The Lady on the Bridge

by Mike Hogan

Sherlock Holmes pushed back his chair, stood, and laid his napkin on the table. “Settle up, would you, old chap? I have a small errand to run.” He weaved among the tables of the restaurant and disappeared through the main entrance doors.

I pulled out my pocket book and sighed. Our finances, as often at the end of the month, were at a low ebb, but at Holmes’s insistence we had travelled from Baker Street to Sydenham on a blustery afternoon to take an early dinner at a fine French restaurant in the Byzantine court at the Crystal Palace. The decor was as highly stylised as the menu prices were highly inflated.

And Holmes’s attention had not been on the food. Even as we were ushered into the room, his eyes had flickered around as if looking for someone, and between courses he had glanced at his pocket watch as if gauging whether he had time to make a rendezvous.

I requested the bill and peered at a note in tiny print explaining that the charge had been calculated according to a Continental system by which a seven-per-cent gratuity had been added. It occurred to me as I received my change from the sharp-eyed waiter that a gratuity should be precisely what the word suggested, a token of appreciation from a satisfied customer, not a levy. However, under the supercilious gaze of the waiter and with the maître d’hôtel, hovering with an elderly couple anxious to possess our table, I made a swift mental calculation and left an appropriate amount in the saucer as a ‘tip’. The waiter peered at the thru’pence coin and its ha’penny companion with disdain, the maître d’hôtel sadly shook his head, and the gentleman waiting for our table shared a condescending half-smile with his lady companion. Undaunted, I stood and marched to the entrance of the restaurant, where I found Holmes leaning against an iron pillar deep in his Evening News.

He folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. “Nothing yet, but there is still the final edition.”

I frowned. “What are you expecting?”

“Did you take the receipt?” he asked.

I handed it to him. “The price included a seven-per-cent charge for service. It was clear from the attitude of the restaurant staff that a further amount was expected as a tip.”

Holmes considered. “Fourpence three-farthings would have been an adequate addition to the charge to make it consistent with your usual practice. Come.”

I followed him out of the restaurant, counting surreptitiously on my fingers, and into one of the huge galleries in the iron-framed glass building. A crystal fountain glistened in the sunlight streaming through the tremendous glass walls and curved ceiling high above us, and I stood in awe as I gazed at the long vista before me. Tall trees brushed the ceiling of the central nave, and massive monuments from antiquity and gigantic engines from the present day occupied the aisles and transepts.

I looked for Holmes and found him reading his paper in the shade of a palm tree in what was clearly a Roman or Greek themed exhibition. A dozen ladies sat before a row of plaster statues of naked, ivy-leaved young males, while a spade-bearded gentleman discoursed on features of ancient sculpture. One young lady seated at the end of the row of students flicked her eyes along the line of sculptures and then past them to me. I blinked at her, and she smiled. It would have been boorish in the extreme not to return such a charming smile, however inappropriately offered, and I - “

“Watson?”

“The Palace is a virtual university,” I said as Holmes led me away. “A very useful institution, especially for young ladies of artistic inclinations.”

Desiring to smoke after our meal, Holmes and I strolled the extensive gardens on what had become a balmy, early spring evening and found a bench where we sat, lit our pipes, and watched the Palace come alive with glittering electric lights.

The sky darkened and Holmes looked at his watch, tapped out his pipe and stood. He led me to a gate to one of the special garden exhibits, where he displayed our restaurant receipt to an attendant and we were waved in, gratis.

A newspaper boy ran up to Holmes holding out a copy of the Evening News late edition. Holmes grabbed it from him and flicked through the pages in the light of a gas lamp, humming softly to himself. He folded the newspaper in half and held his hand out to me. “Pencil?”

I reluctantly gave Holmes my propelling pencil and peered at the boy. On one invasion of our rooms by Holmes’s band of ragamuffins, his Baker Street Irregulars, I had lost not only my propelling pencil, but a signed score of The Lost Chord by Sir Arthur Sullivan. I was understandably wary of nefarious activity by any boy under Holmes’s direction.

Holmes ringed a paragraph in the paper and handed it to me, then he leaned down and fixed the newspaper boy with his steady gaze. “You know what to do?” he asked.

The boy grinned up at Holmes, turned and sped away.

“In the Personals,” I said, holding out my hand for my pencil. “To Ajax. ‘Seven is impossible - Tower Bridge at nine; agent must wear red carnation and carry a newspaper. One Fearfully Wronged’.”

I shook my head. “What silly names; she (we must assume a she) is loquacious, even when paying by the word.”

I was talking to thin air; Holmes was on the move. “Come,” he called back. “It’s ten minutes to seven.”

I scurried after him. “We’ll not get across London to the Tower in time, Holmes, it must be several miles. It is a physical impossibility, unless you have engaged a private balloon!”

Holmes skirted an ornamental fountain and came to a stop at a magnificent floral display. He plucked a red carnation bloom and slipped its stalk through my button hole.

“I say, old chap,” I remonstrated.

He handed me his Evening News and propelled me into a large grassy enclosure, the principal feature of which was an artificial lake crossed by a bridge illuminated with coloured electric globes.

I recalled that some years previously, the promoters of the hideous Tower Bridge across the Thames had built a wood and plaster, quarter-scale model of the structure in the gardens of the Crystal Palace, no doubt hoping that the public would get used to a Gothic monstrosity almost as uncouth as the ridiculous iron tower that defiled the centre of Paris. The model had proved a popular attraction, especially when illuminated on spring and summer evenings. Young couples perambulated the lake and crossed the bridge, no doubt focussed on each other and oblivious to their less than scenic surroundings.

