Mrs Hudson and the Malabar Rose

by Mrs Hudson

  I studied the fruitcake carefully. ‘It’s beautiful, ma’am. But I thought you didn’t approve of iced fruitcake?’

  ‘Oh, well, Flottie, there’s a time and a place for everything. Now, you change into your night things while I boil the kettle and then we’ll settle ourselves down in front of the fire and see what’s what.’

  After following her instructions, I was soon nursing a steaming cup of lemon and honey, and telling Mrs Hudson all about my outing to Stepney. For the most part she listened in silence, though when I described Dr Watson’s response to the antics of Fidelma Fontaine, our eyes met and she allowed herself a little chuckle. When I told her how I’d discovered that James Phillimore had once been a child contortionist, I got excited all over again, only to remember that Mrs Hudson had already arrived at the same conclusion.

  ‘But how could you know that, ma’am?’ I asked. ‘After all, it’s hardly a very likely thing.’

  ‘No indeed, Flottie. Though I had begun to suspect some days ago, when I saw the mention of a contortionist on that poster. That is why I sought advice from Sir Phillip Westacott, the notable anatomist. You see, Mr Holmes was right. Mr Phillimore did not simply disappear. And his mother-in-law was adamant he had not slipped passed her. So he simply must have found some other way out of the house. And as the back windows and locks were all secured, that coal chute really was the only way he could have done it without being seen. And once you realise that, then it must follow that Phillimore is able to fold himself into very small spaces. And, of course, after that all sorts of things made sense.’

  ‘Like what, ma’am?’

  ‘Oh, like how the Great Salmanazar was able to pull off his little act of escapology,’ she said carelessly, with a little wave of her hand. ‘And how the Malabar Rose disappeared.’

  With that, she rose quite calmly from her seat and began to look for something in the drawer of the kitchen table.

  ‘How the ruby disappeared, ma’am? I don’t understand. There was nowhere to hide in that room, ma’am. The only thing in there was the marble column where the stone was displayed, and that was solid. He couldn’t have hidden in there, ma’am.’

  She found the piece of paper she was looking for and returned to the fire.

  ‘Far from it, Flottie. He most definitely wasn’t anywhere near the Malabar Rose when it disappeared. In fact he was suspended above a packed audience at the theatre next door at the time.’

  ‘Ma’am?’ I was completely confused by then. But Mrs Hudson was unrolling a large, scrolled piece of paper.

  ‘Here, look at this, Flottie. I borrowed this from old Lord Boothroyd when I visited him this evening. He is one of the last of the Gallivanting Grandees who made such a splash in the ’60s. They never missed a show, no matter what or where, and Lord Boothroyd never missed a pretty face, especially when it came to filling his country house at weekends. Nobody knows more about the different acts that have appeared in London over the last 30 years than he does. I’ve spent a fascinating evening listening to him – acrobats, dancers, Chinese tumblers, he’s seen them all.’ Mrs Hudson paused to sip at her drink. ‘The only problem was that I was looking for someone called Phillimore, and that name didn’t seem to ring any bells with his lordship. He knew all about contortionists. Boneless Boris the Birmingham Bender and Articulated Anders the Artful Austrian were his favourites, but nobody he mentioned had a name like Phillimore. It was only when we went through the old playbills that we had a piece of luck.’

  I looked at the paper she had spread in front of me. It was a little yellowed and brittle with age, but otherwise it was like other playbills, the headlines full of names I didn’t recognise, all in very large print.

  ‘His lordship had mentioned the name “Folding Freddie” a couple of times before we found this particular playbill. He remembers him well – a small boy who used to hide in tiny boxes so he could burst out at comical moments and shout “Are you goin’ to kiss ’er?” Very popular, he was. But it wasn’t until we came to this bill that we made the link. It’s the very first billing of his career.’

  Mrs Hudson’s finger guided my eye to the tiny print right at the bottom of the paper. At first I wasn’t sure which line she meant, and I peered at Abe Hammond’s Performing Seals and Kitty Keats, Child Poet before I found the line I was looking for: Folding Freddie Phillimore, the Infant Surprise.

