Chapter 15

I lay in bed for a long time, unable to sleep, thinking about the sordid business of body snatching. Obviously, the Anatomy Act had done nothing to better or cheapen medical training. There was a shortage of bodies and teaching hospitals with a focus on dissection needs must equal corpses being provided somehow... by mortuaries or workhouses or gaols. And if that wasn’t enough... and if coroners like the wrongly reputed Hussey, however well-intentioned he might be, stepped in to thwart relatives from selling bodies and refused to let every corpse that came through the Radcliffe Infirmary be carted off prematurely, then this illegal trade would continue.

Oxford had remained a limited provincial medical school, particularly in development of clinical medicine. So bodies were even more sorely needed. And so, this Professor, this Danford Hopgood would have all the more difficult time obtaining corpses for his ‘research.’ I needed to talk to Wiggins. I needed to ask him to accompany me to meet Sherlock and I wanted to find out everything he knew about this degenerate, repugnant trade.

The following morning, a page called upon us during breakfast with a message from Jonathan that he would send a carriage for me to take me to The Criterion for our luncheon. I asked the page to relate to Jonathan that I needed no carriage; I would walk.

After he left, I set out for St. Paul’s where I so often went to contemplate things. If I desired a chaperone on my trek to the Four Swans and if I wanted to speak with Wiggins, first I had to find him. How did Sherlock contact him? Logical as I thought myself to be, it was worth trying to dissect Sherlock’s methods.

I arrived at the cathedral around ten. How often I had come here to pray for guidance or to ask that the burden of my affection for Sherlock Holmes be lifted.

As always, I marvelled at St. Paul’s exterior, taking in her extreme beauty... a mighty temple of colossal proportions, especially the front view at Ludgate Bill. The façade, a pediment, was sustained by a double colonnade and flanked by two towers. Once there had been Paul’s Cross where people preached sermons and politics mixed with religion in a way that had mostly passed. Now a statue of Queen Anne stood where the cross once was.

I entered the door to the left of the northern portico. Only once had I ascended to the top of the dome so I could look down on the nave and the transept, the fresco with depictions of the life of the patron saint. Looking down from the grandeur of the dome, I had often wondered how these works could be accomplished from that dizzying height. A light gallery encircles the top of the dome some five hundred steps upward, and from there one could see all of London, its great avenues, its patches of green, the river winding its way and the bridges spanning it with steamers and wherries and sailing vessels making their way to where I always wondered. My feelings were always strangely mingled. Sometimes I longed to leave England, to immerse myself in other cultures, to venture, as Victor had, to a far off place like India. But if I did, would I miss my relatives? Would I miss my parents, Uncle Ormond and Aunt Susan? This church? Would I long to still be wandering the streets with Sherlock - Farrington and Holburn, Oxford? And Fleet, the bustling lane of the offices of Punch and The Standard and The Daily Telegraph?

I sat down in a pew and closed my eyes. I forced myself to retrace the many moments when I sat quietly spellbound, listening to Sherlock. He knew he was special and was immodest about the fact. He’d once said that no one would ever bring to a case the amount of study and talent that he would. I believed it was in part due to the fact that he played the game for the game’s sake, rather than out of any deep concern for society. He was not totally deficient in human sympathy but oh, there were times when he seemed to be. He loved to push beyond the mundane, to put himself in peril if need be to pursue his goal - defeating criminals, solving the crimes. The thrill of the chase was as important, perhaps more exciting, than ultimately solving it. He could be like a racehorse, driven round the track, nostrils flaring, heart thumping, hooves thundering, absolutely and single-mindedly focused on the matter at hand. For him that was solving the unsolvable, to the point of deafness and blindness to everything else. If anything disturbed Sherlock, it was the possibility that a clue might have slipped by him or been dismissed as unimportant. He had told me repeatedly to discard distraction from my life, including romantic notions as he had worked so hard to do, and yet he kept his mind open to extraordinary possibilities, to look at a problem from many different angles.

He had asked me once, when we were sitting by the river during his holiday at Victor Trevor’s home, “Mary’s father has three daughters. The oldest is named April. The next oldest is May. The youngest is named what?”

I had been reading and occasionally watching the white clouds slowly snake their way across the bluest of skies. I mumbled ‘June.”

He had laughed. “You are not paying attention. Though you are trying to think in a logical way, you are not really listening. Mary is one of three daughters. Her sisters are April and May. The third must be, therefore, named Mary.”

I believe I’d thrown my book at him.

Though he was arrogant enough that he rarely admitted a mistake, he counselled that we must all learn from our mistakes and those of others. He would forgive one mistake but certainly no more than that.

He never guessed. He accumulated evidence and data. He asked the right questions. He evaluated and formed a hypothesis and then reached a conclusion. He constantly worked on improving his inductive skills.

After a time, resolved that dissecting Sherlock’s brain - what little I knew of it - would not lead me to Wiggins or Rattle or Ollie or Scratch or any of Sherlock’s other young cohorts, I sighed, stood up and muttered to myself, “This is getting me nowhere.” None of the things I’d learned from Sherlock were going to help me find one homeless boy in a city of thousands.

As I emerged, I saw a young girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age, with loose, dirty brown curls and eyes like an owl’s. She wore a long, grey tattered skirt and a short gown, something one would expect to see on a washerwoman decades ago. It was T-shaped with a flared hem, the kind of garment that might be suitable for physical labor. It was made of corded linen, and was long ago off-white but now discolored with age that was more obvious against her pasty skin. It had been patched many times, especially along the sleeves and beneath the arms, with the tiny stitches of a skilled and frugal hand. Her battered boots were dusty. She walked up to me and said, “I’m ‘ere t’say Wiggins’ll fetch yer ‘round six to take yer to Sherlock.”

“What? Who are you?”

“Ivy. Ivy Green.”

“Well, Ivy, how did you find me?”

“Wiggins says that Mr. ‘olmes says you come ‘ere sometimes to think. So’s I followed and waited fer yer t’ be done prayin’.”

“Wiggins said that, did he?”

She nodded.

“And you’ll go back to Master Wiggins to confirm that you found me then.”

She nodded again.

“And what will you get for your trouble?”

Now she shrugged and said, “Maybe a shilling. Mr. ‘olmes will see to it.”

Laughing, I gave her a shilling from my pocket and said, “You deserve this and more. Do tell Archie - I mean, Wiggins, I look forward to seeing him then. At my home?”

Again, Ivy nodded.

“All right then. Thank you, Ivy.”

Wide-eyed, she said, “That’s a fine scarf, Miss. And your cape...”

“Ivy, why don’t you come with Wiggins tonight and we’ll give you a decent supper?”

I wanted to take her straightaway to a shop to buy her clothing as well, but she fidgeted as if she could not wait to get on with her day. “No, Miss. I’ll be off then.”

Before I could object, she turned and ran up Fleet Street.

Well, so much for comprehending Sherlock Holmes or any of his little friends, I thought.