The Importance of Porlock

Amy Myers

No chain is stronger than its weakest link … Hence the extreme importance of Porlock.

The Valley of Fear, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It was in the summer of 1887 that I first realised my own importance. My name, as I presented it to Mr Sherlock Holmes, was Fred Porlock, which pleased me as an invention. In that year I interfered with the plans of the most sinister villain ever known to the vast heaving London underworld, just as the gentleman from the village of Porlock once interrupted the flowing pen of the poet Samuel Coleridge. Adopting the name of Fred also pleased me. A name of no importance in itself, it smacks of greatness, of kings, emperors and heroes: Alfred, Frederick and Siegfried.

Later I knew this villain to have been Professor Moriarty, in whose evil empire I was a humble messenger, the fleeting shadow in the fog beyond London’s gaslights, the whisper before the knife. I took my orders from the link above me in his devilish web and relayed them on to the next. That web controlled all that was vile, spinning its malevolence far beyond London, far beyond the shores of England itself, eastwards towards the great powers of Europe, and even westwards towards the mighty States of America. At its centre sat the Spider, manipulating and sucking in its prey in pursuit of its own ends, regardless of the human life it destroyed in the process.

Until the summer of ’87, I performed my tasks without concern. I saw not their beginning, I cared not about their end. I knew nothing about the Spider, but now the very thought of Moriarty brings back the fears and terrors of that time.

My story begins with blood.

The blood of a flower girl spilt in the grey dawn of Covent Garden’s market. She lay in a corner of the new glass-covered flower market. I saw her black dress and shawl with the red blood still streaming over her, as red as the rose she had handed me yesterday as she cried her wares in the Strand.

‘Know her, mister?’ asked a uniformed beadle curiously.

‘No,’ I lied.

‘Elsie Bracken, her name is, God rest her soul. Her man sells matches outside St Bride’s. Soldier once, he was. Out there in India.’

Bracken! I knew that name. I felt myself shaking as I sank to my knees at Elsie’s side, despite the crowd around me. It was then I realised she still breathed, though near to death. Her eyelids fluttered, perhaps aware of my closeness to her, and her eyes opened. Did she recognise me? I doubt it, but she struggled to make one last desperate attempt to speak. Her dying breath was trying to form a word and I leaned over her as though this poor gesture might help.

‘Hurry,’ I heard her say, but then no more.

Flowers are too rare in this world for their passing to go unnoticed. Besides, the coincidence was too great. One of my few talents is an interest in codes and ciphers, as Mr Sherlock Holmes can testify, and the last message I had been ordered to deliver to my link, Bill Butcher, had indicated its next recipient: Jesse Bracken.

The name had meant nothing to me then, but now a terrible suspicion seized me. The message had indicated he was to present himself at the Tilbury docks and, caring little, I had deciphered no further, no time, no place. It was whispered in the taverns that the Spider tolerated no departure from his order of complete silence on those who worked for him. Any peaching or blabbing would result in death and, if circumstances warranted it, that sentence would include those near to him. If Jesse had dared to trespass beyond his orders, not only could he be doomed, but also Elsie, his innocent wife, the girl who’d handed me that red rose yesterday.

I’d heard her cry: ‘Roses, red roses. Red roses for your sweetheart.’ I had no sweetheart but I had bought one nevertheless, and, as she handed it to me, she had said: ‘You look as if you need a rose, mister.’

I had been of no importance, a mere shape drifting past, but she had looked at me and cared. I might have been the unwitting messenger of her death. In vain I told myself I was not guilty of her murder, but I felt I was.

You’ll not go unavenged, Elsie, I silently promised her. I would hunt down the Spider sitting so smugly in his web and make him pay by foiling his fiendish plans.

Brave words. How to find him, however? I knew only the identity of the person to whom I passed the message. Messages were delivered to me by the same anonymous man but in a different location on every occasion. It would mean my own death if I were discovered attempting to find the beating heart of the web, the Spider himself, but to descend it might be of no avail. I was at a crossroads: which way to travel? Climb the web or seek out Jesse Bracken? I felt a surge of power. I alone could choose. If I trod carefully, even this most elusive of spiders might not notice this insignificant fly. Yes, I would climb.

