7
Mary Watson Takes a Hand

Charlotte, standing by her apple tree on a hot afternoon in August, picked an apple and threw it to Mary Watson, who was sitting barefoot on the grass in a black dress, fanning herself with a large black hat. Her black shoes and stockings lay beside her on the lawn. Mary caught the apple and bit into it.

It had been six weeks since they had last met. During that time Charlotte had been at Glamis, while Mary had enjoyed a month with her John at Lake Lucerne. However, for the past fortnight Dr Watson had been incommunicado in a remote part of Wales on a case with Sherlock Holmes, and during that time his fierce aunt had died. Mary, unable to inform her husband of this sad fact, had been forced to attend the funeral at Deal alone. Having returned to Victoria station, again alone, she had felt so discouraged at the idea of reentering her lonely house that she had on impulse taken an omnibus to Chelsea, much hoping her friend Charlotte would have returned from Scotland. To her relief she found Charlotte in the garden. Mrs Digby was in the kitchen, making early preparation for a dinner that evening. Betsey was invisible, though audible, for she was in Charlotte’s laboratory, singing as she developed some photographs.

‘I think she might be a better photographic assistant than maid,’ Charlotte observed as Betsey carolled out a popular song about being a bird in a gilded cage.

‘She would not need to be a very good photographic assistant to manage that,’ Mary observed tartly.

Then Charlotte threw her the apple and said, ‘It must have been a painful day for you.’

‘John’s aunt was not a woman one could love wholeheartedly,’ Mary said. ‘I’m afraid I’m more upset about John’s disappearing just before she died, leaving me to go alone to the funeral. Any grief I might have felt at first for John’s aunt was, I must confess, reduced when I discovered in Deal that she had left all her worldly goods to John, except for one item, which was left to me.’

‘And that was?’ prompted Charlotte.

‘Her parrot.’

Charlotte roared with laughter. ‘You didn’t bring it back with you on the train?’

‘It’s coming shortly,’ Mary said without pleasure.

‘Does it swear?’ called Betsey from the darkroom.

‘No. It says the Lord’s Prayer over and over again,’ Mary said gloomily. ‘And the Collect, and the Twenty-third Psalm – that’s its repertoire. It’s tantamount to blasphemy, I think. Well, tell me about Scotland. And what are you doing now?’

‘Scotland,’ Charlotte said vaguely. ‘It was delightful – then I was unable to resist the temptation to do some investigation in the mildest possible way. My hostess became a little frosty as a result. I left, feeling less than welcome. Sherlock got to hear of all this and is also a little cross with me. Let us say no more of Scotland.’

‘Are you still adhering to your vow to abandon detection?’

‘Yes. I continue to work on the practical uses of science in the investigation of crime. I’m putting together a small, portable case containing all the requirements of a scientific detective. There is powder, for fingerprints. There are glass jars with stoppers in which to place small items found at the scenes of crimes. There’s a camera and some other things. The bag is rather heavy, but it would be a great convenience to a detective to have all the necessary equipment to hand when rushing to a crime. Rather like a doctor’s medical bag. Lestrade has given it a cautious welcome. The trouble with the police force is that they half resent a scientific approach. Science minimises the importance of individual policemen in the detection of crime; it makes crime less personal, less a matter of one band of men, the police, pitted against another, the perpetrators of crime. And no investigator makes a reputation for heroism by using scientific techniques. But come and look – I’ll show you my bag.’

It was a green crocodile-skin valise, some two feet long and two feet deep, fitted with sections and pockets for small items. Charlotte explained how to discover fingerprints by the use of a magnifying glass, and how hairs, threads or other items left behind after a crime could be picked up and preserved, uncontaminated, in the small jars. She showed Mary how to examine a hair under a microscope, took her thumbprint by pressing her thumb on to an ink pad, then on to a piece of paper so that an impression was left. Betsey stood by in a smock, witnessing all this, then, accompanied by the black cat, who had been her companion in the laboratory, returned to the house to help with the preparations for dinner.

Just after Betsey had gone back to the kitchen, as Charlotte was explaining to Mary the use of the camera in forensic work, a tall man came up the garden.

‘Queen’s messenger,’ he said briefly, and handed Charlotte a letter, fixed at the back with a red seal.