I followed Holmes to the arch that marked the start of the bridge walkway. Close to, the model was sadly dilapidated. Bare wood showed through the paintwork, and the suspension wires hanging from the twin towers were visibly bent and frayed, and it was with trepidation that I followed Holmes onto the creaking deck and we joined the crowd crossing and re-crossing the structure. A police constable stood by one of the towers, but he seemed content to chat with a flower seller rather than enforce any rule of the road. Holmes and I took the leftmost tack as having fewer people walking against our direction.

“Keep an eye out,” he enjoined me in a murmur.

“What for?”

My question was immediately answered. Coming towards me against the flow and at a stately pace was an oddly-dressed figure, a lady, who, despite the mildness of the evening, was wrapped in a voluminous grey cape. On her head she wore a grey, flowery hat and her face was hidden, veiled in net. She stopped before me and slipped a hand into her reticule.

I blinked at her, started at a huge bang, and looked up as a firework bloomed high above me in the shape of a bright red carnation.

Holmes stepped between the lady and me and took her arm. “Madame,” he said softly. “I urge you not to take such a foolhardy step.”

More fireworks thundered over us as Holmes drew the lady to the side of the bridge. He made no move to bid me join them, and I stood uncertainly and in a state of utmost confusion as the crowd swirled past me staring up, mouths agape. An instinct of delicacy drew me away from my friend and the lady, and I took a position on the opposite side of the bridge against the balustrade and out of the flow of pedestrians. I could only glimpse Holmes and his companion through gaps in the passing throng and in the bursts of light from the fireworks as if in a jerky, slow-motion Kinematograph. Holmes bent towards the veiled lady and spoke most earnestly, emphasising his words with sharp gestures.

A thickening of the crowd hid them from me for a few seconds, and Holmes was beside me and the lady gone.

“Holmes,” I exclaimed. “You arranged a rendezvous for me with that lady!”

The newspaper boy reappeared, handed Holmes a rolled up newspaper, and disappeared into the crowd.

“In a manner of speaking.” Holmes unrolled the newspaper and disclosed a pocket pistol. “She intended to assassinate you.” He smiled. “Come, let’s take the train home and smoke a pipe or two in the safety of our comfortable den in Baker Street.” He took me by the arm and steered me towards the station.

“Miss Berthoud said that she was sorry to have bothered you, but she cannot see very well without her spectacles, especially through her veil and in the glare of the electric lamps and pyrotechnics, and your luxurious moustache is very like that of her oppressor. I advised her to go home and lay the matter before us in the morning.”

I dropped both newspaper and boutonniere into a bin. “Bothered, Holmes?” I said, somewhat sharply. “Yes, I dare say a bullet through the breastbone might have been bothersome.”

Holmes kept his counsel during our ride home, over late supper, and for the rest of the evening, and I went to bed with no more idea of why I had been targeted by the veiled lady than I had on the bridge.

I came down to breakfast the next morning and found Holmes in his dressing gown, reclining on the sofa, puffing on his morning pipe, and sipping coffee. A newspaper-wrapped parcel lay on the floor beside him.

“I feel that I am owed an explanation, Holmes,” I said as I poured my coffee.

“I am sure you do, old man,” he answered amicably. He leaned towards me and held out his cup for a refill.

“I think it only right that I should know what the devil is going on,” I said stiffly. “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Hudson.”

“Language, Doctor,” our landlady said as she placed fresh dishes of scrambled eggs, bacon, and kidneys before me on the table. “Naming calls. Billy will bring your toast, hot-and-hot.”

“I expect Murchison did what I should have done in his circumstances,” Holmes said as the door closed behind her. “He bribed the boot boy (or boot girl as Miss Berthoud resides in an exclusive ladies’ hotel in Bayswater) to slip a note under her bedroom door. The note referred her to the Evening News Personals and gave the gentleman’s nom de plume, Ajax.”

The bell rang in the hall downstairs.

“Who is this Murchison,” I asked. “And how did you become involved in the matter?”

Billy appeared at the door as I was about to tuck into my bacon and eggs.

“Where’s the toast?” I asked.

“Which, I didn’t bring it, Doctor, on account of the lady in the waiting room come to see Mr. Holmes.”

“But, what about breakfast?” I exclaimed.

Holmes jumped up. “Clear the table, Billy, then show her up.”

“I am a wronged woman,” Miss Berthoud said in a charmingly French-lilted English. “I was harried from my home, driven from my position as a nanny with a titled family, and hounded and threatened by a fiend who will stop at nothing to ruin me.”

Our visitor was a fresh-faced young lady of twenty or so, again in grey, but she had exchanged her cape and veil for a well-fitting, tailored ensemble in the latest fashion, and on her head was a tiny grey and pale yellow hat that clung to her tightly coiled hair like a budgerigar to its perch. She refused refreshment and took Holmes’s place on the sofa while he and I sat in our usual chairs before the empty grate.

She folded her hands in her lap. “There are moments, gentlemen, when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. I grasped that moment yesterday when I saw you on the bridge, Doctor. I was determined to destroy he who stands between my dear Alfie and me.”

Holmes sniffed. “But, you must consider, Miss Berthoud, that you would undoubtedly have been apprehended. Your costume, although admirably conceived for hiding your identity, was too voluminous for speedy escape, and a constable was at hand. You must have been caught and inevitably hanged for murder.”

