All Roads Lead to Whitechapel

by Michelle Birkby

  Sir George Burnwell had returned.

  CHAPTER

  11

  The Great Escape

  We froze, crouched on the floor, in the dimmest of moonlight, gathered around the case of love letters. Irene quickly leaned forward and blew out the candle, and we stayed as still as we could, barely breathing. We listened as Sir George and his lady (who did not quite laugh like a young society miss—he must have been very firmly rebuffed and returned to an easier alternative) climbed up the stairs to the first floor, down the corridor, up to the door of the study. There he seemed to pause for a second and we held our breath, but the pair walked past it, down the corridor into a room further down.

  We three breathed again, and stood up slowly. My knee cracked as I stood, and it sounded unnaturally loud in the tense silence, but no one came. We could dimly hear the sound of laughter and glasses being knocked together and chairs creaking. Irene raised her fingers to her lips (as if either of us would speak!) and pointed towards the door. We could see it outlined in the yellow light from the gas lamp in the corridor, just enough to guide us to it. We walked across the room as silently as we could, uncomfortably aware of papers rustling in various pockets and garments. Irene reached for the door, just as we heard Sir George say:

  ‘Just a moment, dear, it’s in my study. I’ll fetch it.’ His footsteps started down the corridor. In a flash Irene turned the key in the lock and pulled it out, letting the keyhole guard drop. Barely a moment later, the handle rattled as Sir George pulled at the door.

  We backed away to the other side of the room, staring at the door in horror. What if the lock was faulty? What if he broke it down?

  ‘He’ll know we’re here if it’s locked,’ Mary whispered, as Sir George swore and shook the door.

  Irene shook her head and showed Mary the key. If it wasn’t in the lock, hopefully he wouldn’t know it was locked from the inside.

  ‘Left the key upstairs,’ Sir George called to his lady friend. ‘I won’t be a moment.’ We heard him pause before the door a moment, puzzled. Perhaps if he had been less drunk he might have noticed that something was wrong. Then we listened to him walk away and climb the stairs to the second floor.

  We heard the lady drifting up and down the corridor, singing softly to herself. We couldn’t get past her. We certainly couldn’t run for it. Not with all the letters overflowing from our pockets. There was no time, even if I had been as young and fit as Irene and Mary.

  ‘Now what?’ Mary whispered. Irene looked round, and then began pulling at the window, trying to push it open. But this was the window we had seen from outside, the one that had looked sealed, and it didn’t move.

  ‘Help me!’ she hissed.

  ‘We can’t jump from here,’ Mary advised her, though she went to the window and started helping Irene to raise it. ‘There’s a stone terrace down there; we’d break our legs.’

  ‘We’re not going to jump,’ Irene said through gritted teeth. The window was beginning to loosen. I stood by the door, listening, ready to warn them as soon as I heard Sir George returning. I could still hear him blundering upstairs.

  ‘Then what?’ Mary demanded.

  ‘I’m going to use a trick Mr Holmes taught me,’ Irene replied, grinning wickedly in the moonlight. ‘Martha, bring the case of letters over here—and pass me those matches.’

  I did as she said, as Sir George, upstairs, finally stood still. I could imagine him up there, realizing the key wasn’t there, remembering where he left it, working out that someone was in here.

  Do you know, I was not afraid? Discovery, shame, imprisonment, possibly even death stared me in the face, but I was not afraid. Instead I was quietly, so silently, intensely alive, and I liked it.

  Upstairs, Sir George cried ‘Damn it!’ and rushed for the stairs. He had worked it out.

  At that moment, Mary gave one enormous shove, and the window flew open.

  I heard Sir George thunder down the stairs. Irene was trying to light the matches, but they would not strike. She had to discard two, three matches as faulty.

  Sir George fell against the door. He shouted at his companion to get back into the other room.

  Irene tried again. This time the flame caught, and held. Sir George shouted through the door, ‘I know you’re there. There’s no way out!’

  Irene dropped the match into the case of letters. For a moment, nothing happened, then a tiny flame flickered in the middle. Irene blew on it to fan it.

