The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets Read online

  “Thank you, Mrs. Tupper.” She couldn’t hear me, of course, but she could see my lips move in what I hoped was a smile as I took the papers from her hands.

  However, she did not then go away. Instead, she straightened her short, hunched form to its limit and fixed me with her watery gaze. “Miss Meshle,” she declaimed with the bravado of one who has decided to perform a Moral Duty, “it’s no good yer shuttin’ yerself up this way. Now whatever ’appened, and it’s none of my business, but whatever it was, it’s no use gittin’ pale about. Now, it’s a nice day out, wit’ a bit uv sun and startin’ to feel springish. Now whyn’t you git yer bonnet on an’ go out for a walk, at least—”

  Or I believe she said something of the sort. I barely heard her, and I am sorry to say I shut the door in her face, for my gaze had caught upon the Daily Telegraph’s headline and fixed there.

  It said:

  SHERLOCK HOLMES ASSOCIATE MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARS DR. WATSON’S WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  NOT PAUSING EVEN TO TAKE A SEAT, BUT STANDING where I was, with the skirt of my cheap cotton at-home dress nearly in the fire, I read:

  Events sure to send a frisson of horror through any spine with delicacy of feeling have unfolded in Bloomsbury, with implications taking in the whole of London, if a missing British gentleman is not soon found. Dr. John Watson, a respected physician perhaps best known as companion of, and chronicler of the adventures of, the famous detective Mr. Sherlock Holmes, has most mystifyingly disappeared without a trace. Foremost among the thoughts of the absent man’s family and friends, of course, is terror lest he might have fallen into the hands of some criminal enemy of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, to be used as a pawn in some nefarious scheme, bandied as a hostage, or dispatched for the sake of revenge. Alternatively, concern has been expressed that, carrying his black bag identifying him as a physician, he might have been attacked by an anti-vaccination mob in the East End. No form of foul play at this time may be ruled out. Attempts are being made to trace Dr. Watson’s movements this Wednesday last, on which day he departed to perform customary calls and errands but failed to return to his home and business in the evening. Cab-drivers are being questioned…

  And so forth, a great many words to describe, essentially, nothing. An absence not newsworthy at all if it were not that my brother’s name could be deployed in the headline. Dr. Watson had kissed his wife good-bye on Wednesday morning; this was Friday afternoon—the good doctor had been gone for two days. I imagined the police were saying, with some justification, that any number of harmless events might have caused the doctor’s absence, and at any moment a telegram or letter should arrive explaining where and why he had been detained. “Attempts are being made” meant that the police were not yet investigating; otherwise the newspaper would have named the inspector in charge. No, at this point the only people really trying to locate Dr. Watson were two: his wife and his friend, my brother Sherlock Holmes.

  And now one more: me.

  But wait. What if Watson’s absence had been arranged by my brother as a scheme to entrap me?

  Sherlock knew that I had embroiled myself in two cases of missing persons. And while he might not understand that I had invented Dr. Leslie Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian, quite possibly he knew I had worked for the man. Did he appreciate that this was my life’s calling, to be a finder of the lost?

  Did he guess how very fond I was of the fatherly Dr. Watson?

  Should I not, then, regard recent developments with the utmost suspicion?

  But even as these eminently sensible considerations traversed my mind, already I was throwing the newspaper on the fire, then rummaging in my wardrobe, considering possible ways to disguise myself, possible strategies to find out the details of Dr. Watson’s disappearance, how best to approach the matter. Indeed, a strait-jacket could not have stopped me.

  Although I knew I would have to be very careful.

  Which presented some difficulty. Having spent the better part of the past month closeted in my lodging, bitter over my mother’s failure to help me in my time of need—having been, in other words, idle and sulking—I now found myself woefully unprepared for action. There were a dozen items I required but did not have.

  Wrapping a nondescript shawl around my head and shoulders, I sallied forth to acquire them. Mrs. Tupper would be pleased; I was going for a walk.

  I did walk, all the way, because my emotions felt as tangled as the labyrinthine passages of the slums, my thoughts as crowded and confused as the smutty tenements with their peaked garrets looming over me, and a long walk would perhaps help me compose my mind into some form of order.

