第 12 页

One night, while drinking in the Criterion Bar, he met up with Stamford, a young man who had been a dresser under him at St Barts. Stamford knew of a man working at the hospital laboratory who needed someone to share rooms with him.

Stamford introduced the pair to each other and they took up residence at 221B from where Holmes began his extraordinary and unusual career. Watson became his confidante and biographer, writing journals documenting Holmes’ powers of deduction, how he utilised such skills on some of the most intriguing crimes of the age. Through one such case, Watson met Mary and moved into a household of his own, but he continued to be a regular visitor to 221B and still became embroiled in the adventures of his friend.

Watson looked up from his toast and jams as Mrs St Clare entered the room and initially was unable to remember why the pale and fragile face looked so familiar. Holmes recalled her immediately. His encyclopaedic memory had a wondrous ability to remember every detail of all the cases he had worked upon, particularly the clients.

“Mrs Neville St Clare, pray what brings you to call upon my services again?” he asked, indicating to the settee. Slowly, Watson began to remember the most singular case which she had brought before Holmes in ’89.

Mr Neville St Clare was a loving family man of comfortable means, who provided for his wife and two children a large villa in Lee near Kent. Though no-one, including his wife, knew the exact nature of his business affairs, he would travel into town every morning purporting to visit the various companies in which he held an interest, always returning by the 5.14pm from Cannon Street.

On one particular occasion though, he travelled into town as usual but did not return. Mrs St Clare happened to be in town herself that day and saw her husband showing signs of distress in the window of a room above an opium den. She ran to his aid and sure enough his clothes were in the room but the man himself had vanished. The only inhabitant was a beggar by the name of Hugh Boone who rented the rooms from the lascar of the den.

Mr Boone was a man of most singular appearance with a scar running from his eye to his chin causing the corner of his lip to turn upwards into a permanent snarl revealing three of his teeth. Those peculiarities combined with his shock of tangled red hair made him a most pitiful sight. This enabled him to earn good money off the sympathies of those who passed by him as he sat begging on a corner in the business part of the city. Boone was arrested and held in the Bow Street cells on suspicion of the murder of Mr Neville St Clare.

Holmes was engaged by Mrs St Clare in his capacity as consulting detective, to assist the official police in the resolution of the matter and to, hopefully, find her husband.

This indeed he did, using his exceptional powers of observation and analysis, skills which had enabled him to create a unique career for himself.

Holmes helped clients and the police to solve that which seemed unfathomable to their inferior minds. He was the world’s only consulting detective, using his vast knowledge of the history of crime, his advanced scientific abilities and profound observational skills to solve problems which baffled those working in an official capacity.

A man of extraordinary energy when working, Holmes approached the study of crime as a scientist would a microbe, what he described as his science of deduction.

Such skills were brought to bear upon the case of Neville St Clare with Holmes successfully concluding that Hugh Boone and Mr St Clare were, in fact, the same man.

Unknown to anyone, Mr St Clare travelled into town each morning, entered his rented rooms above the opium den and disguised himself by applying stage make-up to take on the appearance of the badly disfigured Mr Boone.

He was one of the most successful beggars in London and earned himself at least two pounds a day. This compared well to the two pounds a week he earned from his previous profession as a journalist. His income was generally about seven hundred a year which allowed him to live very well indeed.

Holmes, ever given to a touch of the dramatic, strolled into the cell of Mr Boone, with Watson faithfully in toe, took out a sponge and while the man slept removed his make-up to reveal the missing Mr Neville St Clare. This was much to the astonishment of inspector Bradstreet who stood with them in the cells.

Mr St Clare broke down once his secret was revealed and pleaded that a scandal be avoided for the sake of his wife and children. It was agreed that no crime had been committed and that all would be kept from the papers as long as Hugh Boone was never seen or heard of again. Mr St Clare agreed and returned to his elated wife with his dignity intact.

Clearly the time since her husband returned had not been easy for Mrs St Clare. She sat nervously with Holmes and Watson looking haggard and anxious.

