. Talking of cases. He told me about an investigation an unnamed earl had set him on, to discover why some score of invaluable books in his library had been gutted and stuffed with blank foolscap. I told him about Miss Millie Sparks (not an under-housemaid, he agreed with a wry smile) and the unfortunate Miss Willie Sparks. The amateur was mightily intrigued. He ordered us a mountain of fried oysters and listened with rapt attention, and soon enough the lancing ache in my ribcage had faded back to the dull throb that never lets me be. And never will, I suppose.
It’s gone one in the morning now, and poor poisoned Mrs. Jane Gibbs’s paperwork not yet filed. But nevertheless I feel unmistakably better. I’ve an eleven o’clock meeting to plan our strategy in finding Miss Willie Sparks with none other than Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street.
Entry in the diary of Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade
Friday, 11 January 1889
If there’s a single man on this sad planet who cannot resist melodrama, that man is Sherlock Holmes.
After writing up Mrs. Gibbs’s case and drinking about a quart of coffee, I eradicated anything that might tempt Mr. Holmes into irksome deductions (the cold compress I’d used at dawn, for example) and sat down with fresh copies of the Globe and Pall Mall. When he was five minutes behind his time, I chalked it up to carelessness. When he was a quarter of an hour late, I supposed it vanity. When a full forty-one minutes had passed since eleven o’clock chimed, I slapped my exhausted papers into the rubbish bin, concluding that Mr. Holmes hadn’t actually given a damn. About any of the events of last night.
I was sliding my arms into my pea jacket, eager for the hearty meal that would banish the last twinges of brandy from my skull, when my door flew open. A beggar dressed all in mufflers and scarves like a tattered Pied Piper stumbled into my office. The sweet reek of cheap spirits radiating from him lodged in my throat.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing, sir?” I cried.
Gripping the back of the chair to halt his forward momentum, the wretch nodded vigorously. “I’ve a complaint to make. With a soo-perior, like. Done in a jiff, and I’ll be on my way again, Captain.”
“This isn’t a ship. And I am not the smallest bit interested in any complaint that has managed to sprout and take root within your cranium,” I snapped. “Now kindly—”
“Hoo my word, gently now. Gently. Ye’ll be glad o’ this hintelligence soon enough, aye, so ye will. Why, I’d not be surprised if ye kissed me square on the gob once ye’ve ’eard me tell o’ the disorders and corruptions a-going on right under yer very nose, Captain!”
“Detective Inspector. I’ll give you five seconds, and then I’ll have you in a cold, draughty cell, sweating it out. One… two…”
A hand fluttered mothlike to his concave chest. “Me in the lockup! And these old bones past threescore year wi’ nary a stain on me good character! Remember that me poor sainted mam yet lives, a hunnert and two and ever so tetchy over shocks and squalls.”
“Three… four…”
“Begging yer mercy, Captain, take pity on a bloke what spies on the Peelers when they figure they’s spying on me. I’m come to give a full-fleshed reporting as regards yer division, from the wobbly-kneed gaffer down to the greenest o’ the green!”
“Five. Come with—”
The ancient mendicant tugged his own greasy hair off his head.
I groaned. Both inwardly and audibly.
“My most abject regrets over my tardiness, Inspector.” Sherlock Holmes placed a cotton bag on the chair seat. “Granted, it is terribly frigid today, but may I prevail upon your good nature so far as to grant us a little fresh air? I suspect that your nose will thank me for it in spite of the chill.”
Dourly, I unlatched my window. Mr. Hol
mes pulled his grey suit jacket out of the cotton bag and deposited a set of eyebrows, a wig, a disintegrating greatcoat, torn leather overshoes and a pair of side whiskers into the same. I blinked, understanding that he was dressed quite normally underneath the rag-picker’s gear, and was thus able to revert to his natural state in seconds. I suppressed a mournful sigh.
“As to the intelligence I promised, I’d never dream of keeping secrets from you, Lestrade.” Mr. Holmes combed his fingers through his hair. “PC McGettigan has had another row with his mother, probably over what Socks may or may not consume for breakfast – his helmet is never properly clean unless she sees to it. PC Allen is strongly considering investing a modest sum in his brother-in-law’s pub venture – he has been agonising over it for days and this morning packed a sack lunch, which is highly out of character. Finally, PC Zordan badly requires corrective spectacles and ought to be subjected to an eye examination post-haste, which I shall explain forthwith.”