Miss Berthoud seemed about to contradict Holmes, but he overrode her. “I see you frown. Although your English is excellent, I deduce from your accent (and your name) that you are French by birth, and you may not be aware that on this side of the Channel the courts do not have the option of excusing a murder as a crime passionel. Our Judiciary is not known for its Romantic conceptions; no, no, it would have meant the rope.”

“I say, Holmes-” I interjected.

“If I might accept your offer of refreshment, Doctor?” Miss Berthoud asked softly.

“Of course, tea or coffee?” I asked.

“A reviving brandy and soda for our guest, Watson,” Holmes said firmly. “And a whisky for me while you’re at the Tantalus.”

I poured the drinks, handed them and helped myself to a whisky.

“Tell me more of the target of your assassination attempt,” Holmes requested. “This Reverend Murchison.”

“Your oppressor is a clergyman?” I asked. “Not of the established church, I trust.”

“Of the Church of Scotland,” Miss Berthoud answered. “He retired to Boulogne, as do many of his countrymen, particularly professional gentlemen.”

She took a dainty sip of brandy. “Although my family was of aristocratic status, we lost everything in the turmoil at the end of the last century. My great-grandfather opposed the tyrant Napoleon, and our family was proscribed. After the death of my father, my mother was obliged to sell what remained of our property and set up a lodging house in Boulogne. A very genteel establishment, you understand, catering to elderly ladies and retired gentlemen, several of them from Britain, as the town has a reputation as a welcoming place for such people: we have an English bookshop, several tea rooms, and a subscription library with the latest newspapers and periodicals from London. I left school in order to assist my mother in the business.”

“Your English is most remarkable, Miss Berthoud,” I said.

She bowed. “In France I received a typical education for a girl of my class and background, but I had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of an English lady who boarded with us. She took me under her wing and tutored me in your language.”

Her voice took on a more severe quality as she continued. “My life changed forever when an elderly man in clerical hat and clothes appeared at our door enquiring whether we had rooms. He rented the second floor front bedroom, with the use of the necessary facilities on that floor and freedom of the downstairs sitting room where my mother and I spent our quiet evenings, sewing or reading improving literature.”

She sighed a most affecting sigh. “From the moment Reverend Murchison entered our household, I had not a moment’s peace. At first, he dined with the other lodgers, but soon he was invited to share our supper en famille, and he ate with my mother and me every night, without fail. During meals, he did not take his eyes from me.”

Miss Berthoud leaned across and grasped my hand. “I was a caged bird, Doctor!”

I squeezed her hand in a reassuring gesture as she continued. “I must explain that in Boulogne, the English men who reside or holiday there are considered prime matches for young girls of the town; the gentlemen are usually elderly and are thought to be wealthy (at least in comparison the local ouvriers). My mother forced the man upon me. I had nowhere to go, and no funds of my own, but I knew that I could not endure being Reverend Murchison’s wife.”

“Ouvriers,” said Holmes, “labourers.”

I frowned at him.

“I represented to my mother that the reverend gentleman was of a certain age and an ungenerous disposition, and that I was but nineteen,” Miss Berthoud continued with a long sigh. “But she would hear nothing against him. She even sought occasions when she might leave us alone together, and I was obliged to endure his vile advances.”

I stood and stroked my moustache. “He did not, ah - “

Miss Berthoud pursed her lips. “Reverend Murchison did not force himself upon me, no. But in every other way he bound me to him with chains of iron. He visited our sitting room morning and afternoon, visibly annoyed if other persons, such as our neighbours, Monsieur Sublier and his wife, or other lodgers were present.”

“You made your escape,” Holmes suggested.

“With the help of that kind English lady, since Passed Over, who knew of my travails and offered her wise counsel. I replied to an advertisement in an English newspaper, offering the position of nanny to a young lady of good character who could teach French. As you were kind enough to remark, my English was good (it has improved in the two years I have worked here). My benefactor provided a letter of introduction to Lord and Lady Muntley (for that is the name of my erstwhile employers) that served in lieu of an employment reference, and I happily accepted the position on adequate terms and conditions. I fled Boulogne for my safe haven in the town of Frome, in Wiltshire.”

Miss Berthoud blinked sadly at me, and I offered her another glass of medicinal brandy, which she reluctantly accepted.

“I will not say that my life was idyllic,” she continued, “although Frome is a pleasant location, and my employers were kind, but-” She sighed. “I hope that you will not judge me too harshly, gentlemen, when I admit that I am not one of those women who dote on children; in fact, I found no charming traits whatsoever in the baby boy in my care, or in the twin girls, his older sisters.”

“Reverend Murchison sought you?” Holmes asked.

“He somehow found me out and settled at an inn in the town. He followed me whenever I left the house, even to church on Sunday. He plagued me with bouquets of meadow flowers and boxes of inferior chocolates.”

“The hound,” I said.

“Frome is a small town, gentlemen, a village really, and Reverend’s Millward’s activities were noticed.” Miss Berthoud frowned down at the clenched hands in her lap. “He wrote to me, often daily.”

“The fiend!” I cried.

“I think we might accept Reverend Murchison’s villainy as a given, Watson,” Holmes said, turning to me, “requiring no further expostulation.”

I sniffed and sipped my whisky in a decided manner.