Mary watched Charlotte, evidently somewhat astonished, break the seal and read the letter. She perused the page of heavy type, which was signed at the bottom. Then she exclaimed, ‘And damn you, Mr Gladstone. We shall see about that.’ Whereupon she entered her laboratory, lit a bunsen burner on her workbench, set fire to the letter and flung the burning page into the garden.

Mary asked no question about all this. When Charlotte sent Betsey off in a cab to the post office with a telegram, evidently an urgent one, she again asked no questions. Dinner, eaten in the garden, was a pleasant meal, the guests being a professor from Harvard and a rather silent Kravonian composer, but Mary detected an uncharacteristic agitation in her friend. Later the composer played some of his own work on Charlotte’s piano while they sewed. ‘Rather advanced,’ was her silent comment as she deftly smocked a small white garment for her coming baby. After the guests had gone she enquired if anything was troubling Charlotte.

‘Thank you, Mary,’ Charlotte responded. ‘I’m sorry if my mood is not good. I shall have to explain several things to you in a week or so, I expect. But for the time being …’

‘Of course, my dear,’ said Mary placidly. She rose to her feet. ‘I’d better go now. I have a sense I shall be taking delivery of a parrot quite early in the morning. I don’t think the gentleman taking care of it at present wishes to have it in his possession any longer than he needs to.’

Charlotte smiled. ‘Let me visit you tomorrow. I want to see this unwelcome legacy for myself.’

*

Charlotte was, however, detained next day. She had been called to the scene of the murder of a peer, Lord Thursby, who had been found dead in what the House of Lords calls ‘the other place’, tied, in fact, into the chair normally occupied by the Speaker of the House of Commons. His throat had been cut.

The body having been discovered at seven o’clock in the morning, Charlotte was hastily summoned by Lestrade, now a convert to her use of photography at the scenes of crime. She was to take photographs before the body was removed. Though the House was not in session it would have been dreadful to leave the corpse there any longer than necessary.

Lestrade told her when she arrived, ‘We’re trying to find Sherlock, so that he can hurry here; but he seems to be somewhere in Wales.’

Charlotte propped up her tripod in a position suitable to photograph the body, and replied, ‘I’ll do what I can in case you can’t track him down. This isn’t a pretty sight, Jules.’ The strong, thickset body of the black-moustached Thursby, a man in his forties, was sagging in the great chair at the end of the long chamber. His head lolled forward. His shirt-front was covered in blood. He was wearing evening dress.

‘Do you want me to go round collecting up any clues which might help?’ Charlotte asked. ‘This room is full of policemen, and shortly you’ll be removing the body – there’ll be a good deal of disturbance. It might be better to find and preserve what evidence I can now. I can hand the cigar ash (which I see there by the front government bench) or anything else which might prove relevant to Sherlock when he arrives.’

‘A good idea,’ Lestrade said. Charlotte, with a magnifying glass, began to crawl over the carpet of the House. With tweezers or with a tiny doll’s house dustpan and brush, she collected various items, putting them into small glass jars which she stoppered and labelled. Bystanding policemen watched this operation with curiosity and some scepticism.

‘No question of suicide, I suppose?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Very little – judging by the angle of the cuts. And the event did not occur here,’ Lestrade told her.

‘Any suspects?’ she asked.

‘Too many – we’re working on it, Miss Holmes,’ Lestrade responded, fascinated by the sight of Charlotte’s behind as she crawled up to the well-polished shoes of the late Lord Thursby. She pulled his foot and, with a small sharp knife, took a sample from the bottom of his shoe.

‘There are some damp footprints, not Thursby’s, leading to this chair. But, Jules, you are right. The murder, if it was murder, was not done in here.’

She straightened up. ‘That’s all, I think. I’ll go back and develop the photographs. Do you want me to start work on the other specimens, Jules, or shall I leave them to Sherlock?’

Lestrade hesitated. ‘Let me tell you that when I see whether we can find him.’ He paused, then said awkwardly, ‘Charlotte – Miss Holmes – I hope you don’t feel I’m making use of you …’

‘Then throwing me away like a sucked orange, Jules?’ Charlotte enquired merrily. ‘No, my dear. I’m only too glad to help. And for the rest – I have other things on my mind. I would be just as glad not to help with this affair of Lord Thursby. For one thing, I imagine questioning those with a grudge against him could be long and weary work. Still,’ she said, regarding the corpse, ‘he may have had many faults, but what a dreadful way to die.’ And with that she put her hands intrepidly into the pockets of the corpse and began to pull out the contents, placing the items in separate envelopes and labelling each. Lestrade looked on, puzzled but appreciative.

