The East India Company
We were just sitting down to breakfast the next morning when there was a pounding of feet coming up the stairs. Wiggins came bursting through the door without waiting for an invitation. He was dressed as he had been the last time I saw him, and every bit as filthy. The boy was breathless from his headlong flight. He wiped a hand from his brow to the back of his head, sweeping his matted forelock over his scalp as he struggled to catch his breath. Urgency was writ bright across the boy’s ruddy features. Holmes merely gestured for him to take a seat at our table. The youth settled himself, chest still rising and falling rapidly as he struggled to bring his breathing under control. The lad grabbed for a crumpet, but Holmes raised a finger, stopping him dead in the act of pilfering from my plate.
“First your report,” Holmes instructed, “then you may eat to your heart’s content.”
“Right you are,” Wiggins said, making no effort to mask his desire for my breakfast. “Me an’ the boys spent the early morning down at the docks like you asked, lookin’ for anything out of the ordinary, chattin’ up the dockers. I wanted to get me ’ands on the customs dockets, but you know how it is, they just won’t show those to anyone.” He noticed my expression, which was one of disbelief. “I can read, Doctor, leastways nuff for this business. Anyway, I don’t exactly look like no official.” The boy looked down at his filthy rags. It was impossible to argue that point with him.
“Did you offer bribes?” Holmes questioned. “You recall our agreement includes expenses and that would have most certainly qualified.”
I gave Holmes an exaggeratedly scandalised look to express my displeasure at the lessons being taught this boy, but my companion ignored me entirely. I rather think he enjoyed playing with my sensibilities at times.
“Well, I would have tried that approach had I the funds,” Wiggins said, all but turning his scruffy pockets out.
“And just what did you do with the gold sovereign I gave you?”
“A boy’s got to eat, sir.” And with that Wiggins snatched the crumpet from my plate and took a huge bite from it. He chewed noisily, gulping it down.
“Your report,” Holmes instructed once more, his tone growing severe. The lad did not need telling a third time.
“Those beans you asked about didn’t arrive in London. Leastways, if they did, it weren’t in the last year.”
I found that report disturbing because castor beans, like any organic material, have a finite lifespan. Those beans would not have kept more than a few weeks. Holmes, though, seemed unmoved by the news. No doubt his mind was already on other things, like where else and by what other means they might have entered the country. This time he allowed Wiggins to wolf down the rest of my crumpet.
“As I assume you know, Wiggins, much of the trade from India was directed by the East India Company.”
“I’ve heard of them,” he said, morsels of crumpet falling from his mouth. He scooped them up with a dirt-encrusted finger and licked them down. “Dunno more than that.”
“The East India Company dates back to Queen Elizabeth. It was primarily responsible for establishing trade routes between England and the Far East. Although the title suggests it was limited to the Indian subcontinent, in point of fact the company’s reach extended as far as China.” Clearly Holmes was intent on giving the street Arab a history lecture. “Tea, foodstuffs, fabrics, jewellery and more was imported across the Empire until the Crown saw fit to terminate their charter, putting them out of business in ’74.”
“Where do you learn so much?” the boy asked, unable to hide his surprise.
“I read, young Wiggins. All the knowledge in the world is there to be found if you have a mind to look for it. I suggest you begin doing the same for yourself if you hope to rise above the rank of street Arab.”
While I appreciated his efforts to encourage the boy, I suspected the words were falling on deaf ears. Wiggins’s world was concerned with daily survival on the streets as opposed to mastering complex history texts and the lessons of life therein. Perhaps Holmes had reached the same conclusion, as he swiftly returned to the matter in hand.
“You have been invaluable in ruling out a London point of entry for the castor beans. I will now dedicate the day to researching other locations. After all, castor oil continues to be sold so the product must be entering the country on a regular basis.”
Wiggins, now done with my crumpet and hungrily eyeing two rashers of bacon I intended to consume myself, looked about the sitting room and waved his hands in the air. “Is that why you have all these maps out?”
“Indeed,” Holmes confirmed.
I felt I needed to remind my companion of our true purpose, for what little good it might do. “Holmes, pray tell, how does the exact route the castor beans came from India have any bearing on poor Wynter’s disappearance? Or have we cast aside our true investigation to chase grand conspiracies? I will admit it feels to me that every fresh question we ask and lead we follow takes us further and further from investigating his fate, and Mrs. Wynter is awaiting our report. I trust you are aware we have nothing of substance to share with her. Our focus has moved from Africa to India, and I cannot believe for a moment that is where the bodies are buried, metaphorical or otherwise.”
“Your protests make a certain sense, Watson, I will concede that, but if we follow the threads of the story, which like a tapestry appear unremarkable until they are combined to create a vivid image, we will find satisfaction, I am sure of it. Wynter’s disappearance was the beginning of the path and by looking under every stone, we will find the clues to refine the direction and determine what became of the man, because something most assuredly has happened to him, and it is a something worthy of covering up and killing for, no less. Our investigations have stirred up a veritable beehive and I was nearly stung once. That attack alone confirms we are moving in the right direction. It is my intention to draw out the stinger without getting stung again.”
I confess I must have looked horrified at the notion because Holmes smiled that knowing smile of his. “Now, don’t look so alarmed. I have no intention of letting the tiger claw have its fill of me.”
“A real tiger? Here? In London?” Wiggins asked, jaw dropping at the prospect of what to him must have seemed like a mythical beast doing for the detective.
“Not at all,” I corrected and noted that during Holmes’s speech, the boy had made off with my bacon, even though I hadn’t seen his hands move. That was an interesting skill.
“My attacker that night you came to my aid used a weapon shaped to resemble the outstretched paw of a tiger. Your arrival was most fortuitous,” Holmes said. He rose and rummaged through a stack of books on the other side of the sitting room, his long finger tracing a few spines before he found the desired volume, and returned to show a drawing of the wretched device. Wiggins’s eyes grew wide, both out of fear and I daresay some envy.
“You know, Watson, the mention of bees reminds me that I have had them on my mind of late. When this case is done, I want to look into them at length. Would you mind?”
Whether I minded or not made no difference to Holmes, of course, he was merely informing me what form his next obsession would take. Once he made up his mind, he was set on a course of action. No doubt there would be a hive in the garden of 221B before the month was out.
“As we have noted, whilst castor beans are indigenous to three regions, East Africa, the Mediterranean Basin and India, a confluence of seeming coincidences, including the fact that my attacker also originates from the Indian subcontinent would have me willing to wager that the now defunct East India Company played some part in this.”
This deduction puzzled me, given that the company had paid out the final dividend on its stock seven years ago and dissolved. I could not see how it could possibly have any bearing on our case. I said as much. “Consider this, Watson: amongst other duties, Benjamin Disraeli was a member of a select committee that in 1852 was tasked with considering how best to rule the subcontinent, and Disraeli himself proposed eliminating the governing role of the East India Company.” He rose from his seat. “While you muse on that, I must go out for a time, but I will return later,” he promised.
Without another word, Holmes tossed a shilling to Wiggins for the previous day’s work, insisted he be more circumspect with his spending this time, and hastened to his bedroom. Minutes later, clad in a fresh disguise, he departed.
Left with no instructions, it fell to me to tend the fire and update my account of this most curious case. In other words, I was left to wait and wonder.