Mrs Hudson and the Malabar Rose

by Mrs Hudson

  ‘Ah, Flotsam,’ he began, with a note of benevolent encouragement in his voice. ‘It is good to see you thinking for yourself. However, in this instance, I fear you cannot possibly know as much as we do. You are clearly not aware of what happened to the Black Pearl of Castile. When the Great Salmanazar came to town, a committee of Spanish nobles was convened to safeguard it, and they adopted a strategy such as you have described. They locked themselves into a strong room with the pearl, a dozen revolvers and a rack of duelling sabres.’

  ‘What happened then, Holmes?’ Dr Watson asked, clearly as ignorant as I was about the annals of foreign crime.

  ‘All went well until the lights were blown out and the room was plunged into darkness. When light was restored, the pearl was gone.’

  ‘No mystery there, Holmes! Clearly one of the fellows had seen his chance and pocketed it.’

  ‘Of course, Watson. But which one? The room contained twelve of the proudest men in Spain, each armed with a duelling sabre. To ask any one of them to submit to a search would have been to besmirch his family honour in the eyes of all his peers. Not one of them would agree to it. And besides, it was likely that the pearl was swallowed, so any search would have been futile.’

  ‘And the pearl?’

  ‘We’ll never know. But I am determined that no such complications should arise here, which is why Flotsam’s plan is quite impossible. No, the best way to secure the ruby is to make sure that no one, not even ourselves, has any way of reaching it. Now, Sir John, the guests are to be allowed in to see the ruby at eleven o’clock. It is safe to say that nothing and no one can enter or leave this room without our knowledge before then. For anyone to overcome all the inspector’s precautions and to find a way into this room without permission is simply impossible. In fact I would go further. If anything happens to the ruby while it is in this room, why, gentlemen, then I might begin to believe that this Great Salmanazar really is a magician after all.’

  Chapter VII

  The Toy-Maker of Kimber Street

  It was a slightly bedraggled group that returned to Baker Street that afternoon. A flurry of snow shortly before we left the Blenheim Hotel had made it impossible to find a hansom, and Mr Holmes, impatient at Dr Watson’s attempts to hail one in the street, had insisted on walking home. As we made our way, the snow turned to sleet and we trudged back with the sky like a shroud above us and thick, grey slush slopping over our boots.

  Each of us was strangely thoughtful, as if fears for the safety of the Malabar Rose were depressing our spirits. For all Sir John’s bluff cheerfulness and Mr Holmes’ confident rationality, I was beginning to feel there was some strange power at work that winter month determined to thwart our efforts. And when the sleet turned suddenly to snow again, as if commanded by the wave of a wand, and when that snow grew so dense that the streets were turned quite white by it, and when night fell with a flurry of snowflakes the size of swan feathers, then it wasn’t too hard to believe that a strange magic was at work in the dark streets, blinding us to what should have been clear and giving life to strange shadows.

  If we needed an antidote to any such thoughts, we found one in Baker Street. The lamps were already lit and the curtains drawn, and from Mrs Hudson’s kitchen crept a smell of rum and nutmeg that whispered to us of Christmas.

  ‘My word, Mrs H,’ Dr Watson declared when she appeared to take the gentlemen’s coats, ‘that’s a fine aroma. What treats do you have in store for us?’

  ‘Nothing for tonight, sir, though there’s some fine ox tongue and a brace of partridges if you wish to dine at home. But the things you can smell are for Christmas Day, and not a taste for any of you until then. Really, with all this Malabar fuss going on, it’s a good job someone has remembered about Christmas.’

  ‘I should expect nothing less of you, Mrs H!’ Watson beamed. ‘I do love a good Christmas dinner! I daresay there’ll be goose?’

  ‘There may very well be, sir.’

  ‘And plum pudding?’

  ‘It’s been ready since September, sir.’

  ‘And a good moist fruitcake to go with a glass of spiced port?’

  ‘I made it today, sir.’

  ‘Excellent! With icing? I’m very partial to an iced fruitcake, Mrs H!’

  The housekeeper frowned. ‘An iced fruitcake with spiced port? I hardly think so, sir.’

  This setback did nothing to dim the good doctor’s enthusiasm. ‘As you think best, Mrs H, as you think best. That little lot should help to take our minds off this ruby business for a few hours, eh, Holmes?’