The obituarists had difficulty in writing kindly about Mortimer, the late, eighth, Lord Thursby. He had begun his career as a second son, but a riding accident of the hushed-up variety had killed his older brother, making him the heir. This accident took place on the hunting field, when Gerald, the older brother, had been about to jump a hedge from one field to another. Mortimer, then aged nineteen, was hard behind. There was private talk among the witnesses of a deliberate jostling of Gerald’s horse by Mortimer, the result being a fouled jump, a messy landing in the ditch beyond the hedge, and two broken necks, those of the horse and Gerald. Six months later his father died, and Mortimer inherited the title.

Gerald left a young grieving widow. Not two years later, after the manner of Richard II, Thursby married his brother’s beautiful widow, Alice, who bore him two sons in two years, and then left him, returning to the house of her father, a clergyman in Wales. There was more scandal, when Thursby refused to allow her to see her children, even on their birthdays, or provide any money for her support. A mere twenty-three now, with the death of his brother and the alienation of his wife behind him, Thursby, leaving his children behind in the care of servants, embarked on a series of journeys, returning rarely to Britain.

Five years later, his estranged wife Alice unwisely fell in love with a neighbour and conceived a child by him. She pleaded with her husband for a divorce so that she could remarry – by law she could not divorce him for adultery, though he could divorce her on those grounds. She was prepared to face this in order to marry the father of her child, but Thursby refused. Alice, to spare her clergyman father shame, drowned herself in a river.

Up to this point the scandals surrounding Thursby had involved only his private life and were known only to a small circle. He was still living abroad when another scandal broke out, this time publicly. There had been many complaints about poor safety conditions in the Yorkshire coalfields which had made the Thursbys wealthy. These complaints had been ignored. A strike followed, which Lord Thursby sat out in Buenos Aires until the men were forced by want to return to work. Finally the deteriorated condition of the pit props led to the cave-in of a tunnel and subsequent flooding, causing the deaths of twenty-seven pitmen. The coroner, a local man dependent on the powerful Thursbys, declared the deaths to have been accidental, but the tragedy was so public and the small community round the pit so angry that a question was asked in Parliament and a commission set up to examine the facts. Thursby was declared guilty of negligence and forced to pay compensation to the dead men’s families. He retaliated by closing down all the pits he owned in that area, ruining two villages and throwing two hundred men out of work.

During all this time he had remained abroad. He returned five years later to court and marry Suzanna, the beautiful, eighteen-year-old daughter of Lady Colindale, a poor widow, mother of five daughters. Lady Colindale’s father, though hard pressed to support the widow and his granddaughters himself, was so horrified by what he knew of Thursby, who was still only in his early thirties, that he refused as Suzanna’s guardian to allow the marriage. Thursby, thwarted and angry, faced with waiting until the girl was twenty-one when she could marry without consent, promptly persuaded her to elope with him. The couple went abroad, returning with a child, a boy, and Thursby took up a clubman’s life in London, rarely going to the family property on the Scottish borders where he had installed his wife and child – and his two older children. Suzanna was forbidden to communicate with her family in any way.

Small wonder the obituarists, writing of Thursby’s death by murder, found it difficult to praise his character or achievements or suggest with any conviction that he would be deeply missed by family and friends.

However, Sherlock returned and Charlotte disengaged herself from the mystery. Less than a week after Thursby’s death, she was at Battersea with Mary, studying Mary’s parrot with some distaste. The creature, small, grey and unimposing, encased in a large brass cage on a table by the window, was declaring, in a rumbling bass voice, for the fourth time, ‘Surely Thy goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life, Amen,’ and then began the psalm again, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me …’ At that point Charlotte hung a cloth over the cage, saying, ‘Into the valley of the shadow of death, with you, Poll Parrot.’ The parrot, mumbling, ‘… lie down in green pastures,’ then ceased to speak.

Charlotte said to Mary, who was knitting, ‘I believe you were hoping I’d take a fancy to it and plead with you to let me have it.’

Mary, needles clicking, responded placidly, ‘It was a faint hope.’

‘Now no hope at all,’ Charlotte said. ‘Who taught it to speak?’

‘John’s aunt was married to a very pious man, active in church affairs,’ Mary said. ‘He taught the parrot. He died many years ago but of course,’ she said ruefully, ‘parrots live on.’