“One day,” Miss Berthoud continued, “earlier in the summer, the youngest child of the family was out of sorts, and our physician in Frome recommended the waters of Bath. We took lodgings there.”

Miss Berthoud seemed lost in thought for a long moment.

“And?” Holmes asked sharply.

She looked up. “I met Lieutenant Lord Alfred Bartholomew by chance in a small park where he played at quoits with some of his brother officers from HMS Atropos, his armoured cruiser. She is in the second rate of that class, but Alfie and I are convinced that she is the most effectively armed of her sisters, as she has no less than five six-inch quick firers, all Armstrong guns. He is Third Officer.”

Miss Berthoud smiled at me, and Holmes tut-tutted for her to continue.

“Alfie proposed, but I hesitated. I did not care to exchange one kind of domestic slavery for another; to become an officer’s wife living at the admiral’s manor house while my husband was in China or the Cape, with my contentment dependent on the goodwill of my mother-in-law. No, no, that would never do. But my beloved convinced me that the Navy is quite different from the Army, in that wives may follow their husbands to foreign stations and set up a home, if they have sufficient means.”

She took a sip of brandy and smiled again. “Admiral Lord Charles Bartholomew is very well situated, and Alfie has high expectations.”

“Reverend Murchison discovered your attachment to Lieutenant Bartholomew?” Holmes asked.

“He did. My tormentor followed me as I wheeled Baby to the park in his perambulator. I refused to enter into communication with him, but he sent me messages through the Personal Columns in which he avers in veiled terms that he will do everything in his power to sever relations between Alfie and me. If I will not be his, he is determined that I shall have no future with another, that I shall die an old maid.”

“The brute!” I exclaimed, and Holmes gave me a reproving look.

“He is determined to ruin my happiness,” Miss Berthoud said, sobbing into her hands. “The wedding is on Saturday at ten in the morning at the church in Rowland’s Castle, a village in Hampshire close to Admiral Bartholomew’s estates. Reverend Murchison requires me to submit to him within forty-eight hours or he will write to the admiral and acquaint him with his prior claim to my hand.”

“Very well,” said Holmes, rubbing his palms together in what I thought a rather callous gesture. “I must now ask if there is anything known to Murchison that might cause unease if it were relayed to the admiral.”

“Nothing! He will make something up. He is the Devil incarnate. Alfie’s father would instantly forbid the match if he detected any taint of impropriety. Lady Bartholomew is of a frail disposition of mind. I fear for her sanity if any shadow of scandal adhered to the family name.”

“I must press you, Miss Berthoud,” Holmes said coldly. “If I am to help you in this matter, I must know everything.”

Miss Berthoud looked down and wrung her hands. “You must understand that I was very young, Reverend Murchison was very persistent, my mother entreated me, and I could conceive of no alternative to accepting his proposal.”

“You did so?” Holmes asked.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“There is written proof of your acceptance of Reverend Murchison’s offer?”

“There were certain allusions in one short note I wrote to Reverend Murchison,” she answered. “Nothing untoward, you understand, but they might be taken as a statement of assent.”

“To marriage with him?”

Miss Berthoud nodded unhappily.

Holmes stood. “We have but two days before the deadline and four before the nuptials. We must act. Watson?”

I stood.

“Perhaps you might see Miss Berthoud to her conveyance.”

I offered Miss Berthoud my arm and accompanied her downstairs and to the omnibus stop.

I returned to our sitting room, and found Holmes leaning against the mantel smoking a cigar from my packet and undoing the string on the parcel I’d seen earlier.

“An interesting lady,” I suggested, “who mixes the delicacy of her sex with an admirable streak of determination; think on the pistol.”

“She is One Cruelly Used,” Holmes exclaimed, throwing his arms up in a melodramatic gesture.

“Are you quite well, Holmes?”

“We could visit the fellow as friends of Miss Berthoud and warn him that his behaviour is intolerable,” I suggested later in the day as we rumbled towards the West End in a four-wheeler. Holmes was dressed in the uniform of a district messenger. On my knees was a picnic hamper.

“Reverend Murchison is already in a paroxysm of jealousy over the naval lieutenant,” Holmes answered. “I fear that his Scots intransigence would meet your own well-documented pugnacity and lead to fisticuffs. He boards at the Langham Hotel in Portland Square, a genteel establishment whose staff might look askance if violence (however justified) were offered to one of their guests. No, we must adopt a more circumspect approach.”

“How did you come across the correspondence in the Evening News, Holmes?” I asked.

“You know that the Personal Column is the first I turn to in every paper. The thread of messages between Ajax and One Cruelly Wronged intrigued me. She refused to countenance a face-to-face meeting with Ajax to discuss the matter between them. He suggested instead a rendezvous on the bridge with a go-between. Miss Berthoud accepted, and I intervened and sent a message to Ajax putting the meeting back and signing it - “

“One Cruelly Wronged.”

“Exactly.” Holmes sniffed. “I believe Miss Berthoud saw through Reverend Murchison’s ploy of confidential agents and knew that the reverend himself would accost her on the bridge. She was prepared to end the matter there and then.”

“Would she have shot her adversary?”

“French women are unencumbered by notions of propriety.”

I frowned.

“There was no danger, my dear fellow; everything was under my control,” Holmes said. “On my orders, the newspaper boy at the Palace contacted a local band of pickpockets and gave them a commission to dip the lady’s reticule as she stepped onto the bridge.” He smiled. “Two hours later, the same band accosted a gentleman carrying a folded Evening News and wearing a carnation buttonhole,” Holmes continued. “The newspaper boy delivered a parcel early this morning in exchange for twelve-and-six from our contingency fund, plus omnibus fare and refreshments.”