  But Sherlock Holmes was eyeing his friend with frosty scorn.

  ‘Nonsense, Watson! With the nation’s honour trusted to our hands, we cannot for a moment contemplate such frivolities. We shall spend Christmas Day on duty at the Regal Theatre, observing Salmanazar’s every move. I have it planned already. You shall be watching the back of the theatre while pretending to unblock the drains.’

  ‘But, Holmes! Really! On Christmas Day?’

  ‘Duty, Watson! Duty!’

  His companion subsided into a series of muffled grunts. ‘Perhaps in the evening… Get away for a bite of goose…’ He muttered it more to himself than to his friend.

  ‘After dark, Watson? When the danger is at its greatest? No, by no means. We must prepare ourselves for a long and painful vigil. Now, in the meantime, Mrs H, I believe you mentioned a partridge…’

  *

  ‘I must say, Flotsam,’ Mrs Hudson confessed when we were alone by the kitchen fire, ‘Mr Holmes’ dedication is certainly impressive. To miss Christmas for the sake of that ruby before it has even been stolen! Really! I’m beginning to think that stone is more trouble than it’s worth!’

  The dark kitchen was at its most appealing just then, warm from a long day’s baking and scented with spices. The flames from the fire wrapped us in their warmth and painted the walls with a soothing glow. It was good to be home.

  ‘Ready for a little supper, Flottie?’ Mrs Hudson asked as she began to lay the table.

  I nodded contentedly. ‘That would be lovely, ma’am.’

  ‘Good. But we mustn’t linger over it, because as soon as we’ve eaten it’s on with our coats and out again.’

  For a moment my surprise was less than my dismay.

  ‘Out, ma’am? Out again at this hour?’

  ‘That’s right, Flottie. The place we’re visiting tonight keeps peculiar hours. It’s nearly a week now since Mr Phillimore disappeared and I really don’t think we can afford to wait.’

  ‘Mr Phillimore?’ I asked faintly.

  ‘There’s something funny going on there, my girl. And just at the moment any unexplained disappearance is surely worth investigating.’ She paused in her placing of the cutlery and came over to my side. ‘I ask you because I value your assistance,’ she said softly. ‘And because a bright young girl shouldn’t be sitting here mending Dr Watson’s socks when she might be out there seeking to explain the impossible.’

  And so of course I went. And when I stepped out into the cold at Mrs Hudson’s side, into a street muffled by the heavy fall of snow, I felt not the cold of the air on my skin but the warmth of her words in my head. For what challenge could be more alluring than to understand the impossible? If anything was to shape my life, let it be that.

  The deepening snow and the bitter cold had emptied the streets that evening so that only a few vehicles and even fewer pedestrians were to be seen on the main thoroughfares, and beyond those, where the maze of London’s backstreets disappeared into murky darkness, it seemed that only the rats and their scrawny shadows were abroad.

  It soon became apparent that Mrs Hudson’s destination was Islington.

  ‘Do you remember?’ Mrs Hudson prompted me as we nestled together for warmth in a draughty cabriolet. ‘That’s where Mr Phillimore bought his gloves.’

  ‘But, ma’am,’ I asked, ‘why are you so interested in where Mr Phillimore bought his gloves? According to Mrs Smithers he would buy his
gloves anywhere he happened to be passing.’

  ‘Of course, Flottie. That’s exactly why I’m so interested.’

  As I settled down to contemplate that utterance the cab rolled north and eastwards, through streets of scarcely broken snow. Shortly after we passed the Angel, the cab turned north off Upper Street and a little further on it dropped us at the end of a quiet, unremarkable little road.

  ‘This is Kimber Street,’ Mrs Hudson explained. ‘Now, Flotsam, think about it. James Phillimore lived in Ealing, on the west side of London. And he worked in Marble Arch, towards the centre. But this is where he bought his gloves. Now how on earth did he come to be here? What is there here that would bring him so far out of his way?’

  I peered up Kimber Street. It was a narrow street with a handful of small shops on either side.

  ‘There might have been any number of reasons, ma’am. He might have had business here. Or friends. Perhaps someone he works with. A mistress even.’