‘Amen,’ said a voice from under the cloth. Mary started.

‘This is not good for you, Mary,’ Charlotte said. ‘In your condition you must avoid upset.’

‘I know,’ Mary said.

‘Besides,’ Charlotte continued remorselessly, ‘I have heard of cases where children learnt to speak by copying the family parrot. They started to screech and say “Pretty Polly”. Do you want your child’s first words to be “We have done those things we ought not to have done”?’

To this Mary merely replied calmly, ‘Well, Charlotte, I have the impression that unforeseen consequences of every kind go with children, as ducks go with water.’ And Charlotte surprised Mary by agreeing unexpectedly and wholeheartedly to this proposition.

*

The reason for this was to come out during Mrs Watson’s visit next day to Charlotte. They were sitting in the garden at a rustic table on the lawn. Mary was now sewing a little nightgown while Charlotte, opposite, was reading to her from the recently published novel, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Into this peaceful scene came Sherlock Holmes, by arrangement, to collect the samples taken at the scene of Thursby’s death by Charlotte from the House of Commons a week earlier. Betsey brought tea out into the garden and all three sat at the table in late summer sunshine, drinking orange pekoe tea and eating warm scones with cream and Mrs Digby’s strawberry jam.

Sherlock, in a white linen suit and panama hat, was quite relaxed. The samples were in a case at his side.

‘How peaceful,’ he exclaimed with pleasure, looking up at the cloudless blue sky. ‘One might as well be in the country.’

Unless the subject will cause terrible grief or offence, it is impossible of course, knowing someone is involved in a murder case, not to discuss the matter. Sherlock himself introduced the subject: ‘I tried to spare John the visit to Yorkshire to interview the strike leader, Matthew Truscott,’ he said to Mary. ‘I said I would go myself. John should be with you now. But he claimed you were adamant he should go and you were perfectly well able to look after yourself for a short while.’

Mary said, ‘We do not expect any excitement before Christmas, so I am well able to do without John for a few days. A man must have his liberty, after all. Marriage is not serfdom. But thank you, Sherlock, for your consideration. So he will be seeing the man who led the strike at Lord Thursby’s mines? Do you really believe a miner was responsible for Lord Thursby’s death?’

‘It is a possibility, no more. Truscott could be the villain, for Thursby’s closure of the mines after the strike caused much suffering, and is still remembered. When he reopened the mines the men had to go back to work, but there’s still very strong feeling against him up there. Thursby was a silly fellow,’ Sherlock said. ‘Shutting down, then reopening the mines cost him a fortune, for they were flooded. I suppose he finally concluded it was more profitable for him to have them open. He closed them out of spite, of course, an absurd motive for any action.’

‘Let us hope he improved the safety of the mines when he reopened the pits,’ remarked Charlotte.

‘I believe he did,’ agreed Sherlock. ‘Perhaps more for his own reasons than for the miners’ benefit. He could not afford another scandal and further compensation payments. But of course, even as Thursby died the miners were on strike again demanding unions. Thursby had the coalfields again at his throat. He was trying to starve them out. I don’t fancy John’s welcome will be warm when the men hear he’s trying to find out who killed their employer. Too many of them will be only too glad he’s dead, and not keen to find his killer, I regret to say. As to whether he was killed by a miner seeking vengeance, I cannot say. He was a man with many enemies.’

‘The fact that his dead body was transported to the House of Commons might indicate some kind of political motive for his killing,’ said Charlotte. ‘I told you of finding odd, damp footprints on the carpet leading to the Speaker’s chair. Meanwhile I’m putting together some statistics, in an attempt to establish a statistical basis for catching the perpetrators of murders, based on certain constant factors such as the means used to kill the victim, where the deed is done and so forth.’

‘Sensible,’ said Sherlock.

‘A matter of common sense, I should have thought,’ Mary said, her head bent over the little white flannel nightgown.

‘There’s always a point to analysing and systematising what we call common sense,’ Sherlock said. ‘To take an example, if a man were to die of poison in his own dining-room we would probably assume the murderer was someone in his own household, most probably a woman, and that the motive for his murder was personal. But if the same man were shot with a revolver while riding in the park we would no doubt consider it more likely that his assailant was male and that there might be a number of reasons for the murder – an assassination for political reasons, for example, or revenge for a wrongly given order on the battlefield, causing many deaths. Common sense, one might say, is a conclusion based on experience. Yet,’ he said, ‘it might be very useful to make a proper analysis of these things, to produce a formula, if one existed. This could make the process of detection swifter and more exact. Congratulations, my dear,’ he said to Charlotte.