I waited. Mr. Holmes stalked to the open window, threw the cotton bag outside for the street urchins to paw through, and collapsed into the chair, lighting a cigarette. The cloud of liquor began at once to dissipate with the disposal of the costume, so I shut the window with a bang.
“Do me an immense favour and don’t brag a word about how you know any of that tripe. I don’t need you to play parlour tricks with my constables as subjects. And I’m sure these theatrics will all be of enormous help with the case we were going to discuss,” I barked. “Miss Milhemina Sparks will be deeply comforted when she calls on me this afternoon.”
“I should hope so,” Mr. Holmes drawled, spinning the cigarette in his fingertips as if he were a card sharp. “When she learns that I spent the latter half of the night in her missing sibling’s former suite, and that I made some significant progress in our joint – or so I think of it now, if you’ll pardon me, Lestrade – investigation, she ought to be heartily gladdened indeed.”
My jaw dropped. I shut it again. “How did—?”
Interrupting me peevishly, Mr. Holmes explained. After we parted last night, he darted off to the nearest of the small chambers he rents for a pittance in various districts of London. He donned scrap fabrics, covering the middle-class togs he was now wearing. He altered his posture, glued on facial accessories, painted on dirt, and pinned on his wig. Transformation complete, sack over his shoulder like an indigent Saint Nick, he shuffled off to South Lambeth – no cabs being eager to offer him their hospitality – and made straight for Paradise Road.
“As unprepossessing as that stretch of dingy boarding houses may be, Mrs. Bray’s did possess certain features which endeared it to me. It boasted an empty barrel not far adjacent to an exquisite drainage pipe, for example, and the gutters were sturdy, and a few hard tugs with a wrench were enough to get the better of Miss Willie Sparks’s erstwhile window latch. I was ready to turn tail if any member of the household proved a light sleeper, or if a canine ally enquired as to my motives, but they all slept like lambs. A scrape on the wrist as I crawled over the ledge – here, you see – was a modest price to pay for a carte blanche midnight tour of the premises.”
Mr. Holmes had with him a dark lantern, which he set in a corner and lit. Mrs. Bray was telling me the truth when she claimed to have had her guest room cleaned. But the housekeeping standards at her establishment proved to be lacklustre. Mr. Holmes was able to eke some information from the threadbare rug and the second-hand furnishings.
“Willie Sparks had a fondness for lemon biscuits,” he reported dryly, “which I know because Mrs. Bray is deeply in need of a housemaid who sweeps under the settee. Miss Sparks was an avid reader; the chair was angled for the best light from the south-facing window, its pillow was pressed nearly flat, and the carpet was more worn, as if she had got up a number of times for tea, and then returned to her book and her perusal of lives which were wider than her own.”
“That’s balderdash. How can you know that she wasn’t sewing or embroidering?”
“A housemaid who overlooks lemon biscuit crumbs isn’t likely to check beneath cushions she hasn’t even plumped, and every seamstress, no matter how meticulous, leaves snippets of thread behind in the cracks of the upholstery.”
Rubbing at my eyes, I settled on the other side of the desk. “Right. What else?”
The hearth informed Mr. Holmes that Mrs. Bray was stingy with her coal supplies, for the shards and pebbles were all carefully swept into the centre of the grate. The curtains informed him that their tenant Miss Sparks still retained her curiosity about the world beyond her fishbowl, for a slight discolouration remained just where a woman’s fingers would smudge the pale fabric in pulling it aside to peer out. Apart from that, he concluded with a lackadaisical shrug, he could only tell me that our missing spinster left in a very great hurry, and that while her departure had been sudden, it was not entirely unexpected, and that the dairy farmer responsible for her departure lodged in a village called Lynchmere in the district of Chichester, West Sussex.
“Mr. Holmes, either cease this useless parading of fabrications or go to the devil,” I snarled. “I should have thought that our conversation of yesternight proved how very serious a business this is for me!”
