Chapter 17
“It’s really amazing,” Mr. Nelson commented as he leafed through the newspaper the next morning. “Half of Europe is in flames because of the war, and the newspapers continue to publish full-page stories on Ophelia Merridew!”
I broke the shell of my hard-boiled egg. Hearing Mr. Nelson say her name made my heart beat faster. I could not reveal to him that I had been involved in that murky incident, so I pretended to be absorbed in reading the first page. Thankfully, Mr. Nelson did not ask questions.
The Times reported that Ophelia Merridew had been found alive, but now she was struggling between life and death. She was being cared for in a secret place, because it was believed that she was still in danger.
Police had determined that it was only by some miracle the attacker had not been able to finish his work — to kill Merridew. They reported that until they received direct testimony from the opera singer, they would not have a definite name for the attacker.
There was no mention of the three of us, fortunately. Apparently, Scotland Yard was still convinced that Théophraste Lupin was guilty of murdering Alfred Santi. Nisbett continued to protest the accusation by insisting that there was some link between the murder of Santi and the attempted murder of Merridew — the latter of which, we all knew, had occurred when Théophraste Lupin was locked up in a jail cell.
My friends and I were certain that there was a connection between the two incidents. The dratted devil of Bethnal Green! But, as Sherlock said, at this point he was like a fictional character, a faceless and nameless ghost.
We figured it would be useless to try to talk to Nisbett or to go to the Scotland Yard. They would have simply thought of us as children who had too much imagination.
At this point, Scotland Yard had investigated Mr. Lupin’s past, although not entirely accurately. They were convinced that he belonged to a dangerous gang of criminals. Therefore, they deemed that the attack on Merridew could have been one of Théophraste’s accomplices attempting to muddy the waters, freeing Mr. Lupin of any blame in the murder of Santi.
A small sigh escaped my lips. The investigators, I thought, wouldn’t discover who the real murderer was even if he passed right under their noses!
I finished my breakfast in a hurry and then stood up, ready to go out.
“What are your plans for today, Miss?” Mr. Nelson asked me.
“Oh, I don’t know exactly,” I said. “But I think I’ll go back to take care of . . . fabrics.”
He opened his eyes wide. It was clear he didn’t want to spend another afternoon winding his way from one tailor shop to another on Savile Row.
“Do you want to come with me?” I asked anyway.
“Only if it involves something very dangerous, Miss. Something that absolutely requires my protection!” the butler joked.
“Then you can stay here in comfort, my good Horatio Nelson,” I said as I got up from the table and smiled at him. “It will be an affair of refined matters . . . haute couture!”
I crossed the dining room, laughing the entire way. I pushed through the Claridge’s revolving door and headed outside toward Sherlock’s house.
The Holmes residence in London was simple, but had a great perk — a toolshed in the backyard.
Sherlock had made the toolshed his own kingdom, and it was there where he greeted Lupin and me that morning between screwdrivers, hammers, and saws hanging on old rusty nails; a massive workbench; and an unknown number of drafts in the woodwork that the young Holmes would have to mend before winter.
That morning, I discovered that the magnifying glass that would become Sherlock’s famous tool belonged to, in fact, his older brother, Mycroft.
But it was that morning, Sherlock claimed, that he became the first one to use the lens.
Sherlock put on a pair of white gloves (which also belonged to his brother). He then picked up the piece of red cloth that Lupin had snatched from the devil of Bethnal Green and bent over to study it with great care. Seeing Sherlock stooped in that way, with his eye grotesquely magnified by the lens, made me think of the famous hunchback of Notre-Dame, and I burst into laughter.
“And what’s wrong now?” he asked me, lowering the lens for a moment in astonishment.
“Forget it, Quasimodo,” I joked. “Tell us what you see.”
That day I witnessed the great detective’s first investigation with a magnifying glass — with the very lens he would often be pictured with many years later.
But since I want to be honest about how things really took place, well . . . I must say that in the beginning, Sherlock Holmes’s work with the lens was not very impressive.
“It is silk!” Sherlock announced. And then he added, “Valuable silk!”
Mocking him, Lupin made a shocked expression, and I had to try my hardest to hold in my laughter.