But then Elsie’s cry echoed in my ears: ‘Red roses, red roses …’

Few hear the cry of those whom the metropolis’s uncaring ways trample underfoot. But I did hear it, and I knew I must answer it.

‘Hurry,’ had been Elsie’s last word, and so my first step must be to find Jesse Bracken before he too was killed. To have left the army, Bracken must be an invalid. If, as was likely, another order along a different chain had been issued for his and Elsie’s death, his killer might already have acted – or be about to act.

I had been early abroad as sleeping comes hard to me, and it was not yet six of the clock. No time to waste, however. I could see the police constable coming towards us now, but in the crowd around Elsie, it was easy to melt away with my usual anonymity and then run.

I ran from the market towards Wych Street and then down into the Strand, through the arch of Temple Bar and into Fleet Street where lies the great church of St Bride’s. London’s working world was already coming to life, and I hoped to find Jesse Bracken at his post.

There was no sign of any match-seller by or near the church, when I arrived, panting for breath. Where did Jesse live? No one could tell me. I must find Bill Butcher – who being the link above Jesse would surely know – but the taverns, whose company he sought more than that of toil, were not yet open. Then I saw a coffee stall by the cab stand and, to my relief, I could see Bill slumped against it.

He was a street entertainer, a one-man band, whose raucous music offended the ears of London. He jokes as passers-by drop halfpennies and farthings into his cap, but his eyes can turn into the coldest of weapons to those who cause him trouble. I had one advantage, however. Bill Butcher did not know who I was, just as I did not know the link above me. To him I was just another anonymous fly caught in this web.

Another of my talents is impersonations to dodge recognition; I can be an afflicted beggar, a chimney sweep, a fisherman, a jack tar, a night-soil man or even a toff as it takes my fancy, but there was no time today for such precautions. I could change my voice, but otherwise I was my own unimportant self with a fortunately unmemorable face.

I ordered tea and a muffin and stood next to Bill for a moment or two, then remarked gruffly: ‘Heard there’s a girl murdered in the Garden.’

‘What’s it to me?’ he growled.

‘Hard for her man. Invalided soldier, I’m told. Know him, do you? They’re looking for him now. Sells matches round here.’

I feared I had gone too far, but he showed no signs of recognition, as he sniggered, ‘He won’t fret. Pulled out of the river last night by them River Police. Down by the big ship docks. Knifed,’ he informed me, with much satisfaction.

My face changed not a whit, but inside I was very cold. ‘What was he doing down those parts?’

He turned away, without bothering to reply, but I’d heard enough. ‘Hurry,’ Elsie had said less than an hour ago. Jesse must already have been dead, but Elsie might not have known that. Perhaps, however, her ‘hurry’ referred to something else. Could that be the Spider’s planned crime in which Jesse and I had been links? My heart pounded within me. I must act – but how?

At that moment a police van passed, possibly carrying Elsie’s body away. I doffed my hat and, as I did so, glanced upwards. There I saw flags of red, white and blue flying from every window. I live my own anonymous life, but how could I have not considered what was exciting most of the world, even though I had dismissed it as being of no relevance to me?

On the morrow, 21 June, Her Majesty Queen Victoria would be celebrating her Golden Jubilee. She would have been on the throne for fifty years and London was already crowded with vis itors. Its ports, especially those with water deep enough to take the new large passenger ships, were greeting princes and crowned heads from as far afield as Persia, Japan and Siam; from India came maharajahs bearing gifts of jewels and servants for the royal household, and bringing gifts from Hawaii was Queen Kala Kaua. Most talk, however, was of Her Majesty’s many German relatives, including the Crown Prince Friedrich, his wife, the Queen’s eldest daughter, and their son Prince Wilhelm, later to be Kaiser himself and who was a far from popular gentleman, so the rumours went. The pomp of their arrival on the destroyer Blitz and accompanying flotilla of torpedo boats had demanded one of the newer docks.

Tilbury, I thought, where Jesse Bracken must have lost his life. The death of a flower girl seemed far removed from such grand matters of stage, and yet …

‘Hurry,’ Elsie had said.