“Yes, quite.” He yawned, tugging a sheaf of letters out of his inner pocket. These were tied with a red string and were obviously well taken care of. “I beg your pardon, Inspector, but the night I passed was mostly sleepless. As I was about to elucidate, when I had drawn what superficial conclusions I could regarding Miss Sparks’s narrow habits, I performed a check of the floorboards where my boot produced an unlikely creak. One of the slats was indeed loose – and upon prying it up, I discovered this small cache of correspondence. A man by the name of Mr. Richard Boxall, who claims to be a dairy farmer in the hamlet of Lynchmere from a family of many generations’ standing, has been penning love notes to our missing sister. Doubtless the correspondent and the mysterious fiancé are the same – and doubtless Miss Sparks left in a hurry, too taken with the notion of seeing the chap in the flesh to worry over retrieving her billets-doux.”
“Good Lord, you might have said so in the first place!” I exclaimed. “Here, hand them over! You really are the most maddening fellow I’ve ever come across – you’re aware of that, aren’t you?”
“My good Lestrade,” he intoned darkly as he obeyed, “not a soul on this planet is more aware, as you phrase it, than I. More’s the pity.”
As I rifled through the letters, I soon saw what Mr. Holmes meant by saying that Mr. Boxall “claimed” to be the latest edition of a long line of dairymen. His penmanship was perfectly legible but blocky and unpractised. Like a child drawing its mother, with a circular head and triangular skirts. As for the prose, however… it was uncannily elegant. I’ve not made any great strides with the fair sex personally, having long been preoccupied by darker matters. But if I’d wanted to woo some cheery, buxom lass, I’d have patted myself on the back for these rudely penned sentiments. One impressed me particularly:
While I know that we have never met in person, we have each separately met with Our Common Correspondent, and her descriptions invest me with such affection for you that I find myself smiling upon the instant I spy one of your envelopes. How quickly can the mind come to associate mundane objects with special joys! My thoughts wander as I fret over the price fresh cheese will bring – what exact shade of blue are your eyes? What would your laugh sound like?
Then as the sun sets over my lonely corner of the world, I fear that my happy imaginings are all unfounded. That I must not wish for too much, that surely Our Common Correspondent cannot have described me in such glowing terms to you as she did in the reverse. That I must content myself with the sight of your envelopes – and I could almost be content with such a small portion, so glad is my heart whensoever I read news of you.
“Yes, that page struck me as well.”
Glancing up, I found Mr. Holmes staring as he so often did at nothing, or at a quarter to midnight, or at
the bush-tracking techniques of the aboriginal Australians.
“What, some singular clue struck you, embedded in this page?” I asked.
“Not at all. The author employed a very effective metaphor for tenderness, however – the sight of the envelope. One grows accustomed to the physical traces of those for whom one has an affinity, which is a scientifically sound instinct as regards natural selection; I have of late been making a small study of the phenomenon. Even the most customary objects – nay, especially those – can be imbued with the comfort of the wolf pack’s cave. It’s stamped in our bloodline and there’s no avoiding the urge no matter how passionate one’s love of the unprecedented. A scatter of papers on a desk, a bowler hung on a peg, the scent of familiar tobacco… anything may serve to trigger this Darwinian appetite for humdrum detritus. Mr. Boxall is simply more poetic about it than most.”
When this extraordinary speech had run its course, Mr. Holmes gave no sign of having made it. He just crossed his legs and blinked at his bootlaces.
I pretended to flip through more of the letters. “Did you notice anything else?”
“Of course I did. What’s more, I imagine you have too.”
Pursing my lips, I held up a page. “There’s something devilish odd about these, yes.”
“Oh, well done,” he murmured. “Describe this oddity, if you please, as carefully as you can.”
I scratched the back of my neck. “It isn’t easy to put into words. Certainly nothing a jury would give weight to. And I’d expect these blockish letters from a dairy farmer, maybe one whose father passed on untimely. One forced to quit schooling altogether. But the writing itself is first-rate. Why should that be? I’d surmise that this fellow was a great reader of romances, perhaps. And surmise that his life revolved around them, mentally speaking. And surmise that he was introduced to Miss Sparks via this ‘Common Correspondent’, who saw two equally solitary folk and decided to kindle a rapport between them.”
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