“Please Mr Holmes, as you were so kind to help me the first time my husband disappeared, I could think of no-one better to help me now that he has disappeared again.” She removed her lace gloves from her trembling pale hands.

“Life has clearly not treated you well since our last encounter,” offered Holmes. “Pawning your wedding ring must have been a most painful experience.”

The lady looked at him with a mixture of shock and embarrassment.

“The skin at the base of your ring finger is a little paler than the rest showing the ring to have been recently removed. Now, clearly as you are here with such an obvious desire to find your husband the ring has not been removed out of spite or lost feelings. Why else would a lady remove her ring if not for financial necessity?”

Mrs St Clare suddenly bowed her head and began to tell of the financial struggles her family had endured.

“As you may recall,” she began, ignorant of the true reason for her husband’s absence all those years ago, “my husband’s disappearance was due to the company in which he had placed all our interests going out of business, leaving us without an income. The strain drove him to seek solace in that dreadful den and he was ashamed I had seen him. That is why he would not come home.

“Where you found him I do not know, nor wish to. I will always be in your debt for sending him home to me. He confessed everything, promising that he would resist any future temptation of the poppy.

“We were now without income. We left our property in Lee and were forced to take lodgings in the city centre. Sadly, we had to borrow money and became burdened with many debts. My husband returned to his earlier trade as a journalist, but it pays very little. Approximately three months ago, just as things were beginning to look particularly hopeless, my husband announced that he had been promoted to the editorial team at the paper and his salary had been increased.

“You can imagine, I’m sure, my elation when suddenly he would bring home toys for the children and we had plenty of food to eat. Then, about a week ago, just as things were becoming so much easier for us, my husband travelled to work as usual in the morning and never returned. I have not seen nor heard from him since.

“I have been to the police who did not take my concerns seriously and have been no help at all. I now have no income and as you correctly observed I have even pawned my wedding ring. One of the people who my husband borrowed money from was a dangerous man who has now demanded full payment or he will harm us all. I need most of the money from my wedding ring simply to pay him off and to feed my children.”

“Why did you not come to me sooner?” asked Holmes.

“I was ashamed that my husband had left me again and unable to offer you any fee. Although you charged me nothing for your services last time, I cannot possibly expect you to do the same again. With the money from pawning the ring, I am now in a position to offer you something in return for your time.”

Holmes reassured her that the resolution to a problem was often reward enough especially in circumstances where a client was of meagre means.

He asked whether she had enquired at the newspaper to see if Mr St Clare was still attending work. She stated that his colleagues informed her that he had not been at his job for the past three months and had certainly not received a promotion of any nature.

Holmes concluded that it was now time to tell Mrs St Clare the truth about her husband’s secret life begging in disguise on the streets of London and to explain the true reason for his first disappearance.

She began to sob with shock and shame, leaving Holmes feeling discomforted by such an emotional display. She thanked him for keeping her husband’s shameful antics away from the public domain. Holmes handed her a handkerchief and indicated to Watson to come and exercise some of his soothing bedside manner. Once she had regained her composure, Holmes speedily dismissed Mrs St Clare to return to her lodgings and await news.

As Holmes and Watson sat alone together once more, Watson returned to his breakfast.

“Surely Mr St Clare has returned to begging?” he asked, “hence the improvement in their financial circumstances.”

Holmes remained seated in his fireside chair, reached for a Persian slipper stuffed with tobacco and then readied his pipe for a long smoke.

Accustomed as he was to having his questions ignored, Watson could not resist the need to continue pressing for a response.

“But why would that suddenly prevent him from returning home? Last time, when he was arrested, he did what he could to get a letter to his wife so why not try to contact her this time? Also, if he was in the hands of the law again they would have told his wife when she made enquiries about him.”

Holmes looked through a cloud of pipe smoke thoughtfully.

“I fear that great harm has befallen this man. Perhaps we are too late already.”