  ‘So that’s how you knew! And it means we know exactly how he came to disappear in Ealing!’ I paused, suddenly struck by a thought. ‘But we don’t know why, ma’am. That still doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Doesn’t it, Flotsam?’ The housekeeper chuckled to herself. ‘Here, have a look at this.’

  She tapped her finger on the playbill, about half way up the list. ‘Polly Perkins, the Clapham Canary,’ I read.

  ‘Polly Perkins, ma’am? That’s the girl he was in love with later on.’

  Mrs Hudson nodded. ‘Lord Boothroyd remembered Miss Perkins very well, Flottie. She began as a tot, singing popular songs, but according to his lordship she grew into a very attractive young woman. He doesn’t know what happened to her, though. One day she was on her way to the top, the next she dropped out of sight. He supposed she must have married someone respectable and settled down.’

  ‘And did she, ma’am?’

  Mrs Hudson chuckled. ‘Lord Boothroyd has a remarkable collection of old papers about the stage, Flottie. Eventually we dug out this.’

  She showed me a picture of a young girl in an old-fashioned white dress. She must have been about eleven or twelve, but her dark hair was trimmed into tight little ringlets of the sort that had been fashionable then. Underneath was printed the legend ‘Polly Perkins, Popular Songbird’. Mrs Hudson was eyeing the picture with evident satisfaction.

  ‘Does she remind you of anyone, Flottie?’

  I looked again, thinking of the young girls I’d known, trying to match them to the picture before me. Then, quite abruptly, those childish features seemed to rearrange themselves in front of me: an adult nose, full lips, cheekbones where there had been girlish fat. And a pair of passionate dark eyes, flashing from under locks of dark hair.

  I looked up, my face full of wonder.

  ‘Why, Miss Hudson, not… ?’

  ‘Of course, Flotsam,’ she confirmed with a small smile of satisfaction. ‘And I think there can be no doubt now that James Phillimore is a man who needs watching.’

  *

  That night was the first for some time when I did not think of the boy with blue eyes. For now the hurt I felt was crowded out by a sense that pieces of a puzzle were beginning to fit together. The thought filled me with a restless excitement, so that when I lay in bed that night it was with images in my mind of stage tricks and exotic dancers, and of love amongst the stage lights.

  Perhaps this mental turmoil is why I didn’t notice anything strange about the shadows cast onto the kitchen floor by the street lamp outside. Had I been studying the patterns of light visible from where I lay in bed, I must surely have seen a long, slim shadow that fell into the room from the road outside as it passed to and fro across our window. Backwards and forwards it paced, like a restless shade undecided in its hauntings. But that night my eyes were heavy, and I didn’t see the dark figure creep down the area steps and very silently try the latch on the kitchen door. No sense of foreboding disturbed my slumber, no shiver stirred my sleep. Not even a vague sense of relief that, for once in my life, I had remembered to bolt down the latch of the kitchen door, to keep the night at bay.

  Chapter XV

  Perch Revisited

  The next morning was unusual in that both Dr Watson and Mr Holmes were up very early. After the lethargic start to the previous day, Mr Holmes now appeared seized with exceptional energy. He was dressed long before his breakfast was served and passed the time before its arrival skimming at great pace through a very large bound volume entitled Minutes of the Honourable Society of Mechanicians. When I placed his tray before him, he immediately pounced on
the boiled egg he spied there, proceeding to balance it on a large pile of books he had constructed in the centre of the breakfast table, only to knock it off with a touch of his fingernail so that the egg in question disappeared between two bulky tomes. Mrs Hudson, who happened to observe these activities for herself, smiled encouragingly and left him to it.

  Dr Watson, on finding that his friend’s fierce concentration precluded all conversation, declared that he intended to take a stroll in Hyde Park. Pausing only to put on new socks and to change his necktie for a new and very colourful cravat, he was gone before the tea in the teapot was even cold. Mrs Hudson too seemed anxious to leave the house, for she rushed through the routine jobs of the morning with the most unusual haste. While I was still laying the fire in the gentlemen’s study, she popped up to tell me that she had business to conduct with Mr Rumbelow and that she would be gone all morning.