  Mrs Hudson shook her head. ‘Not according to his mother-in-law, who if not the most reliable witness does at least seem confident on that particular question. Now, Flottie, see how the road narrows towards the end? It ends in a footpath that leads through a churchyard into a crescent of large houses. To go from those houses to the main road, you don’t need to go through Kimber Street. So this road isn’t a shortcut to anywhere. If you do not live here, or know anyone who lives here, then the only reason to turn into Kimber Street is to visit one of these shops.’

  I looked about me at the drab shop fronts. Only one, towards the end, showed any light. It was hard to imagine someone crossing the city to come here.

  Mrs Hudson held her arm out to me. ‘Let us imagine the enigmatic Mr Phillimore walking down this street. Which shop might be visiting?’

  The first shop we came to was a faded grocer’s shop, its window display dusty and dated. Facing it across the narrow street was a rather mean-looking draper’s.

  ‘Neither of those,’ I decided.

  Next came the glove-maker’s where Mr Phillimore had made his purchase and, opposite it, a very ordinary tobacconist’s.

  ‘Not those either, I think.’

  The third shop was tightly closed with wooden shutters but the legend above the door read ‘E.A.Husband, Top Pedigree Puppies’.

  ‘A pet shop, Flotsam. They sell young dogs to the better-off families around here.’

  ‘So that’s why you asked if Mrs Phillimore had recently been given a puppy!’

  ‘Indeed. Yet the answer tells us little. Phillimore might have been purchasing it for a lady who is not his wife.’

  ‘So you think he came to this street to visit that shop?’

  Mrs Hudson looked unconvinced. ‘Such shops exist in other parts of town, Flotsam. But it is a possibility. Come, let us move on.’

  None of the next seven shops offered any suggestion that they might draw their customers from a distance, and I had nearly concluded that the pet shop really was Mr Phillimore’s destination when we came to the shop with the lighted windows. And then I knew instantly, with total certainty, that this was a shop unlike any other anywhere in the world.

  All through the shop tiny lamps were burning, shaded with glass of different colours so that they lit the contents of the window with a glow of many different hues. There was gold and green and red in there, and shades of violet and ochre, all mingled together. Between them they lit the window as treasure troves are lit in picture books, and their light crept out onto the snowy street so that the flakes falling on us were gold and turquoise and orange by turns. But it was not the lights that made me gasp, though they filled the window with a magic of their own. No, it was the many devices in front of me that made me stop and stare, each of them turning or spinning or twisting so that the whole shop seemed to be in motion.

  ‘A toyshop!’ I gasped, though the words were inadequate, like labelling the finest Swiss chocolaterie a sweet-shop. Every single one of the items that crowded the window moved by clockwork, the whole ensemble dancing together in the brightly-lit cave as if to a wild pan-pipe tune. There were all the simple toys you might imagine: a jack-in-the-box leapt from a tiny walnut box then reached behind his back to pull down of his own accord the lid that trapped him, so that he was gone as quickly as he had appeared; behind him a musical box stood open and, as it played, four ballerinas dressed as swans pirouetted to a tune I could not hear. But those were the simple items. Others threatened to overwhelm you by their sheer accomplishment. Near the front of the window, a small boy, no more than twelve inches high, was holding a hoop and teaching tricks to an equally tiny poodle. The dog appeared to yap at his ankles with the fluent movement of a real dog, until suddenly it leapt from its base, clean through the outstretched hoop, before returning to his capering.

  Further back, there was a doll’s house that appeared to be an ordinary model of a large country house until the figure of a window cleaner on a tiny ladder polishing one of the windows began to move. Attracted by the movement, I was in time to see a window near him fly open and to watch as a maid in bonnet and apron shook her duster clean. Then lights came on in the ballroom and I watched an elegant couple dance its full length before disappearing through double doors, to be followed by the figure of a footman who gently snuffed out the candles until the room was in darkness.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked, my voice little more than a whisper.

  ‘A place where magic is for sale,’ she replied softly, her own eyes still on the spinning toys. ‘He’s been here many years now. His name is Perch. Come, let’s go in.’