‘I’ll accept your congratulations only after I have come to some useful conclusions, if I do,’ Charlotte smiled. ‘Meanwhile, Sherlock, although I haven’t analysed the samples, I think you’ll find something very curious about the particle I took from the jacket pocket of the late Lord Thursby. It was so big, about the size of my little fingertip, that analysis was hardly required.’

‘And it was – you think?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Opium,’ she replied.

‘Opium!’ he exclaimed.

She nodded, but at that moment they were interrupted by the arrival through the french windows into the garden of a young woman in Kravonian national dress – an embroidered blouse, a full embroidered skirt of red and white, a pinafore and stockings. As they gazed at her, a small, fair-haired boy of about three years old, wearing green knickerbockers and a green jacket, erupted from behind the young woman and sped up the path towards Charlotte, crying, ‘Mother!’

Mary gasped and dropped her sewing on the grass. Sherlock put his head in his hands. ‘You did it, Charlotte. Against all the advice of the Prime Minister – and mine – you did it.’ He raised his head and looked at her furiously. ‘I am so angry, Charlotte, I can hardly contain myself. I shall leave now, before I say or do something I’ll regret.’ He stood up. ‘One thing, though – this cannot continue. The child must go back.’ He turned to leave.

Charlotte, scarcely noticing, had swept up the child. ‘At last, Alexander. At last you’re here!’

And, as Prince Rudolph of Kravonia came smiling through the french windows, Mary Watson fainted.

Naturally, much confusion ensued: Sherlock Holmes and Prince Rudolph helped Mary into the house; Betsey brought water; Mrs Digby made a pot of tea; while Alexander, followed by his nursemaid, ran round Charlotte’s house to find out how it was. Mary, coming round from her faint, insisted vehemently that John should not be intercepted at Euston, before he got on the train north. She said weakly, ‘Nothing is wrong with me. In these circumstances, who would not have fainted?’

With Mary sitting up and drinking tea, and the sound of Alexander crying out excitedly upstairs, while the Kravonian nursemaid’s reproaches rumbled round the house, Sherlock Holmes made his departure, bowing to Mary and hoping she would soon be fully restored, kissing Charlotte’s cheek and bowing coldly to Prince Rudolph as he left, murmuring, ‘Prince Rudolph. We must speak more of this affair.’

‘By all means, my dear Sherlock – as I hope now, as your acknowledged brother-in-law, I have licence to call you,’ replied Rudolph of Kravonia, with a humorous glint in his eyes.

Charlotte saw Sherlock to the door. Returning, she said, ‘I’ve sent Betsey to Euston to get John back. You have had a shock, my dear. You are very brave, dearest Mary, but surely your well-being ought to prevail over the hunting down of a murderer, especially as the victim was not particularly well loved. I myself think it most unlikely, in any case, that the murderer is a miner from Yorkshire. But you need John with you, dear. Speaking as someone, the birth of whose own child was fraught with secrecy, partings and all kinds of complications, I believe separations at this time are wrong and should be avoided, if at all possible.’

Prince Rudolph nodded. ‘John will be happier, believe me, if he can be often at his wife’s side at such an interesting and important time for both of you.’

‘It is true, then?’ Mary asked the Prince. ‘Alexander is your child – and Charlotte’s?’

‘You are shocked?’ Charlotte asked.

Mary hesitated. ‘I do not know what to think.’

Charlotte laughed. ‘We are married – morganatically. I do not believe in marriage as an institution, but would not have liked, and nor would Rudolph, to saddle any child needlessly with the stigma of illegitimacy. We live in narrow-minded times, Mary.’

‘For my part, I am relieved that we do,’ declared Mary. ‘But – I must congratulate you, Prince Rudolph. And Charlotte … Charlotte …’ But suddenly there were tears in her eyes and she could say no more. Rudolph put a consoling arm round her.

This scene was interrupted by Betsey’s bursting in, saying, ‘Madam, madam, that Kravonian girl – she’s lit a candle in her room to get rid of evil spirits. It smells horrible. What evil spirits? There’s no evil spirits in this house. I told her, “There’s no evil spirits in this house. Trust me, I’m very sensitive,” but she won’t listen. She don’t speak proper English.’