Sherlock, who was intensely concentrated on his inspection work, took no notice of the teasing and kept sharing his observations with us. “It is certainly not a piece of a scarf. It looks like a piece of the lining of a coat. And here . . . here are the initials sewn on the fabric! Three characters: W & R!”
At that, he put the lens down triumphantly.
“Is that it?” Lupin asked. “W & R could be anything.”
“Not anything,” Sherlock pointed out. “Indeed, it could be an abbreviation for thousands of names. But I can hardly believe the man is a Spaniard . . . considering that the letter W is extremely rare in the Spanish language.”
“Good point,” Lupin agreed.
“And that’s not all! Wait here a minute, please.”
He gave us the cloth and the lens and ran out of the toolshed, heading toward his house.
Sherlock returned shortly with a fancy coat belonging to Mycroft.
He showed us how the silk was applied to the lining of Mycroft’s coat, convincing us even more that what we had in hand was, indeed, a piece of silk that Lupin had ripped off of the Spaniard’s coat.
“As I have already told you,” Sherlock added, “my brother is determined to pursue a career in politics, and it is for this reason that Mother gave him my father’s good coat.”
It was the first time that Sherlock mentioned his father, Siger, whose sad story I didn’t learn until later.
“Now,” young Holmes continued, “please smell the lining of this coat and then smell the scrap that Lupin tore off of the Spaniard’s coat. Try to sharpen your senses. Smell, if you can, beyond the stench of the people who have worn these fabrics. Concentrate on the aroma of the silk, so to speak.”
Intrigued, I tried to do as he said. The silk of the two liners did have, at their depths, a similar fragrance. “Aromatic!” I exclaimed. “Almost spicy.”
“Excellent!” Sherlock approved, snapping his fingers in satisfaction. “The two fabrics have the same unmistakable smell of Indian silk, coming from the colonies of Her Majesty the Queen of England.”
Lupin crossed his legs on his stool. “Then although he is likely a Spaniard, we know he bought his clothes here in England.”
“Exactly. And we also know he spent more than a little on whatever this tiny scrap came from — likely a coat,” Sherlock added, holding up the piece of silk with a grin on his face.
Lupin tugged nervously at his chin. Every little analysis or discovery, which for Sherlock and me may have seemed a simple move to solve a difficult puzzle, represented for Lupin, in reality, a step toward his father’s freedom.
“And now that we have these letters, and we know that this silk is made in England?” I asked.
“Should we go back to Savile Row?” Sherlock suggested.
I shook my head. “Not quite Savile Row, but almost.”
* * *
As soon as Hortence left her house, I caught up with her along the street, leaving Lupin and Sherlock hidden behind a tree.
“Miss Hortence! Miss Hortence, excuse me!”
The seamstress stopped to see who was calling, but as soon as she recognized me, her expression turned rather sour.
“Have you read about Ophelia?” I asked, moving toward her.
Hortence said yes, adding that the accounts were terrible. She walked slowly but steadily, and held a couple of jackets wrapped in blue tissue paper under her arms.
“What do you want from me this time, young lady?” she asked.
“Instead of being happy that your friend has been found, you seem angry with me, Miss Hortence,” I pointed out.
“I find it a strange coincidence . . . you come to my house with your butler, both of you weighed down by packages,” she replied, then she paused, as if to emphasize that she considered it entirely inappropriate to reveal the fact that I had someone in my service. “You ask me about Olive’s family, I tell you about Aunt Betty, and then, the next day . . . then my poor friend is found right in the old house of this aunt — more dead than alive!”
“I do not see how you can think that I —” I started.
“I do not think anything, young lady! But I don’t understand why you’re here now,” the seamstress concluded, nervously clutching her bundle of clothes.
“Because you are the only person who can help me,” I admitted. And then I told her, trying to be as honest as possible, that I was doing a small investigation into the incident.
I explained that we had a valid suspect that we believed had attacked Ophelia in her aunt’s house, and that it could very well be the same person who had murdered Alfred Santi.
“It just so happens that I have a friend, Miss. And right now she is lying in bed and fighting for her life. So I hope that I do not hurt your feelings, but I will tell nothing more,” the seamstress said.
“All right, Miss Hortence,” I said, nodding. “I won’t ask you anything more about Ophelia. However, what I would ask of you is your expert opinion!”
I was hoping that the initials on the cloth, W & R, would awaken some memory linked to Hortence’s childhood — and therefore to Ophelia’s.