With such a bleak statement he returned to his pipe and Watson to his toast and jam.

I remember being particularly alarmed when Jude and I captured an old beggar in town because he did not respond in the way we expected. I thought he would be easy prey due to him being crippled, stooped, one eye sealed shut with blindness. But he took us both rather by surprise when we crept up behind him in the street and grabbed him. He instinctively straightened up and fought back forcing me to kick him squarely in the face to bring him down. I was taken aback when parts of his face came away upon contact with my boot, almost as if they were simply stuck on. The splits on his nose and lip began to pump blood which quickly hid his features. We pulled a sack over his head and bundled him into a waiting carriage masked by the late afternoon fog swirling in the glow of the gas lights.

I didn’t know why the professor wanted us to bring in a beggar. But, as we were in town on other business I was happy to comply. We were instructed to take him to the medical rooms built into the vast cellar network underneath our townhouse.

The professor had always employed a full team of medical staff as his own health was fragile and the nature of our business often resulted in many injuries. Recently though, I had noticed an increased number in the team.

We took our beggar to the nurse’s room and left him with Nurse Jackson to clean him up and await further instructions.

“What is he going to do with the poor man?” asked Jude as we walked away.

“Don’t know, don’t really care,” I replied.

This wasn’t the complete truth. I sensed that things had changed in the house since the theft of that worthless painting and the death of Mr Whitaker. A strange shift of tension was blowing down the draughty old corridors and I resented not knowing its exact nature. But, I had changed too. On the surface I was still the same, carrying out my duties, but inside I was simply going through the motions. I had everything I had ever dreamt of, but it wasn’t how I thought it would be. It was all fragile, all in the hands of a brilliant but increasingly unstable man who could dispose of me as casually as he did our child.

That evening, Jude and I went to the house from where the painting had been stolen. I still had the mysterious papers that the professor wanted so badly stashed away in my desk draw. I truly enjoyed knowing that as he raged on about finding them they were right under his nose. To keep up the pretence we returned to the house, now largely boarded up, and went through the motions of searching for the missing papers.

It was the only time that I can ever remember the professor actually doing anything illegal himself. He insisted on coming with us to search the house personally.

He had existed mainly as a recluse since our marriage, using me as his ambassador and sending me out to liaise and communicate when required. Venturing into the outside world caused him much agitation.

I placed a bowl against a French window at the back of the house, scratched around it gently with glass cutters and caught the circular piece of glass as it fell. I reached in and undid the catch.

Jude and I walked in first to check that all was safe and then the professor followed, oscillating his head this way and that with his keen little eyes missing nothing.

It was a fascinating place; its murdered ex-inhabitant was a well-known scientist who had turned the house into a vast laboratory. Tables were littered with test tubes and chemical jars, papers covered with scribbled equations and rows of scientific books. Jude and I left the professor seated behind a desk reading through vast piles of papers while we explored the house.

All along the upstairs landing, cages were piled up against the walls containing emaciated rats on the verge of death while insects lay dead in jars.

Even piles of equations couldn’t keep the professor calm among such chaos for long. Soon we could hear him banging around, seeking the “missing” papers. We joined him in the hall as he was slashing open paintings with his pen knife, each one yielding nothing. Extremely dissatisfied, he eventually agreed that we could return home and we left the house carrying armfuls of papers and note books between us.

Upon our return, the professor disappeared silently into his study. I pondered the mystery but still could not work out what my husband had become involved in. And, those horrible tortured rats haunted my dreams.

As the week progressed, things did not become any clearer. I was ordered to continue delivering beggars from all over the city. I was told to deposit them with Nurse Jackson who would from now on receive them in a small room just off the hallway. Under no circumstances was I to go down to the medical rooms.

In all, my team brought in ten beggars. I still had no idea what purpose they could serve or how they connected to those crumpled old papers which seemed to have been the beginning of this strange interlude.

Eventually, curiosity overcame me. I summoned Jude and we ventured down to the cellars to investigate.