Surely not even the Spider’s plans would reach as far as Her Majesty’s Jubilee Day, even to the Queen herself? It had to be considered, however, for in the past there had been failed attempts by madmen to assassinate Her Majesty, and the next might succeed. There were some foreign powers who might welcome the Queen gone from the throne of England and its empire. This very day Her Majesty was arriving by train from Windsor Castle to make her way to Buckingham Palace for the celebrations on the morrow. What could I do even if such an outrage were being planned by the Spider? For all my spurt of confidence, I was a person of no importance. I could not spill out my fears to Scotland Yard without appearing a madman myself and such a move would undoubtedly sign my own death warrant from the Spider. But I could try to climb the web even at this late stage. My very unimportance might enable me to move unseen.

And so my climb began. I went first to the dark and smoky tavern in the Strand near the Lowther Arcade; it was here that the message about Jesse had been handed to me by my anonymous link. I had little hope of finding him, not least because this was only one of the taverns where I had met him. Good fortune favoured me, however. My link had grown careless, for he was drinking here now. He failed to recognise me in the gloom, especially since my assumed accent and my cap identified me as a costermonger from the east of our city. It was surprisingly easy over the next hour or two for me to supply him with enough liquor to acquire a clue to where he had met the link above him.

‘Must be a toff,’ I then joked, as he had referred to a public house near to Eaton Square.

He spluttered with mirth. ‘Him? His servant more like.’

Whose servant? I wondered, but could take it no further, for my link belatedly realised that loose tongues led to voices silenced for ever.

The information both heartened and depressed me. Eaton Square was a neighbourhood where the Spider might himself dwell and his servants might indeed spend time in the local taverns. What depressed me, however, was that by the time I had clad myself appropriately and found what I thought to be the right tavern, the day was advancing fast and tomorrow was 21 June. The chances of finding Spider, learning his plans, and foiling them were very remote, even if his servant were here.

The barmaid was eyeing me curiously. ‘New round here?’ she asked.

‘Work for tomorrow evening. Up at one of them big houses in the Square.’

The Queen would be holding a splendid luncheon and dinner at Buckingham Palace after the procession and service at Westminster Abbey. She was related to so many of the crowned heads of Europe that they alone would dine at the Palace, which meant that the British aristocracy were planning to hold similar splendid gatherings in their own grand homes. My story passed muster with those around me.

‘Sooner it’s over the better,’ said my neighbour, a morose-looking man, albeit smartly dressed, in his thirties. ‘Dress uniform his nibs wants laid out tonight. And he’s only off to his club.’

Uniform? That sounded interesting. ‘Must be meeting Jubilee visitors,’ I said wisely.

He snorted. ‘Only a dinner with one other chap. Important, he says. Everything has to be important for him.’

‘I’m thinking of joining a club myself,’ I joked, knowing my workman’s gear hardly put me in that class.

‘You wouldn’t get past the Albion door,’ he said, grinning.

One of the famous clubs in Pall Mall. There was a slim chance that his employer might be the Spider, but I hesitated to arouse suspicion by asking more. I was in luck again, as my neighbour decided to continue the joke. ‘Give it a try,’ he urged me. ‘Turn up there, ask for Colonel Sebastian Moran and say you’re dining with him.’

‘I’ll do that,’ I assured him.

He roared with laughter, the barmaid joined in and I followed suit. When he’d wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes, he clapped me on the back. ‘I likes a man who likes a good joke.’

Anticipation filled the air that evening, crowds already gathering on the streets, talking of the great event on the morrow and of those dignitaries who were known to have arrived. The glorious weather was holding and much beer was drunk that night in the Queen’s honour; many the working men who staggered home even more bung-eyed than usual.

I was not among them. I was sitting on a stool at the roadside near the foot of the Albion Club steps in Pall Mall and practising my newly acquired trade of shoeblacker. My companion, the regular shoeblacker, had been easy enough to square, once he had been informed that I was a detective from Scotland Yard, one of the many guarding the Queen’s peace that evening; there was, I told him, an expectation of trouble with so many important people in the city. My shoeblacker friend was especially pleased to help on receipt of a whole shilling.

‘Between you and me,’ I told him in confidential tones, ‘I’m looking out for a Colonel Sebastian Moran. Know him?’