Holmes displayed a silver pocket watch, a spectacle case, an empty wallet, a bill for accommodation at the Langham Hotel at the clergy rate, and an unopened, unstamped letter addressed to Admiral Bartholomew, care of the Railway Hotel, Rowland’s Castle, Hampshire.

“So, we not only have the reverend’s address, we have the letter he intended to give to Miss Berthoud to show that he was in earnest.” Holmes slit the envelope open with a pocket knife.

“I say, old man, you can’t just - “

“The envelope is not franked; it is unprotected by law.”

I muttered something about the inviolability of private property while Holmes held the letter to the light from the cab window. He offered it to me, but I waved it away.

He shrugged. “It is as vile as we might expect. Miss Berthoud, however circumspect she has been with the truth, is under threat from this man.”

“Will Reverend Murchison not take precautions after his things were stolen?”

“No, no,” Holmes answered. “He was prey to a band of ragamuffins who will throw the letter away, take the cash, and sell the empty wallet, spectacles and watch.”

The cab turned off Regent Street and halted in Portland Place “We must return Reverend Murchison’s possessions,” I said. “And pray that no more contingencies occur this month.”

We stepped down from the cab, and I sat on a bench under a tall plane tree just across from the grand entrance to the Langham Hotel.

“I expected you to infiltrate the hotel in the guise of an aged clergyman,” I said as I peered into the hamper, but Holmes was already out of earshot and halfway to the cab stand on the corner. I poured myself a cup of wine and sipped it as I watched Holmes chatting with the drivers in his guise as district messenger. He nodded farewell to them and climbed the steps to the hotel entrance.

“The task before us may be divided into several stages,” Holmes said when he returned to the bench some minutes later. “The first is already accomplished: we have the address and room number of our mark and, after a moderate distribution of silver to the cab stand and the hotel door and boot boys, we will soon note his routines. The second stage is the letter he threatens to send to the groom’s father and how we may prevent it reaching its recipient.”

Holmes accepted a chicken leg and a cup of wine. “Word from the cab drivers is that the reverend gentleman is of a choleric disposition, prefers to travel by omnibus, and frequents Madame La Rout’s establishment in Jermyn Street.”

I heaved myself up. “And the hound has the effrontery to pursue Miss Berthoud, despite her clear revulsion. I should take a horsewhip to him, reverend or no. He is a disgrace to the Kirk and, and - “

Holmes handed me an apple. “Calm, old man. Let us plan our dispositions.”

I subsided onto the bench.

“The letter, then,” Holmes said. “According to the door boy, Reverend Murchison is a prolific letter writer. He drops a bundle of envelopes into that letter box before dinner each evening.” Holmes indicated an iron post box on the pavement a few yards from the hotel entrance. “He uses no other.”

“He does not employ the hotel mail service?” I asked.

Holmes smiled. “Reverend Murchison is clearly a man of frugal habits. If he posts the letters himself, he saves a tip.”

“Merely dipping the letter from his pocket will not answer,” I said, “as Reverend Murchison will simply write another letter and take better care when he posts it. What other measures may we adopt?”

Holmes considered. “Lead line and plumb, with tar or glue on the plumb bob, dropped into the letter box slit just after he posts the envelope to fish it out. Or fit a bag inside the slit. Or we can just set fire to the letters. Do you want the last boiled egg?”

I listened to Holmes’s suggestions with mounting unease. “Set fire to Her Majesty’s mails! I say, Holmes.”

He shrugged. “Very well. According to the cab drivers, the postman has no less than seven mouths to feed on his wage, and he moonlights as a knocker upper.”

“I refuse to countenance bribery of an official of the Crown,” I said stiffly. “You speak of criminal activity with the insouciance of a Hoxted costermonger.”

“Perhaps you could offer a more benign solution to our problem, Doctor?” Holmes said, taking the last boiled egg. “Miss Bertaud’s deadline expires at midnight tonight.”

We returned to Portland Place at eleven-thirty, and I sat in a four-wheeler cab parked across the road from the hotel. Holmes, now in the guise of a London postman, was opposite me.

He smiled. “Three-and-six to a specialist firm in Lambeth for rent of the uniform and post box key.”

“The expenses in this case are mounting,” I said, noting the rental cost on my shirt cuff.

At two minutes to midnight, the hotel door opened and a stooped, elderly man with a thick walrus moustache emerged and paused at the top of the steps, peering around myopically and sniffing the air. He wore clerical weeds and a flat vicar’s hat and carried an umbrella. Seemingly satisfied with the balmy weather, he strode down the steps to the pavement, marched to the letter box, and without a moment’s hesitation slipped an envelope inside. He turned and sauntered back to the hotel entrance, humming a tune and with his umbrella clicking rhythmically on the steps.

“Pinafore,” I murmured, frowning. “Murchison looks nothing like me.”

Holmes put his finger to his lips as we watched Reverend Murchison re-enter the hotel lobby. Holmes instantly leapt from the cab, raced to the post box and unlocked it with his key.

I glanced down at my watch. We had met the regular postman, Mr. Willis, at his local public house earlier in the evening before he started his round. He had blankly failed to comprehend the hints and innuendos that Holmes employed, and Holmes did not dare make a plain offer in case the man informed the authorities. We had fallen back on an alternative plan which required Holmes to retrieve the letter before Willis collected the mail at midnight.