  ‘Who sent you?’ Sir George bellowed, as he smashed his shoulder against the door. The wooden frame shuddered, but held. ‘I warn you, I’m armed.’

  The flame was still so small, but growing.

  ‘To hell with warnings!’ Sir George shouted. ‘I’ll shoot you where you stand!’ He slammed against the door again. It still held, but I could see the frame splintering. One more thrust against the door, and he’d be in.

  The letters were fully alight now. I heard Sir George line up to shove against the door one more time. The frame was worn. This was the moment on which it all turned.

  ‘Fire!’

  Irene had thrown the flaming case of remaining letters out onto the lawn. The lady, who had left the corridor and was waiting in the other room, had seen it from her window and she screamed with all her might.

  ‘Fire, fire!’ she yelled, at the top of her voice.

  Sir George swore again and ran down the corridor to find a window. Holmes had taught Irene that when someone screams fire, they grab what is most precious to them. She had guessed that for Sir George, it was his letters. He would assume we had them and were out on the lawn burning them. The woman continued screaming, and we heard Sir George curse loudly as he worked out what was burning outside. He ran further down the corridor; we hoped he was on his way down to the garden.

  ‘Now!’ Irene said, and we ran for the door. Irene turned the key quickly, and flung open the door. ‘Front door!’ she ordered, and we headed down the corridor, towards the front stairs.

  ‘Halt!’ Sir George called. He had seen us and I remembered he had warned he would shoot us where we stood. The warning was not in vain. Something ricocheted off the wall, and smashed a mirror as I ran past it—he was shooting at us! We hurtled down the stairs, running faster than I’d ever done in my life.

  ‘Halt, you scoundrels!’ Sir George called, and fired again. He was twenty yards behind, but that was close enough to hit us. The shot passed through my skirt and grazed Irene’s leg, but she ran on regardless. She pulled open the front door, and held it open for Mary and me as we ran through. Then, giving a cheeky tip of her hat to Sir George, thus making sure the only shape he remembered was a male one, she ran through the opening, slammed the door behind us, and joined us as we ran down the drive. Sir George standing by the front door called after us, ‘Who sent you? Who sent you here?’

  We ran, and kept running, down little alleyways and tree-darkened lanes until we reached the main street. It was well lit, and the shops were still open, so we could blend into the crowd. I was out of breath, and convinced everyone was looking at us, but Irene made us slow down, breathe gently, and walk along as if nothing had happened. In this way, occasionally glancing in shop windows, and buying apples from a street vendor, we finally reached the railway station.

  I saw a glimpse of the three of us reflected in the train window as it pulled into the station. For a moment, I barely recognized us. I saw one middle-aged woman, one pretty young woman, and one slender young man. We all looked very respectable and well behaved. There was no hint we’d burgled a well-known seducer, stolen half his secret papers (still stuffed in our clothes), started a fire, been shot at—and got away with it all.

  We managed to get a carriage to ourselves and settled down for the train ride back into London. Once we were sure we were alone and on our way, and unhurt—apart from Irene’s bullet graze, which she dismissed with ‘I’ve had worse’—we looked at each other and then burst out laughing. We were laughing in relief, and joy and
disbelief and just because we could, and it felt so good.

  I handed the ledger to Irene and we gathered all the letters together.

  ‘What will you do with them?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Such a lot of secrets here,’ Irene mused, glancing through the ledger. ‘So many lives he could have ruined.’ She snapped the ledger shut. ‘I shall post them all to Mr Holmes, unless you want to deal with these yourselves?’

  I agreed with her. We had enough to do with our own case. I did not want to involve myself in Sir George’s convoluted and filthy affairs. ‘He’ll know what to do with it all. He’ll use it to destroy Sir George, when the time is right,’ I assured her. ‘And discreetly too, which is more than could be said for the police.’