  She must have seen some disappointment in my face at this news, for her expression softened and she offered me the prospect of something far more interesting than a visit to the solicitor’s offices.

  ‘If the gentlemen do not require us this afternoon, Flotsam, I rather think it is time we had another word with Perch, the toy-maker. Perhaps we could arrange to meet at his shop at five this afternoon?’

  It was an invitation I accepted gladly, and one which piqued my curiosity. Peering out of the window as Mrs Hudson emerged into the street below me, I wondered where the old toy-maker fitted into our story. Would he be able to tell us the answer to the whole mystery? As I watched, Mrs Hudson made her way along the pavement below me, looking around her as she went as if enjoying the fragmentary sunshine. A hansom cab slowed beside her but she dismissed it with a shake of her head and continued on foot with all the vigour of a woman intent on a good walk. It was just as I was turning away from the window that I noticed her check suddenly. Across the road from her, another cab had slowed almost to a halt in order to manoeuvre around an unloading dray, and I watched astounded as Mrs Hudson darted across the road and swung herself with remarkable agility into the moving cab just as it was pulling away. In a few seconds more, it had turned a corner and had disappeared from sight.

  Before I could ponder the meaning of this remarkable behaviour, my eye was caught by another familiar figure. Miss Peters, looking as fresh as a Michaelmas daisy, had entered Baker Street from the other direction and was making her way to our door. Her progress along the crowded pavements was easy to follow, for her advance was marked by the erratic behaviour of the many gentlemen who insisted in sweeping off their hats in a manner designed to capture her attention, but which mostly succeeded in hampering their fellow pedestrians. Totally oblivious of this, Miss Peters smiled sweetly and rather vaguely at the crowd in general and, on noticing me in the window, gave an exquisitely lovely smile and a wave of her hand. Without waiting to witness the impact of this on the young men in her path, I hastened downstairs to the front door and waited for her knock.

  However, when after a longer interval than I had expected, her knock finally came, I found that a little of the serenity had gone from her face. She was holding a note in her hand and she looked puzzled.

  ‘Hello, Flottie,’ she began. ‘Do you know, the strangest thing just happened?’ She looked again at the note. ‘A small boy just gave me this. Just now, when I was about to ring the bell. “For the lady wot lives inside,” he said.’ Her voice fell naturally into a very fair impersonation of a Cockney urchin. ‘Then he just darted off. Oh, it is exciting here! Every time I come, something mysterious happens. Mrs Hudson’s always up to something, isn’t she? Living here must just be the most wonderful thing, Flottie. So much more interesting than tea parties with Lady Londonderry and waltzing with the Walters boy.’

  She sighed deeply, as if the hardship of her life was almost beyond bearing.

  ‘Still,’ she continued, brightening again, ‘it’s not every girl that gets to deliver mysterious messages, is it? Come on, let’s see what it says!’

  I hesitated. ‘But if it’s for Mrs Hudson, don’t you think… ?’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, Flottie! He didn’t say it was for her, did he? It might just as easily be for you! Oh!’

  The exclamation coincided with her tearing open the note, and as it dangled open in her hand I saw at once why she had gasped. The message was not handwritten at all. Instead it consisted of one sentence, made up of different letters clipped from newspapers. The effect was dramatic, and it shocked us both into silence. I had never seen anything like it.

  sTop yoUr SnOopiNg oR face tHe consEqueNcEs

  ‘Oh, Flottie, whatever does it mean?’ Miss Peters asked breathlessly.

  ‘It’s a warning,’ I replied, my eyes narrowing. ‘For Mrs Hudson. Someone doesn’t like what she’s doing.’

  Miss Peters took a deep breath and began to shake her head, but her smile was one of sheer bliss. ‘Goodness, Flotsam! You must tell me everything. What on earth is Mrs H up to now?’

  *

  In the end, Mrs Peters insisted on spending most of the day with me. Having digested the meaning of the strange note, her spirits rebounded to their earlier heights with remarkable alacrity, and her plan for ensuring that my own spirits followed hers was simplicity itself.