  My surroundings, however, did not promote serenity. A pieman cried, “’Ot meat tarts, two fer a penny!” while street urchins capered around him, mocking, “Puppies and kittens! Cats and rats!” meaning the probable meats in his pies, and a constable came frowning along to rout the lot of them for blocking traffic. While the day was indeed “springish,” as Mrs. Tupper had said, the warming weather had increased the stench of the tenement privies—each of which served perhaps two hundred of London’s Great Unwashed—and of the nearby Thames, and of the gas-works looming over the slums like a bloated shining caterpillar on steel legs, blighting everything beneath it.

  Very well, I was perhaps failing to appreciate the beauty of the sunny day—a rarity in London, where clouds of smoke generally held sway no matter what the weather elsewhere—but truly, a hint of spring seemed only to increase the din and danger in the streets. I saw a district nurse in her old-fashioned black bonnet, long coat and white apron trying to make her way into a narrow court criss-crossed with clothes-lines of washing, while lounging men and street brats and even some women shouted curses, throwing mud and stones and horse droppings at her.

  Brave woman, I thought, but I admit that my next consideration, as I walked on, was whether a nurse’s garb might serve as a good disguise. Or perhaps the military-style black skirt and red jersey of one of General Booth’s Hallelujah Lassies? It seemed to me that people encountering someone in uniform observed the clothing, not the individual.

  But Sherlock Holmes was no ordinary observer. Aware that I had masqueraded as a nun, he would be on the lookout for something else of the sort—a deaconess, a nanny, a nurse. No, I had to invent some disguise he could not possibly expect of me.

  By now, blessedly, I had left the East End behind me. Instead of threading my way between tenements, I now walked pavements along wider, cobbled streets, and ahead of me loomed the dome of St. Paul’s, a Grecian-columned landmark that contrasted strangely, I thought, with the shiny steel gas-works just as tall, not to speak of the gargoyled Gothic steeples of other churches nearby. Or the square-towered, corniced Italianate residence I was just then passing. Most of London was such a hodgepodge, railroads and factories but also edifices French Second Empire and Moorish and Georgian and Regency, plus Tudor revival, or classical, revival this and revival that. A city uncertain, like me, of what appearance to present.

  Here, even more so than in the East End, one saw all sorts of people. Well-dressed ladies shopped the haberdashers and milliners and perfumeries, moving briskly about their business so that they would not be mistaken for much-adorned “ladies” of a different sort loitering on the pavements. Shop-girls mounted with the agility of goats to the tops of omnibuses, while visitors from the country gawked at everything: delivery boys on bicycles, bandbox-vendors with their wares on poles across their shoulders, chimney-sweeps trudging along as black as their brushes, ink-stained students carrying books, street musicians, gentlemen dressed in sober grey or black from head to toe, and “gents”—quite a different breed, “swell” dressers in search of amusement. My brothers had once hypothesised that I was masquerading as one of those.

  Here came a short-haired woman in a billycock hat with a coachman cape, a stick in one gloveless hand, the leash of a bull terrier in the other—I am certain my brothers were afraid I was going to turn out even wors
e, perhaps puffing a cigar.

  By now I was walking in the City itself, that is to say, the oldest part of London—one would think, London’s centre, but it was not so, not any more than the Tower was London’s centre, or Covent Garden, Piccadilly Circus or Trafalgar Square, or Bucking-ham Palace, or Westminster where the Houses of Parliament were. London had no more centre than one of Mrs. Tupper’s sheep’s-head stews did.

  Resisting any further comparison between the city’s confusion and my own current state of mind, I made my way towards Holywell Street.