  ‘Why post it?’ Mary asked. ‘Why do we not just give it to him at 221b? Oh, yes, I see, you don’t want him to know it came from us.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I agreed, leaning back in my seat. I was exhausted now, but it was a good kind of exhaustion. It was not the kind of restless tiredness that I usually experienced, which kept me irritably awake all night and worn out all day. The kind of tiredness that came from a day spent doing nothing worthwhile. No, this time I felt I could sleep the sleep of the just.

  ‘Won’t Dr Watson wonder where you are?’ Irene asked Mary.

  ‘He and Sherlock are caught up in a case,’ Mary explained. ‘They’re out all hours, and locked away when they are at home. They won’t notice either Martha or me not being at home for a while.’

  ‘Convenient,’ Irene said wryly.

  ‘Very,’ Mary replied with a smile.

  We sat in silence for a while, letting the night drift by us. Out there everything was calm and peaceful, dim countryside giving way to warmly lit suburban villas. Irene read the ledger, frowning every once in a while. Mary dozed in her seat, curled up like a cat. I stared out of the window. Every so often I would catch my reflection, and I could see how different I looked: younger, happier, more at peace. Being a criminal suited me, it seemed.

  ‘Well, that settles it,’ Irene said, closing the ledger. ‘Sir George Burnwell is definitely not our man.’

  ‘How can you be certain?’ Mary said sleepily, half opening her eyes. Irene looked at her, very directly.

  ‘Because I have read this book from cover to cover and one name does not appear.’

  ‘Whose?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Mine,’ Irene replied.

  Well, she had certainly succeeded in surprising us. Mary’s eyes opened wide, and I sat up in my seat. Irene smiled, a touch bitterly.

  ‘That is why I’m back in England,’ she explained. ‘My husband received a packet of papers, with the promise of more to follow. The papers detailed certain incidents in my past which I was under the impression no one but myself and the parties involved knew about.’

  Irene stared through the window, not seeing us, not the land around us, but perhaps, seeing her husband, the man she loved, the man she had given up her whole life for.

  ‘He was horrified,’ Irene continued, in the same steady voice. ‘Not at what I had done, but that anyone could behave in such an ungentlemanly manner as to send these papers to him. I told him I would come back to England, alone, and make it stop. He agreed.’ Irene smiled to herself, a soft, sweet smile I hadn’t seen on her before. ‘He really is quite perfect.’

  ‘So that’s why you were so eager to help us,’ I realized.

  Irene turned her attention back to me.

  ‘One reason,’ she said. ‘I think I would have helped anyway, after what you told me about what this man had done. It just so happened that your cause and mine coincided.’

  ‘But it’s not Sir George,’ I said. ‘You didn’t have an affair with him?’

  ‘No, I would not!’ Irene said, snorting in disgust. ‘But if this is not merely a record of his seductions, but a record of victims of this blackmailer, I would be in the book.’

  ‘And you are not,’ I said quietly. ‘Sir George is a scoundrel, a cad, and many other things I don’t even have words for. But he is not the man we hunt.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Tomorrow you must start again, from the beginning. But first…’

  ‘First?’

  She smiled, but not like before. It was an odd, tight smile.

  ‘First I have an impossibility to eliminate.’

  CHAPTER

  12

  The Impossibility of Miss Adler

  Many people have asked me what exactly the relationship was between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, to which I always replied that it was none of my business. (And none of yours, either, I was tempted to add!)

  In truth, I had no idea what their relationship was. It seemed to be a fluid, amorphous thing, never pinned down, never defined, never really understood by either of them. I know they respected each other deeply. I know that, to a certain extent, they relied on each other to behave a certain way. He was the hero, she was the dubious lady, but both had honour—at least, that was what they expected from each other. But beyond that, I do not know. Sometimes I believed they hated each other. When he railed against women in general and her in particular, when she stormed out of 221b shouting ‘blasted man!’, I thought they would never talk again. Perhaps they saw each other as adversaries, occasionally as colleagues. Perhaps there was an odd sort of friendship there. Every once in a while, I thought I could discern a trace of love, but I always was a romantic.