I stiffened as Holmes, kneeling beside the post box, struck a match, but he stood, relocked the box, hurried across to the cab and leapt inside just as a tricycle turned into the square. It stopped beside the post box and Willis emptied the post into his sack.

Holmes tapped on the cab roof with his stick and we set off for home.

“I thought for a moment you were going to set fire to the letters,” I said with a soft chuckle.

“I would not dream of interfering with Her Majesty’s mails,” Holmes answered.

I frowned.

“Reverend Murchison will expect his letter to arrive at the admiral’s villa in Hampshire tomorrow,” Holmes continued. “The reply, probably by telegraph or express letter, should reach him no later than Friday afternoon, the day before the wedding. If Murchison does not receive that reply, he will gird his financial loins and spring for a telegram.”

“He will not use the Langham Hotel telephone service?”

“Too expensive.” Holmes smiled. “And I checked the directory. Admiral Bartholomew does not possess a telephone.”

We arrived back at Baker Street and settled in our sitting room.

“Take down Bradshaw would you, old man?” Holmes requested. “I want a Portsmouth train stopping at Rowland’s Castle not later than nine-thirty on Saturday morning. That gives Murchison time to have his breakfast (included in his room charge and not to be missed by our frugal friend), take a ‘bus to Waterloo and get to Rowland’s Castle before the wedding starts at ten.”

Holmes sat at his writing table, took a sheet of notepaper from an envelope, dipped his pen and wrote in silence for a few moments.

He looked up and handed me the note. “I have made an appointment for Reverend Murchison to meet Admiral Bartholomew on the morning of the wedding - that will appeal to the reverend’s sense of drama. He will relish his power to destroy the happiness of Miss Berthoud and her naval swain.”

“This is The Railway Hotel, Rowland’s Castle notepaper, Holmes.”

“A touch of authenticity courtesy of Wiggins’ Uncle Silas, confidential printer, and purveyor of slush paper to the Quality at tuppence a sheet.”

I made a note.

We were on our bench opposite the Langham at six-thirty on Saturday morning.

“Reverend Murchison has checked out,” said Holmes. “And, here he is, curtly spurning the offer of a porter to carry his carpet bag and stalking head down towards the omnibus stop.”

“He is not as sprightly as he was two nights ago,” I remarked as we stood and picked up our bags. “He seems to be in a gruff mood.”

“I want Reverend Murchison in a lather,” Holmes said, rubbing his hands together. “I did not destroy his letter to Admiral Bartholomew, I merely crossed out the address and marked the envelope ‘return to sender’. Oddly, when the letter was returned to the Langham in yesterday’s morning post, the admiral’s reply came in the same delivery. Reverend Murchison has had a confused night. Come, we will go on ahead to Waterloo by cab.”

“What if he takes a Portsmouth train from Victoria Station?” I asked as we crossed the square to the stand.

“He will not. That service does not stop at Rowland’s Castle. He would have to buy a separate ticket from Portsmouth and incur more expense. No, no, we shall wait for him at Waterloo.”

Holmes purchased our tickets at the kiosk in Waterloo Station and instantly disappeared into the crowd. I looked about me and started as Reverend Murchison strode purposefully from the arched exit from the omnibus stands, bought a second-class ticket at the kiosk, and headed towards the Departures Board.

Holmes reappeared beside me dressed as a railway porter.

“Holmes!” I cried. “He is here. What now?”

He passed me a ticket. “Stick precisely to my plan, of course.”

I stalked my prey as he squinted up at the Departures Board and at the station clock hanging from the roof above us.

“What platform for the eight-oh-four to Portsmouth?” I called across Reverend Murchison to Holmes lounging against a porter’s trolley.

“Moved to platform seven, sir,” Holmes answered.

“Stopping at Rowland’s Castle?” Reverend Murchison asked in a gruff tone tinged with Scots.

“Number seven, sir. You’ll have to hurry.”

Reverend Murchison reached towards his empty watch pocket and frowned. “I will do no such thing. I have thirty minutes or more.”

Holmes pulled out a brass pocket watch and checked it with the clock above us. “Five or less, sir. It’s just gone eight.”

“My watch says eight and a bit,” I said truthfully. “We’ll have to run!” I hefted my Gladstone bag and raced towards Platform Seven with Reverend Murchison grumbling at my heels.

A group of schoolboys milled about the entrance to the platform with a harassed looking master attempting to bring them to order. I pushed through them and waved my ticket at the attendant guarding the platform entrance. A line of a dozen or so carriages stood behind him with the engine in front hissing and puffing out billows of steam. The attendant glanced at my ticket and indicated with a jerk of his head that I and my clerical companion might proceed.

“Have I time to get a paper?” I asked.

“You have not, sir. She’s away any moment.”

“Come now, boys,” the teacher cried in a shrill voice. “You heard the man, you must come along. The train is leaving.”

The gate attendant chuckled. “He’ll never get that lot on; he’s herding cats.”

Reverend Murchison and I pushed through the mass of boys, who seemed to take delight in obstructing us. I lost my stick in the commotion, which was probably just as well as I would have been sorely tempted to use it on the brats. I saw that Reverend Murchison’s hat was askew and his umbrella had become unfurled.

At a harsh cry from the teacher, the boys came instantly to attention, and I was able to struggle through to clear ground on the platform beyond with Reverend Murchison close behind, rolling up his umbrella.