So, without hesitation, I waved the piece of red silk before her eyes. Hortence looked at it and then looked at me like I was crazy. “What is this? A joke?”
“What can you say of it?” I asked, choosing to ignore her skepticism.
“It is silk. Of the best quality,” she replied, examining the fragment.
“It is signed with the initials W & R. Do they mean anything to you?” I asked.
The woman paused to think. “No, I’m sorry. Not at all.”
I bit my lip. “Could they be the initials of a tailor’s shop?” I persisted, determined not to leave empty-handed.
“W & R?” Hortence repeated, pausing to think again, this time a little longer. “No. There is no tailor’s shop that has those initials. Not on Savile Row, at least.”
“Maybe a tailor’s shop that has closed?” I kept at it, although I had less and less hope. “Or are there any shops that have changed ownership?”
“I’ve been here for a lifetime,” Hortence said, “and I can assure you that I have mended a lot of clothes, old and new. I’ve never seen anything from your imaginary tailor, W & R! And now, with your permission, I have to finish my deliveries.”
“Very well. I am staying at the Claridge’s,” I said. “If you think of something, or change your mind —”
“I have nothing more to say to you, young lady. Good day!” Hortence said, walking briskly away. I walked back toward my two friends.
“Now what?” Lupin and Sherlock asked when I returned to them.
“A waste of time,” I said, disappointed. “According to Hortence, there is no tailor’s shop that has those initials.”
“We didn’t need this,” Lupin said, looking frustrated. “It could be a cloth that has been produced in the United States, France — anywhere else but here!”
Sherlock was disappointed. His theory — that the Spaniard’s shawl was from England — was not looking as likely now.
For the umpteenth time since we had started that investigation, we were stuck.
I began to think maybe we weren’t skilled enough to conduct such a demanding investigation . . . and maybe we would have to ask for help.
* * *
I stared at Mr. Nelson throughout dinner that night, continually asking myself if I should tell him about our investigation. I was waiting for the right time, but the moment never came.
Back then, it seemed to me that discussing our work with an adult would mean betraying the spirit of our group.
“There is good and bad news, Miss Irene,” Mr. Nelson told me in the middle of the dinner. “The good news is that your father let us know by telegram that your mother is doing well and that tomorrow or the day after, they will leave to meet you here in London.”
“And the bad?” I asked, slightly worried.
“Perhaps, among your many thoughts, you have wondered what my job here is, apart from making sure you are safe and keeping track of your questionable friends, while your father has been gone.”
“Actually, I haven’t, Mr. Nelson,” I admitted.
“Well, he asked me to look for an apartment rental here for all of you, and myself,” Mr. Nelson replied.
My eyes widened. “We are leaving Paris?”
“For some time, it would seem so, Miss Irene. I’m really sorry . . .” and here Horatio Nelson went beyond his call of duty, displaying a fake regretful grimace worthy of a Shakespearean actor. “At the thought of all the distinguished Parisian friends you must give up, instead of spending goodness knows how many months in this new city, where you know only Mr. Holmes and Mr. Lupin. Those two will be barely enough to distract you while things on the continent are sorted out.”
I kissed him on the forehead, which left him speechless, and ran happily around the room, imagining the moment when I would tell my two friends the news.
Then, when the excitement passed, I decided to keep the news to myself for the time being . . . at least until we saved Théophraste Lupin from the gallows.
* * *
I took a long bath, during which I let myself dream a thousand fantasies about my future in London, and when I returned to my room, ready to sleep, I noticed that someone had slid a thin white envelope under the door.
I picked it up and turned it over. There was my name and the address of the hotel written by a light and very accurate hand. I opened the envelope and there I found a short note, full of erasures.
Dear Miss Adler,
I’m sorry about this afternoon, but as you may have guessed by now, I have difficulty trusting other people. However, I think I can fix that — at least partially. Thinking back to the piece of red silk, I finally managed to remember something. And now I am certain that the shop you’re looking for is Wallace & Renfurm, not very far from Covent Garden. The reason why I did not remember immediately is because it is a very specialized shop, which only handles costumes — especially those for the Royal Opera House. Hoping to have been of some help. I offer my respectful greetings.
— Miss Hortence Cheepnis
The tailor of the costumes for the Opera House in London.
We had a new lead!