‘Not ’arf,’ he told me eagerly. ‘That’s one geezer everyone steers clear of. You don’t cross him. Yessir, nossir, that’s what he wants and if he don’t get it you’re in trouble.’

‘Tip me the wink when he comes,’ I said.

‘Right-ho, sir.’

I waited about an hour, filling in my time learning to buff an evening boot and, I admit, enjoying the task. Nevertheless, I was conscious that the hours were ebbing away like sand through an egg timer and I might be pinning my hopes on the wrong man.

‘That’s him now, sir,’ my companion whispered. I looked up from my improvement of an evening pump shoe to see the most chilling face I had ever had the misfortune to encounter. Huge white drooping moustache, glaring eyes and a sharp jaw that would quell the fiercest of warriors all combined to convince me that this was my man. The Spider, resplendent in his army uniform, was before me.

‘Indian Army,’ my confidant said in awe. ‘That’s what he said once. The First Bangalore Pioneers.’

I rejoiced: Jesse Bracken too had been in the Indian Army – perhaps a coincidence or perhaps he had been chosen for his role at Tilbury for that reason.

Then I sobered. What came next? Even though I knew who the Spider was, how could I tell his plans? And, if I did not, how could I avenge poor Elsie’s death by scotching them? With whom, I wondered, was he dining? Would that give me some clue?

‘Does his companion for this evening dine regularly with him?’ I asked.

‘Once a week,’ he replied. ‘Some geezer he knows, a professor or something. He’s a good ’un, that one. Give me a tanner over what he owed for his boots once.’

My hopes fell. A regular guest was less likely to be here for final details of a master plan. And yet the Colonel had told his valet that it was an important occasion. My hopes rose again.

‘Here’s that chap now,’ my informant told me ten minutes later.

The evening seemed suddenly chilly, as a figure descended from the hansom, paid the driver, then paid him the unusual courtesy of lifting his top hat to him.

‘Thank you, cabbie,’ he said.

I heard the voice quite clearly. It was like none other I could remember, with its peculiar mix of softness and steel. He paid no attention to us, as he climbed the steps, and I heard the doorman greet him: ‘Good evening, Mr Moriarty.’

‘Professor Moriarty,’ he gently reminded him. Then he turned round before entering the building. I could not tell what made him do so. All I know is that I felt the presence of evil so powerfully that I had to look away. Imagination, I told myself, but I knew it was not. He must be the Spider’s chief of staff, as tainted as the Spider himself.

I sat at my post in despair. What had I learned? Nothing for sure, save evidence that I was surely right about the Spider’s diabolical plans for the morrow.

Two hours later, the Professor returned alone. He stood at the top of the steps looking out towards the roadway – or perhaps he looked at me. Certainly a shiver ran through me. Then Colonel Moran joined him and they walked down the steps together, pausing not far from me for a whispered conversation. The Colonel was laughing, a sound so alien that I trembled. There was no mirth in it, just a maniacal triumph.

‘Every crowned head of Europe will be with the Queen,’ I heard him say. ‘They and those who guard her.’

‘Certainly,’ the Professor agreed. ‘Her Majesty will be served well by her Indian guards.’ The politeness of his voice made his words more sinister than the Colonel’s.

They were bidding each other farewell and I hastily concentrated on my current employment, a pair of button boots for which the owner waited expectantly. Yet I sensed the Professor was looking at me. I felt his eyes boring into me, as though they seared through to my very soul. If the Devil had sent his messenger then this was he.

With a great effort of will, I did not glance up at him, as my fellow shoeblacker took my customer’s payment.

What did he want of me, this Professor? Had he understood my purpose for being here, seen my true unimportant self? Panic filled me, and I was on the point of running for my very life, when he spoke to me: ‘My shoes, if you please.’

He addressed me, but fortunately my companion seized the opportunity of another tanner and took over the task of polishing the Professor’s laced leather footwear. I felt he watched me, however. I thought he would speak to me, but he did not. I reckoned my ordeal would never end, and it was with great relief that I watched him hail a hansom and disappear from our sight.

Then a terrible suspicion came to me and, try as I might, it turned into certainty. Colonel Moran was not the Spider I had sought. The Spider was Professor Moriarty and I was now within the reach of his carnivorous tentacles.