  ‘We are going back to Bloomsbury to have luncheon with Rupert. Then we are going to Verity’s to look at their new hats. If there’s a safer place in the world than Verity’s, I can’t imagine what it must be like! And wait until you see the hats just in from Paris, Flottie. They are so unutterably beautiful; I almost want to weep just at the thought of them. And after Verity’s, we’ll take tea at the Ritz and eat absolutely as much as we can, and then, if we can fit it in, we’ll go to Bertorelli’s for chocolate. That ought to be enough to calm us down, I think. Except, of course, that the waiters at Bertorelli’s are all so fantastically handsome that I defy any lady under the age of eighty ever to be calm there.’

  I explained to her that I was engaged to meet Mrs Hudson at five o’clock. Miss Peters suggested accompanying me, but the image of Mrs Hudson questioning Mr Perch with Miss Peters in tow seemed so utterly far-fetched that I insisted I should slip away alone. Nevertheless, Miss Peters proved such excellent company that as we walked back towards Bloomsbury, I already felt my good humour returning.

  It also turned out that Miss Peters had news about the theft of the Malabar Rose. Rupert Spencer, it seemed, had been made responsible for talking to London’s community of butterfly experts with a view to finding out more about the specimen found in the Satin Room.

  ‘And he’s been so boring about it, Flottie. Really! Butterflies, butterflies, butterflies, all day long. How can a man as handsome as Rupert be interested in something so dull? And it’s not as if he sees the beauty in them, at least not that he ever lets on. To him they’re just creepy crawlies with wings, you know. But that’s the trouble – he loves creepy crawlies. He really must marry me, you know, just so I can save him from himself. Otherwise he’ll just become one of those tedious, dusty old men with butterfly collections. And I know exactly what they are like because I’ve been forced to take tea with them all week. He calls them lepidopterists, which as far as I can see must be the Latin for dusty old men. There was one of them who was being so crushingly dull that in the end I said to him in my grandest manner, “Really, sir, do you not think you should have some interest in your life other than insects?”But instead of him shrivelling up in shame, he just laughed as if I’d deliberately told a very funny joke. And then it turned out that he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Well, really! I’m not sure I’m happy that the nation’s finances are in the hands of a man who spends his money on moths. If I ever did get a vote, Flottie, which would probably be a terribly bad thing for the country, I’d be sure not to cast it in favour of any party that includes lepidopterists.’

  I felt a smile of my own beginning to form, but I suppressed it hurriedly. ‘Tell me,’ I asked instead, ‘what has Mr Spencer found out from all these men?’

/>   ‘Well, Flottie, it turns out that the butterfly they found in the Satin Room really was the kind called Malabar Rose, which is just too peculiar, isn’t it? I keep telling Rupert that the Great Salmanazar must have waved his wand and done it by magic, but he doesn’t seem to find that in the least bit funny. Anyway, it seems that what really happened is that, a few weeks before, someone bought a dozen specimens of Malabar Rose butterflies from a man in Newbury. Or was it Newmarket? Or Newark? Somewhere, anyway. The man doing the selling, wherever he was, had a lot that were just chrysal-thingies, and he sent them by post before they hatched.’

  ‘And where did he send them?’ I asked, hoping that Miss Peters’s sense of geography might not have collapsed altogether.

  ‘Oh, to an address in London somewhere. Can you imagine getting a pack of creepy, wriggling things pushed through your door like that? Yuck!’

  ‘And can you remember whereabouts in London?’ I persisted as patiently as I could, wondering if it would be bad manners to shake her.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. You know how bad I am at remembering things. Now, let’s see…’

  ‘Not to the Great Salmanazar, I suppose?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Flottie. I’d have remembered that.’

  ‘Might it have been an address in Ealing?’

  ‘Ealing? I don’t think so. I keep thinking ‘Billingsgate’, but it can’t have been that. Why would someone send butterflies to Billingsgate? And besides, I think there was some connection to toys…’

  ‘Toys? It wasn’t sent to someone called Perch in Kimber Street, was it?

  ‘That’s it, Flottie! Perch! I knew it was something to do with fish.’ Miss Peters glowed prettily at her own cleverness and smiled randomly at a young man passing on a bicycle, who reacted by wobbling with surprise and almost colliding with an omnibus.