  Inside the shop, beyond the window display, the sense of a magic world continued. Strings of brightly coloured beads and sequins hung from the ceiling, shielding the back of the shop from the front like fantastical spiders’ webs in a fairy-tale grotto. Strange shapes and structures peopled the shop, but these were still, as if exhausted. I spied a tiny archer and a rocking horse, and a stationary seal with a ball balanced on its motionless nose.

  A bell rang as the shop door closed behind us and as if in response a clockwork nightingale in a wooden tree began to sing. From behind a curtain in the depths of the shop a man of about sixty-five appeared. He wore a workman’s smock and had a pair of thick spectacles pushed onto his forehead, held there by tufts of unruly white hair. The frame of the spectacles was held together with copper wire. I noticed that his head seemed to twitch slightly from time to time, rather as if he had begun to take on some of the motion and mannerisms of the objects he created. There was little welcome in his voice when he spoke.

  ‘Can I help you? A clockwork doll for the girl perhaps? Something for a shilling that will last until Boxing Day?’

  Mrs Hudson returned his gaze coolly, unruffled by his tone.

  ‘My companion here is rather old for dolls. She is rather more interested in mechanical design. We stood outside your shop and wondered what ratio of gearing you must have employed to create the unusual motion of that Spanish dancer?’

  Rather than show surprise at this extraordinary question, he nodded his head rapidly several times, in the manner of someone whose whole life was so dominated by one obsession that there was no surprise when someone, however unlikely, understood and spoke his own language.

  ‘Ah, yes. The Spanish dancer. A fine piece of work.’ He nodded his head again, a little nervously. ‘Of course I cannot tell you how I do it. I never tell.’ He scanned us again, as if seeing us for the first time. ‘Most girls just want dolls,’ he said. ‘Boys want soldiers. They could buy them anywhere but they come here to plague me. I could make a fortune selling dolls and soldiers that jerk like fishing lines and break down in a week.’ He clucked to himself bitterly.

  Mrs Hudson gestured around the room. ‘But these… They are magnificent. You must surely make more from selling one of these than from a thousand cheap dolls.’

  ‘Ha! Ha!’ The toy-maker twitched his head again and grimaced. ‘There is nothing to be made from these! Nothing! Each on
e costs me a fortune in time and in crafting. If I were to sell any one of them at the cost required to make it, it would be beyond the purse of every man in the kingdom! When I do sell one – and that is rare enough these days – it is less a sale than a gift. And yet the buyer goes away and says to himself, “Old Perch is expensive. Old Perch cannot charge those prices. I have half a mind to take it back and demand that Old Perch be more reasonable.” Here, look at this.’

  He stepped across to a shelf where a small tree a couple of feet high stood in an old clay pot. Its branches were bare as if it had long ago succumbed to a lack of attention and to the permanent twilight in which it was kept. It didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t a real tree until the old man pressed something near the base of its pot and then stood back and waited. At first nothing happened. Then a tiny mechanical tune began to play, something bright and hopeful.

  ‘Watch carefully now,’ he whispered to me and I realised that as the music played the tree was beginning to put forth tiny green shoots that grew and opened until, in a minute, the bare branches were hidden by a canopy of leaves.

  ‘You see?’ he asked, while the leaves continued to grow. ‘One of the finest pieces of work I have ever achieved and yet of what value is it? Who will pay for a tree that grows silk leaves?’ He turned away to lead us to another part of his shop, but the tree’s music was still playing and when I turned back, I noticed that tiny specks of blossom had appeared and clustered to every branch.

  Meanwhile, Mrs Hudson and the toy-maker had their backs to me and he was beckoning her to a part of the shop where an object the size of a wardrobe stood covered with an old curtain.

  ‘This is something I have just started working on. You may know there is a famous illusionist about to perform in London. His visit has been my inspiration. The mechanism for the figure is still very crude but I have solved the hard part of the puzzle. Watch…’

  He tugged away the curtain and for a moment a chill passed through me. Smiling out from the dark corner, life-sized in evening dress, a grinning mannequin leered out at us. His glass eyes seemed to meet mine and his waxen face combined the features of the living with the pale emptiness of the dead. It was a gruesome rendering of a magician, the sort you might expect to see only in bad dreams. Next to the figure, and of the same height, stood a rough wooden crate with a hinged door. This door Perch pulled open, revealing a low three-legged stool within the crate.