I felt near to tears, but this was no time for weakness. What did this insidious Spider have in mind for the morrow? ‘Every crowned head of Europe will be with the Queen … Indian guards.’ I shivered. I had read that the Queen’s carriage would be preceded by her Indian Army as well as the Household Cavalry. One of them was a traitor.

What could I do to wreck the Spider’s plans? Nothing.

Then I realised that I was wrong. There was a step I could take, even now. Scotland Yard would take no notice of me, but they would pay heed to Mr Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective in London. Should I telegraph? Deliver a letter to his Baker Street lodgings? My head spun with indecision. I might be followed, watched, killed, the message destroyed. I must take that risk. There must be no way that Mr Holmes could trace me. I must invent another false name, use a code … It must be a letter, delivered by myself to Baker Street. I hurried to the nearest open post office in St James’s Street to acquire paper and ink, and scribbled the best I could think of on the spur of the moment:

Golden rosebay clive bilberries: Fred Porlock

I had partly used the language of flowers. I had not forgotten poor Elsie.

The whole of London, the whole world rejoiced as kings, em perors and potentates gathered under a cloudless blue sky to celebrate fifty years of Victoria’s golden reign. Like Atlas, however, I felt the whole weight of that world on my shoulders. I had delivered my letter and then slept overnight in St James’s Park, as if by my physical presence near to Buckingham Palace I could protect Her Majesty from harm.

The processional route to Westminster Abbey was a long one from Buckingham Palace through the streets of London, Hyde Park Corner, Regent Street and Whitehall, and thence to the Abbey. At some point, a mounted guard would turn assassin. There would be no attack in the Abbey itself, I reasoned. It was too enclosed a space for such an outrage. Along the processional route, troops lined each street, an impressive sight with their red uniforms and black bearskins, but they would provide little defence against a sudden move by a mounted assassin.

What to do? I was ignorant, I was helpless, I was of no importance. My letter to Sherlock would be of no use. Even he could not watch the whole route.

I chose to stand at the foot of Regent Street on its corner with Pall Mall to wait for the procession to pass me. Perhaps I thought being near to where I met the Spider last evening might help me read his evil mind and even now prevent his planned crime.

At last, I heard the sound of cheering above the noise of the waiting crowds. It grew louder, then the sound of the horses became audible.

‘Here she is, God bless her,’ someone roared, words taken up by the entire crowd. ‘Here she is … here she is …’

I could see the troops’ horses now, seeming to make straight for me as the noise began to deafen me. I forgot the Spider; I forgot the danger. I was caught up with the spectacle. Behind the mounted guard, six cream horses pulled an open landau in which was seated one small figure: Victoria. Did she wear a crown? No. Did she hold swords of state? No. There was no need of either. This was majesty. This was Victoria. She wore a simple bonnet that sparkled in the sunlight. The empress of a quarter of the world did not need a crown to boast her majesty. My eyes filled with tears of emotion, as the sound of the hooves and the cheering merged in one excited roar.

‘Keep on going, duck,’ shouted one daring man.

Hats flew in the air, cheers rang in my ears, and then she had passed us, followed by her sons and other family riding on horseback, including the Prince of Wales, the Crown Prince of Germany and his son Prince Wilhelm, withered arm or not. Her Majesty’s grandson was said to have a great love of all things English – but a great envy of his grandmother’s power and graciousness had led him to a wilful insistence on his own preroga tives and rights. He was twenty-eight now, but not, it was said, beyond playing practical jokes, the kind that are not jokes.

‘Every crowned head of Europe will be with the Queen …’ I had heard the Colonel say.

The procession was passing and I craned my neck to see it to the very last.

‘It will not be here,’ murmured a voice in my ear.

‘The Abbey?’ I instinctively blurted out, before terror at this unexpected companion silenced me. Then I relaxed. It was a tall, lean clergyman at my side, who seemed to offer me no threat. I must have been mistaken over what he had said. There was no doubt about his next statement, however.

‘The Palace, Mr Porlock. I am sure of it. But how? That is the question. Do you have no other information?’

I shook with fear now. I was followed last night, I must have been. ‘None,’ I stumbled out. ‘The guards, the Indian Army.’