Tears drying fast, Mary rose to her feet, indignantly. ‘Betsey – you are a disgrace. How dare you interrupt your mistress in this manner!’

‘Quite right. Go away, Betsey,’ said Charlotte. Betsey withdrew, chastened. But not long after, a very strange odour composed of candle fat, herbs and an undefinable something nastier began to penetrate the room. At that point there was a knock at the door and John Watson came hurrying in, barely acknowledging Charlotte and the Prince, on his way to Mary’s side. As he knelt beside her, young Alexander Osteire ran in, hotly pursued by his nurse. Charlotte captured him by seizing the collar of his small Norfolk jacket and said, ‘Stand still and be introduced. John and Mary, this is my son, Alexander. Alexander, shake hands with Dr Watson and give Mrs Watson a kiss.’

Dr Watson, though astonished, mechanically put his hand out to the little boy, who advanced towards him, proffering his own hand. John bent over and said, with surprising calm in the circumstances, ‘I’m pleased to meet you, my little man.’

‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ said the boy. ‘Are you a detective?’ He shot a glance at his father. ‘I mustn’t ask personal questions,’ he reminded himself.

‘Not usually,’ said John, ‘but let’s consider ourselves friends from the outset so yes, I am a detective, sometimes, but I’m also a doctor.’

‘I’ve had measles,’ Alexander said. ‘It’s wrong to scratch your spots, isn’t it?’

‘That is the opinion on the whole, of the medical profession,’ John soberly agreed. He then took the boy’s hand and led him to Mary, still on the sofa, and said, ‘Give this lady, my wife, a kiss, then, as instructed.’

‘You have the makings of an excellent father,’ Charlotte said. She then spoke in the Kravonian language to the nursemaid, who was standing in the doorway. The nursemaid appeared to protest. Prince Rudolph joined in the argument. As the discussion progressed there came yet another knock at the front door, a step in the hall and a strong-faced roly-poly woman in a navy travelling coat and sensible matching hat entered. She embraced Prince Rudolph, greeted Charlotte in a firm but kindly tone, nodded in a faintly threatening way at the Kravonian nurse and went to Alexander, still with Mary. She knelt down.

‘Hullo there, wee boy,’ she said. ‘Remember me? Nanny Macgregor? I’ve come to look after you. You look very hot. Have you no lighter clothes with you?’ She then spoke severely to the nursemaid in Kravonian. The nursemaid left the room.

‘John and Mary, please greet Mrs Moira Macgregor, my old nanny, whom we have persuaded out of unnecessary retirement to take care of Alexander,’ Prince Rudolph said. ‘Nanny – here are Dr and Mrs Watson, dear friends of ours.’

‘And I must love you and leave you, as the poet said,’ declared Nanny Macgregor. ‘Come, Alexander, let us go upstairs and see if there is anything in your trunk suitable for hot weather.’

Prince Rudolph smiled reminiscently as they heard Alexander’s excited little voice and Nanny Macgregor’s responses as they went upstairs together. Charlotte sat down with a bump and fanned herself with her straw hat. ‘What a busy day,’ she remarked.

John said, ‘He is a remarkably nice boy, Charlotte my dear.’ Mary looked at her husband with amazement tinged with respect. He looked at her, and some silent intelligence passed between them.

Charlotte observed, ‘I’m so glad this is out in the open. It has all been a very great strain.’

John said, ‘I imagine so. Let me offer belated congratulations on your marriage and on the birth of your son. I am not as astonished as you might have thought I would be, my dear. I knew something had happened, though I could not name it. One develops a kind of instinctive diagnostic skill over the years, part medical observation and part observation of character. I noted a slight change in you, physically and mentally, Charlotte, which I could not explain to myself at the time. But now I can, and am delighted the explanation is such a happy one. Prince Rudolph, I do congratulate you, my dear fellow.’

Prince Rudolph clicked his heels together and mock-bowed. ‘Thank you, dear Watson.’

Mary stood up. ‘I should love to stay longer, but you have had a busy day already and must have much to discuss. We will leave you in peace.’ She stood up and John offered her his arm.

Charlotte said, ‘I’m afraid Sherlock’s very angry with me.’

‘I’m sure he’ll come round,’ said John, but not in any very convinced tone.