  A narrow, winding, dirty thoroughfare that could not have been more ironically misnamed or misused, its picturesque, high-gabled old buildings were given over mostly to vendors of low publications and cheap photographic prints. However, I was not here to look at lithographs of young ladies exposing their petticoats and legs whilst lacing their Balmoral boots. I sought a vendor of a different sort. As far back as the time of Queen Elizabeth, Holywell Street had housed mercers, and echoes of that silk-and-fancy-textile trade lingered on in the form of dealers in costume, finery, queer old clothing and the like, for masquerades. Wooden signs carved in the shape of masks grinned or grimaced down upon me most unpleasantly as I shouldered and elbowed my way through the crowded lane. Not only was Holywell Street itself quite ancient, crooked and narrow, but the print vendors’ tawdry wares overflowed their shops onto the pavements, reaching out for one. Indeed, as I struggled along, a winsome little girl no more than six years old plucked at my sleeve, offering to sell me what appeared at first glance to be a pack of playing-cards. My second glance made me shudder and hasten onwards.

  There. At last I saw, suspended from the overhanging eaves of a venerable lath-and-plaster building, a wooden sign which had likely been there as long as the structure itself. Carved in the shape of a rooster, it had to mark the shop for which I was searching.

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  I HAD FOUND OUT ABOUT IT DURING AN ADVENTURE worth mentioning. A few weeks earlier, you see, my brother Sherlock had very nearly caught me. But in the crucial few minutes while he was summoning the constabulary to scour the streets for me, I had found an unlikely refuge: 221b Baker Street, that is to say, Sherlock’s own lodgings, which I had entered by means of a plane-tree, a rooftop and a bedchamber window.

  Ever since, I had wondered how my brother had reacted when, returning to his rooms at dawn, he had discovered my burnt cast-off nun’s habit in his grate and a few items missing from his wardrobe. I imagined he had felt utterly chagrinned. Oddly, this thought did not make me smile.

  Now, if it had been Mycroft…

  Some other time, perhaps. As I was saying, hiding for several hours in Sherlock’s lodging while he hunted me throughout every lane and alley, mews and court in the area, I had put the time to good use by examining my brother’s possessions. That man had an entire cabinet full of wigs and false beards and so on, but also accoutrements of disguise utterly new to me: face putty, stick-on warts and scars, dreadful (like ruined mediaeval battlements steeped in creosote) false teeth to cover his own well-kept ones, skull-caps to make him look bald or partly so, skin pigments varying from ruddy to swarthy, various false fingernails (unkempt, or yellow, or ridged, or overlong as if in mourning), a glue-on device to change the shape of his mouth and give him the look of a harelip—altogether, my eyes were opened. Wide. Where had my brother acquired such uncommonly useful items?

  Searching his desk, then, I had found receipts from various shops, most of them in the theatre district and frankly intended to serve the needs of the stage—I hardly thought I could pass as an actress. But a few items several years ago had come from a shop in Holywell Street. A shop called Chaunticleer’s.

  So I thought I would try there first. My brother had not purchased anything at Chaunticleer’s in some time; perhaps the place had closed? But there was only one way to find out, and if the shop remained, excellent: My brother had taken his business elsewhere for whatever reasons, and I would be unlikely to encounter him.

  Chaunticleer’s: hence the sign carved in the shape of a rooster. Chaunticleer meant a rooster, just as Reynard meant a fox. Where the latter had come from I had no idea, but the former I had read in one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

  Struggling across the teeming street—Holywell always thronged with all manner of Londoners ogling the pictures in the windows of the print-shops—I elbowed my way towards my destination.

  Or was it my destination after all? Standing under the wooden rooster—which had probably hung there since Shakespeare’s day—to catch my breath before entering, I saw that the red lettering painted over the open door read, simply and mysteriously, Pertelote’s.

  Most peculiar.

  I went in to see what was what.

  Proceeding cautiously, I cast my glance anxiously about me, but neither of my brothers pounced from the shadows to seize me; indeed, the shop seemed empty. Racks of sheet music flanked the doorway, some used books had collected in a corner, and the bins and counters displayed an interesting variety of wares. Items for parlour amusements, I decided as I scanned them: cards of various sorts (though not, I am glad to say, of the tawdry sort I had been offered on the street), sets of dominoes, peg-board games, brightly coloured pick-up sticks, little play-scripts, stereopticons with story-photographs, a terribly clever miniature printing kit with moveable type and an inked pad…I was thoughtfully examining this last item when a contralto voice asked, “May I ’elp you?”