‘I think not. Come, man. What does that embodiment of evil have in mind?’

I could not speak for terror, but, as I looked at him, with his shrewd eyes and air of coiled tension, I calmed myself. He had called me Porlock. ‘Mr Holmes,’ I breathed, hardly daring to hope.

‘The same. Think, man, think.’

‘I know not,’ I cried in despair. When I next looked, Mr Holmes had gone.

Hurry, I thought despairingly. The service at the Abbey would last an hour and then the procession would return this way to the Palace. Surely Mr Holmes must be wrong. How could the attack come there, where there could no longer be a threat from the guards?

I could not rest. I must see the procession on its return journey, watch it at a point where I could see it safely reach the Palace itself. And so I ran along Pall Mall, down past St James’s Palace to the Mall which led up to the Palace. But my plan was to cross Green Park and wait at Hyde Park Corner. Here were the stands specially built for the Jubilee and full of quality folk. Beneath them, crowds blocked the entire road to the west as well as lining the road to Piccadilly and the point where the roadway sweeps round to join Constitution Hill. The island of green in the middle of the roadways was equally full of excited onlookers waiting for the return of the procession after the service in the Abbey.

Here, surely, was where the attack would happen. It was another hour and a half before the procession could be heard once again, and my head was dizzy. This vigil began to seem a mere dream and I was lulled into a conviction that all would be well as the procession passed and the Queen remained safe. I followed it with the cheering crowds down Constitution Hill to the Palace gates and saw the Queen’s procession pass safely inside.

The Palace, Mr Holmes had said. Perhaps I had been wrong and he right. The attack would come now. I was pressed far back in the crowds as the Queen came out on the balcony of the Palace and the cheering began again. How could they cheer when the Queen would be assassinated? Someone in the crowd shouted that the Queen was watching a parade of Blue-Jackets in the courtyard, but so thick were the crowds I could see no sailors. Every moment I expected the sound of a rifle.

None came.

Where now, as the Queen went back inside the Palace?

‘Hurry,’ Elsie had said.

‘Think,’ said Mr Holmes.

Other snatches came back to me … ‘Well served …’ ‘No, but his servants may …’

What about the Queen’s servants who guarded her and not her Army guards? The Queen’s Indian servants. They were newly arrived and …

I must find Mr Holmes immediately. But where? How? I forced myself through to the front of the crowds, to the gates of the Palace courtyard. I could not enter them; they were too well guarded, not by police, who would recognise the name of Holmes, but the army. I was turned back.

Think, man, think. The servants’ entrance! Perhaps there, or the mews. These were in Buckingham Palace Road, so yet again I found myself running, so fast now that my heart hurt with the strain. But what could I do? Leave it to burst with grief if I failed Elsie, if I failed my Queen?

This time it was uniformed police at the gates, but they turned a blank face to me when I asked for Mr Holmes. They told me to be gone.

I stood back and I howled to the skies: ‘Fred Porlock!’

Instantly, it seemed he was there, with half a dozen men in plain clothes who seized me, dragged me inside those gates as though I had wanted to escape them. And there was Mr Sherlock Holmes, looking strained and grim.

‘Indian servants,’ was all I could gasp out.

He groaned in disappointment. ‘I was there before you. Two new ones arrived yesterday; we hold them already, but I fear we are too late. The mischief is done. Tell me their plan. The Queen’s life may depend on it.’

‘I do not know,’ I sobbed. This had all been for nothing.

Mr Holmes did not reproach me, but looked at me kindly. ‘Mr Porlock, you are a person of importance. Think. Where came your earlier information? From that murdered flower girl?’

So he knew about Elsie. I nodded. ‘I was with her when she died.’

His eyes brightened. ‘She spoke?’

‘But one word, hurry, and I have been too late.’

He brushed this aside impatiently. ‘Think. Relive that moment, if you please. Speak as you do so.’

I closed my eyes, conscious of all these people around me waiting for me, hoping, demanding … Elsie was with me again, I took one breath and was back with her in the flower market: ‘She is dying,’ I whispered. ‘I am putting my head close to her, trying to help, to hear if she would speak. She tries her very best, gasping, breathing out sounds from her throat …’

I sensed quickening interest around me, but I was with Elsie and must not lose her. I subdued the temptation to force the word from her. ‘Tell me again, just as it was,’ I whispered to her.