  Oh yes, their relationship did not begin and end with A Scandal in Bohemia. There was so much more that John never revealed, perhaps because he understood it as little as I, perhaps out of a sense of respect for both of them.

  Did I see love there? Mr Holmes and Irene?

  She could love, I know that. She loved so deeply and so completely, but then Godfrey Norton was, by all accounts, an easy man to love. Perhaps she could love in a different way, a less comfortable, more stirring way. Could she love someone as remote and controlled and cold as Mr Sherlock Holmes?

  And he. That man. He always denied his ability to love, and yet he did, against his will, against his nature, against his very knowledge. John told me once that he caught an occasional glimpse of a great heart behind the great brain. Perhaps some of that was given to Irene—but if so, he never told me. Perhaps he never told himself.

  So no, I cannot tell you what their relationship was. What I can tell you is that though it changed from day to day, hour to hour, with each new discovery of a hidden part of the other and themselves, it was, as the old sonnet says, ‘an ever fix’d mark’. All through their lives, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler danced round each other, coming close, drifting away, never losing sight of the other.

  Given all that it was hardly surprising that Mr Holmes was the impossibility Irene had to eliminate. He could have discovered the secrets in that packet of papers sent to her husband. He might, in one of his harsh, cold moods, have felt it was his duty to warn Irene’s husband exactly who she was. The packet had been sent from London, after all. I knew better than to suspect Mr Holmes, of course, but she did not. Not then, anyway. So I did not stop her when she arrived to see him the morning after our burglary. Besides, I wanted to see what would happen when they met face to face.

  She stood in my kitchen in a rich red gown, hat tipped coquettishly over one eye, somehow looking less vulnerable than she had in her men’s clothes the night before. She looked round the room—and noticed the vent. She knew what it was the moment she saw it. I suspect she had listened through a few vents in her time.

  ‘Very useful,’ she remarked.

  ‘Don’t tell Mr Holmes,’ I said quickly.

  ‘I have no intention of telling him!’ she said indignantly. ‘However, please do me a favour and keep it closed for the next half hour? I will tell you everything, I promise. I just…’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. Irene wanted to be able to pick and choose what the ‘everything’ she told me was. She nodded, and headed towards the stairs—then paused. She stood there, at the foot o
f the seventeen steps leading to Mr Holmes’ rooms, her hand on the newel post, just staring up at his door.

  ‘You look very beautiful,’ I reassured her. She turned to look at me, and there was uncertainty in her face. Beauty was not what she needed right now. ‘And very assertive,’ I added. Those were the magic words. She took a breath and headed up to his room.

  I kept to my word and did not open the vent, though it was a hard-won battle, I can tell you. This is what Irene told me when she came downstairs again.

  ‘I let myself into his rooms, quite as if I had every right to be there. He was standing by the window, alone, peering down into the street, his hands behind his back. I wonder now, did he see me arrive? He did not seem startled or disturbed by my entrance. He turned to look at me, his hands still clasped, and nodded once.

  ‘“Miss Adler,” he said.

  ‘“Mrs Norton,” I corrected. He did not seem shaken, as you assured me he would be, not even in the slightest. Nor did he seem pleased or angry or show any other emotion. He was the stone image of cool politeness.

  ‘Except his hand. His left hand. He had unclasped his hands to gesture me to sit, and then he kept tightening his left hand, over and over again. I do not think he knows he does it. It is as if any emotion he does feel is clasped in that left hand, and he keeps tightening his grip, lest it should escape.

  ‘“Welcome back to London. You are well, Mrs Norton?” he asked, calmly, a polite inquiry, nothing more, as I sat down at his table. If he was surprised to see me there, he concealed it very well. But then he would, wouldn’t he? God forbid Sherlock Holmes should show an emotion! He continued to stand by the window, clear daylight illuminating every plane of his face. I wonder if he is aware how handsome he is? He has a stern, unforgiving profile, his face is all angles and sharpness, but perhaps he knows that when he smiles, it is enough to set a girl’s heart beating like a drum. Yet he did not smile, and I am not a girl.