“We must make haste,” I cried, pointing to the guard with his flags in his hand marching along the side of the train and closing the last few doors. Reverend Murchison and I raced behind a gentleman in a top hat and overcoat also running for the train. We three jumped through the first open door, which the guard slammed behind us. The reverend and I sat on either side of the compartment, he opposite the gentleman, who snapped open his Times and disappeared behind it.

Reverend Murchison nevertheless addressed him, and my heart sank.

“Excuse me, sir, this is the eight-oh-four to Portsmouth, I collect?”

A shrill whistle sounded and the train jerked into motion. The man put down his paper, stood and smiled at me. “Come, my dear fellow.”

Holmes opened the door and we stepped out onto the platform. I closed the door behind us. The train picked up speed, and as it left the station and curved west, a walrus-moustached face squinted from the window of our compartment.

The harassed schoolmaster came up to Holmes with his charges.

“A shilling each boy,” Holmes murmured in my ear, “and three bob for the cat herder.”

I fumbled in my waistcoat for the necessary coins, paid the master and boys and glared down at one schoolboy who held out my stick.

“Reverend Murchison may have some difficulty with the guard before he arrives in Exeter,” Holmes remarked.

“Exeter!” I exclaimed.

“He is on the seven-thirty-eight non-stop to Exeter without his watch and spectacles and with my Times and the wrong ticket.” Holmes smiled. “He might go on to the coast in this fine weather.”

“I trust you will post his things back to him, or hand them in at the Lost and Found.”

“I will post them. I want him to know that Miss Berthoud (soon to be Mrs. Bartholomew) has friends.”

I threw my Exeter ticket into a bin, took out my watch and corrected the time. “Where did you find such brats, Holmes? Are they the Crystal Palace gang?”

“No, no. I applied to the nearest Doctor Barnado’s Home and borrowed a dozen of their inmates. Before they became Barnado’s cherubs, the boys were street Arabs; I am happy to see they have not lost their skills.”

I took out my pencil and made a note of our expenses on my shirt cuff, tut-tutting to myself.

Holmes took my arm. “Come, we have twenty minutes before the Portsmouth train.” He indicated the railwayman’s uniform he wore under his coat. “I must change, and then let us have a celebratory coffee.”

I had a sudden thought. “But will Reverend Murchison not pull the communication cord, at the next station and stop the train?”

“And incur a hefty fine?”

Rowland’s Castle was a picturesque village nestled around a green, with a Railway Hotel and a church, where I was roped in to give Miss Berthoud away during a short and very simple service. After the requisite photographs at the lynch gate, the groom, Lieutenant Bartholomew, having unaccountably disappeared, I took it upon myself to take the bride’s arm and lead the wedding party across the green, where wickets were being set up for a cricket match, to the hotel.

We joined Holmes in a pleasant room adjoining the bar, and the newly minted Mrs. Bartholomew took glasses of Champagne from a waiter and handed one each to Holmes and to me. I proposed a toast to the happy pair, which Mrs. Bartholomew acknowledged with a gracious bow. “I cannot thank you gentlemen enough,” she said, tears glistening in her eyes. “I should have been lost without you.”

“What are your plans?” I asked.

She smiled as she dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and regained her composure. “Alfie and I leave immediately on the mail packet for our honeymoon in Grenoble, then to Gibraltar and our new life.”

“Grenoble?” Holmes asked in a musing tone. “Not Paris? I thought you might like to revisit your old haunts. The Moulin Rouge is very entertaining, or so I am told.”

Mrs. Bartholomew regarded Holmes through narrowed eyes.

“Of course, you will want to put Daisy behind you,” Holmes continued. He lifted his glass again. “To a fresh start for you with Lieutenant Lord Alfred Bartholomew and a very happy life together.”

Holmes bowed and left us, passing through the front door and onto the village green.

I blinked at Mrs. Bartholomew.

“I will indeed start anew with Alfie,” she said stiffly. She considered for a moment, smiled and continued in an accent more reminiscent of Balham than Boulogne. “And I suppose I owe you the truth, Doctor, now that things are all hunky dory, as they say. I met my beloved in Paris, not Bath.” She giggled. “Not at the Moulin Rouge neither. No, no, my little establishment was not at that level, ‘though we had a show.”

Mrs. Bartholomew smiled up at me. “Poses plastiques et tableaux vivants. Alfie visited the house with some other officers. They took a girl each upstairs and left, but Alfie stayed watching the show, and he called me to his table.”

She frowned and looked around the room. “Where is he?” She turned to me. “Do you have a cigarette, Doctor?”

I opened my case with a cold gesture and Mrs. Bartholomew took a cigarette and lit it with a match from a passing waiter. “Alfie was polite and handsome, and he wanted to take me out for supper.”

She blew out a long stream of smoke. “He saw me home to my lodgings after, with no ‘how’s your father’ expected. On the third evening, he proposed, not only marriage, but a cycling trip through the Camargue. I accepted.”

“You went on holiday alone and unchaperoned with a man you had known a bare three days?” I asked.

Mrs. Bartholomew laid a hand on my arm. “What a darling you are, Doctor. Alfie was a perfect English gentleman. You remind me of him.”

I smoothed my moustache.

“After a very jolly holiday, he brought me here to London and set me up at a ladies hotel. I provided myself with a suitable wardrobe, and I met Admiral Bartholomew and his dear, but delicate wife at their London home.”