I listened and spoke: ‘She is trying and it comes so softly like a breath itself, hurry – but she has no strength left, only the breath that comes as “hurry” because she can no longer form the proper sounds in her mouth …’ And then I had it:

‘Curry!’ I cried.

One of the duties of Her Majesty’s Indian servants was to prepare curry for Her Majesty, to which she had taken a liking. By the time they were apprehended in the Palace that day, so Mr Holmes told me later, the curry had already been prepared only for Her Majesty at the formal dinner that evening. It was found to be poisoned. The two Indian men who had come to join her household the day before the Jubilee were not those intended for the Palace staff, but assassins. Jesse Bracken had been ordered to meet the two genuine new Indian servants at Tilbury, but he had met his death. They were abducted by others of Professor Moriarty’s web, taken to Sussex and held in captivity. The plan had been to hold them there until their replacements had finished their perfidious work at the Palace, and these two genuine Indian servants had been fortunate not to be killed. On 23 June, two days after the Jubilee celebrations, Abdul Karim and Mahomet had been presented to Her Majesty and taken up their lawful appointment on her staff.

‘But who would plan such an outrage?’ I cried. ‘Why would the Professor wish to kill his monarch?’

Mr Holmes frowned. ‘That man’s malignant intent would have daunted even Machiavelli. There are no lengths to which he will not go in pursuit of his own corrupt power. To those who do not know the truth, he is a brilliant and respected mathematician, a scientist of the first order. To those who do, he is the epitome of everything that is vile, but he brings to that the same brilliance with which he writes his learned tomes. His evil services are sought at the highest levels in kingdoms and empires far beyond this one.’

‘By the Indian maharajahs?’ I asked.

‘I believe the plan we have foiled began much nearer our homeland than India. You have heard that the ruler of a certain European state is far from well?’

‘The German emperor?’

‘Please, no names. It is not generally known that the heir to the throne is also in bad health, and it is probable that his son will within the next few years bear the title of Kaiser.’

‘The prince with a withered arm? But he would not wish to poison his grandmother.’

‘You speak plainly, Mr Porlock, but you are correct. I fear the people he employs to perpetrate the practical jokes of which he is so fond are not all loyal to him. Instead of the mild emetic he had plotted to be added to her curry at the dinner that evening, a strong poison was substituted. There is a powerful circle in his country whom it would suit both to rid themselves of the Queen of England and to cast doubt over this Prince’s suitability to rule over their nation and empire. And who, indeed, is to say that they are not right in that latter respect?’

‘And the Professor’s purpose?’ I ventured to ask.

‘Think of the power he would wield had this foul plan succeeded, of the great European monarchs he would have at his mercy. Why, he would have been an emperor himself, but of a sinister underworld that never seeks the light and wreaks only evil.’

‘What will happen to the Professor now, Mr Holmes?’

‘He and I will clash on more occasions I fear before my evidence is complete and he and that chief of staff of his, Colonel Sebastian Moran, are unmasked so that justice may take its course. If Moriarty is the core of all evil, then Moran is its physical presence. But it is for me, not you, Mr Porlock, to break Moriarty’s power. As for you, forget the name Porlock, forget the Professor and his web, and take up some toil far from London.’

How greatly I wanted to follow his advice, but I could not. There would be other Elsies, innocent flies caught in a web whom I might manage to free. Roses, red roses …

‘I cannot do so,’ I told Mr Holmes in anguish.

Sherlock Holmes smiled. ‘I see you wear a flower in your buttonhole, Mr Porlock, and I understand. Very well, forget we have ever met, as I shall forget both you and my involvement in this case. As long as you feel it is safe to do so, however, you will be of extreme importance in my quest.’

I was greatly moved. ‘I will try to be so.’

He smiled. ‘I shall not seek you out, so avail yourself of an appropriate means of communication between ourselves – you might consider Camberwell Post Office as a neutral channel. Use the name of Fred Porlock only to me. Pray continue, if you please, your invaluable role as a person of no importance.’