  Looking up, I found myself facing a smiling woman of middle age who wore, along with a simple blouse and skirt, a comfortable yet unmistakable proprietorial air. This was her shop.

  Even so, it took a moment for my rather overstrained mind to remember that Pertelote was the name of the practical-minded hen in Chaucer’s Chaunticleer story.

  No wonder Sherlock Holmes had stopped coming here. Somehow ownership had passed from rooster to hen, so to speak, and—as our old butler’s wife had once told me—neither of my brothers ever could abide a strong-minded woman.

  “Um, Mrs. Pertelote?” I inquired.

  Her smile warmed and widened as if at a private joke. “Per-tell-oh-tee,” she said, correcting my pronunciation so cordially that I felt as though I had been complimented for my attempt. A large-boned woman, with a face like a platter and not a pretty one either, she wore her greying hair combed flat, then wound into two buns, one over each meaty, pendulous earlobe.

  “What became of Chaunticleer?” I answered her smile, willing to share her amusement.

  “Oh, ’e met ’is better.”

  “Yet you keep the carved rooster sign?”

  “Well, it’s very old, and one must take care of old things, mustn’t one.” Her smile broadened, yet I felt the topic dismissed. “’Ow may I be of assistance?”

  Even though she dropped “’er aitches,” her accent was not entirely Cockney, but pleasantly semi-cultured. I tried to keep mine much the same as we conversed. Indicating the miniature, portable printing kit, I asked, “Could one make calling-cards with this?”

  She did not blink, did not seem to wonder why such a poorly clad woman would want any calling-cards, much less wish to print her own; she did not hesitate at all before answering, “Yes, indeed, but of a rather crude sort. I could make better ones for you, in the back room, if you just need a few.”

  “Indeed.” I nodded. “Thank you. Might I look around your shop?”

  “Certainly.”

  There were in fact many fascinating trifles and oddities for me to peruse—square wooden puzzles with tiles that could not be lifted out but slid within the frame, “talking boards” with numbers and letters for spiritualist experiments, velvet roses, music boxes, feather fans, silk scarves, vizard masks, some quite excellent quality wigs of long hair most likely shorn from fever victims, or possibly female convicts—but I took the time mainly because I needed to think. I wanted to accept Pertelote’s offer to make me a few calling-cards—I foresaw needing at least one quite soon—but in order to h
ave her print them, I must settle on an alias for myself.

  Regarding which, my musings resumed where they had left off: Ever me, Everme? No. Ever I, Everi? Even worse. Ever so, Everso? Given a French twist, Everseau?

  Not bad.

  Very well; perhaps I would not have to use it for long. But what of a first name? Violet? No, a flower name, too risky. Viola? More evocative of a musical instrument than of a flower; Viola would do.

  If the shop-owner were greedy, I ruminated, she could have sold me the miniature printing press for far more money than she would make by herself printing a few cards for me on, apparently, a better press that she owned.

  Hence, I found myself inclined to trust her, even though Pertelote was almost certainly not her real name. No matter. She was not to know my real name either.

  In addition to the calling-cards, might I safely buy some even more compromising items from her?

  I found myself inclined to think so.

  But what if I were mistaken about her? What if she were the sort to talk?

  It hardly mattered, for neither Mycroft nor Sherlock was likely ever to speak with her. Either one of them would shudder to go near such a woman, plainly in possession of herself, her own business and her own affairs.

  Neither of my brothers could accept or understand a woman unattached to some man as wife, daughter or sister.

  Both of them dismissed women as beyond the comprehension of logical thought. Neither of them could imaginatively enter the mind of any woman.

  Much less mine. When I, a beak-nosed beanpole of a girl, had run away, I am sure that they had quite expected to find me disguised as a boy; to their way of thinking, how else could such an unfortunately plain female possibly manage?

  But now they knew that I had masqueraded as a widow, and later as a nun, so probably they were on the lookout for another variation on the ugly-as-a-crow theme: a sharp-faced, veiled spinster perhaps? Or a scowling “platform woman” attempting to reform the slums? Probably they had stopped looking for me in male guise. So perhaps now it was time for me to adopt trousers?