She squeezed my arm. “What I told you of Reverend Murchison’s unwelcome attentions was true, Doctor. The wretch bombarded me with billets-doux in Paris, wouldn’t take non for an answer, and followed me to England. What better way to get him off my back than to persuade the great private detective, Sherlock Holmes, to deal with him? Your stories in the Strand Magazine gave me the idea of hooking Mr. Holmes by insisting that Murchison only contact me through the Personals.”

She chuckled. “One Cruelly Used! Ha!” She frowned again. “Where is Alfie? He should be with me, the attentive husband and all.” She leaned towards me. “He’s been a might skittish today. I suppose he was afraid of a scandal if Murchison turned up. Men are such cowards. They outrage every law of the world and are afraid of the world’s tongue.”

I sniffed and looked away.

“Oh, Doctor, do not judge me. You don’t know what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, sniffed at!”

Mrs. Bartholomew took a silk handkerchief from the sleeve of her bridal dress and blew her nose. “One pays for one’s sin, and then one pays again, and all one’s life one pays. But let that pass.”

“If Mr. Holmes had not turned up,” I asked. “Would you have used your pistol?”

Mrs. Bartholomew looked around with a moue of annoyance. Guests, mostly female, were in small clusters around the room, looking rather nonplussed. “Where the devil has the boy got to?”

I found Holmes on the village green in a deckchair under an umbrella, drinking a pint of ale and watching the cricket match. “Should we not meet the groom and family?” I asked.

Holmes waved me to a chair beside him and ordered a pint of ale from a boy in sailor suit and a bright scarf.

I settled back in my chair. The afternoon was warm, mellowed by a cooling breeze that brought the smell of new mown grass and the scents of spring flowers across the green. There was a thwack of leather on willow, and the ball arched across the cloudless sky and was deftly caught by an elderly gentleman in cover.

“I should have expected a more Naval wedding; an arch of cutlasses and so on,” I said as we applauded.

Holmes chuckled. “What a minx it is, Watson.”

The boy arrived with my beer, and I paid him, took a sip of deliciously refreshing ale, and frowned. “Miss Berthoud, I mean Mrs. Bartholomew? Have we met her before? Who is this Daisy?”

“You mentioned once that you saw Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windemere’s Fan a few years ago.”

I shrugged. “In ’92, if I recall, while you were gadding about Asia. A lot of high flown, airy nonsense, I thought. Very clever, of course, but not my cup of tea.”

“Our Daisy Watts was not on the boards that night, but she was in the wings as understudy for the part of Rosalie, the maid. I saw Daisy play the role of Lady Windermere at a private performance in the residence of the Apostolic Nuncio in Montpellier in ‘94.”

“Watts?”

“An East End costermonger family of ancient lineage.”

“Not French?”

Holmes laughed. “The taste in the bordellos in Paris, and, I dare say, Boulogne and Montpellier, is for English roses, or Daisies in this case. She crossed the Channel to try her chances, picking up a smattering of the language and the sultry accent she deployed against us. I recognized her purple prose as shadows of passages from the Wilde play, snipped and fitted for her new role as One Cruelly Wronged.”

I blinked at my friend, and a new and unpleasant thought struck me. “But what of the wedding, Holmes? Have we not set the young officer up for a terrible fall when he discovers Daisy’s true identity?”

He smiled. “You wanted to meet the groom, old chap? There he is.”

A lithe young man in cricket whites with a full, imperial beard raced towards his opponent at the far wicket, swung his arm in a blur of motion and let the ball loose. It bounced just before the feet of the batsman, but he was able to deflect it, with a satisfying thwack, across the green towards the church.

“Well played, sir!” I cried. “Both of you, actually.”

I turned to Holmes and frowned. “But I just gave Daisy Watts away under the name of Miss Berthoud! Can that marriage be valid? And isn’t her impersonation highly illegal and my involvement culpable?”

“Do not fret, my dear fellow; few things in life are what they seem. You were involved in a form of words, a charade for the admiral and his wife. The legal wedding took place sub rosa at dawn this morning in the Library of the Railway Hotel. It was presided over by the chaplain from young Bartholomew’s ship and attended by his brother officers.”

“How did you - oh, the boot boy.”

Holmes smiled. “The only servant up at the time. He was bribed to silence and commandeered to serve the Navy rum in which the officers toasted the happy pair. I re-bribed him to paint the scene in his own words; the ceremony was, by his account, very affecting.”

Holmes reached into his pocket and waved a cheque at me. “On Hoare’s in the Strand and for a hundred guineas. Lieutenant Bartholomew buttonholed me in the bar of the hotel before the church wedding and congratulated me on keeping Murchison away (he mentioned that he had a horsewhip handy if the reverend had turned up). Ha! Daisy’s husband is not quite as easily gulled as she thinks.”

Holmes pocketed the cheque. “And we dine at the Amati’s tonight.”

Another crack came from the cricket field and the bails of the nearer batsman’s wicket flew apart. Lieutenant Bartholomew waved a languid hand in acknowledgement of the congratulations of his teammates and the crowd’s applause. He bowed to the elderly gentleman fielding in cover.

“Admiral Bartholomew,” Holmes said. He lifted his glass. “Any man who can forsake his bride on her wedding day to play a taut game of cricket deserves a salute from us. I very much doubt that Daisy knows what she’s taken on, but let us wish them both the greatest happiness.”

I raised my glass. “The Navy, Holmes!”

“And Daisy,” he answered.