In the cab on the way to Battersea John said to his wife, ‘I didn’t like to comment, but there was a most peculiar smell …’

Mary told him, ‘The Kravonian nursemaid lit a candle she had with her to expunge evil spirits from the house. Charlotte’s maid Betsey was making a terrible fuss. And now Mrs Macgregor’s arrived. Poor Charlotte – there will be such domestic battles – and the cottage is so small.’

John shook his head. ‘I’m afraid those won’t be the only battles. This marriage, and the boy, will cause a lot of trouble. I’m delighted for Charlotte, of course, but unfortunately morganatic marriages, as I suppose this must have been, are not acceptable everywhere and – ’ He broke off, sighed and added only, ‘Oh dear, oh dear. I imagine Queen Victoria will be most displeased.’

Sherlock Holmes, talking to Inspector Lestrade at Baker Street, said, ‘This Thursby affair is proving difficult, Lestrade. Have you any fresh information?’

Lestrade was not concentrating. He was staring into space with a melancholy air.

‘Lestrade,’ questioned Sherlock, ‘are you listening to me at all?’

Lestrade sadly shook his head.

‘Is there something on your mind?’ demanded Sherlock.

Lestrade only sighed. He had taken the news of Charlotte’s secret marriage hard. ‘My dear fellow,’ Sherlock said, ‘whatever it is, pull yourself together. We must not let personal preoccupations stand between ourselves and the detection of crime, must we?’

Lestrade, lost in sad thoughts, was paying no attention.

‘Must we?’ Sherlock asked again.

‘No,’ said Lestrade in a gloomy tone, ‘we must not do that. Did you say Thursby?’

The coroner had stated at the inquest that the death of Lord Thursby had been murder. The investigation continued, but all policemen know that every day without an arrest after the first forty-eight hours following a murder increases the murderer’s chances of getting away without being caught. More than a week had now elapsed since the crime. Moreover, there were many suspects. Sherlock himself had interviewed the strike leader Matthew Truscott and many others in the Yorkshire coalfields, but with little result. Lestrade had spoken to the family and friends of the first Lady Thursby, who had drowned herself. Also suspect were the family of the second maltreated Lady Thursby, and even, though no one liked to think it, the lady herself. Then there was Thursby’s heir, his oldest son, who had little reason to love his father and stood to gain a title and a fortune from his father’s death. A further possibility was that during his long stays abroad Thursby’s talent for causing rage and hostility had earned him other enemies. ‘A regiment of suspects,’ Watson had said to Sherlock Holmes, who had responded gloomily, ‘An army, rather.’

The reconstruction of Mortimer, Lord Thursby’s last days of life had not proved edifying or rewarding. He had apparently left his wife in Scotland and returned to London with the friends who had been staying there during the summer, Harry Bell and Sir Arnold Roper, both men of such bad reputation that it was, some said, a scandal to impose such creatures on a wife. Once back in London he went to his house in Manchester Square where he had installed a young woman, Polly Fowles, formerly a member of the chorus of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. She had recently been dismissed for violating the code of conduct on which the company insisted.

This good-looking young woman in her late twenties was found by the police staying with her mother in Kilburn. Inspector Lestrade had gallantly put aside his distress about Charlotte’s marriage and done his duty. He had been to interview Polly. ‘She was far from grief-stricken,’ he reported to Sherlock Holmes. ‘I found her sitting in the parlour in Kilburn eating chocolate creams. She says Thursby didn’t come home at all the night he must have died. The last time she saw him, she says, was at tea-time. He went out after tea saying he was going to his club and would probably not be back to dinner. This kind of behaviour was apparently not unusual. The young woman’s story is supported by the servants. Lord Thursby told the butler after tea he would be at his club that evening. And Polly Fowles, understanding Thursby would not be home, darted off later to see her old friends from the D’Oyly Carte, just back from a summer tour. She had supper with them, came back at about eleven and went to bed. In the early hours of the morning, about the time when Lord Thursby must have died, she was tucked up in bed in Manchester Square, or so she says and so do the servants. She could have crept out and murdered him, I suppose, and then transported him to the House of Commons in a wheelbarrow and put him in the Speaker’s chair, but I doubt it, somehow. She’d no reason to kill him. She was planning to leave – she’d got her old job back, that night, from the company manager, on promise of good behaviour in future. She’d gone right off Thursby, to use her own words, and regretted the whole affair.’

‘And Thursby was at his club all night?’ enquired Sherlock.

Lestrade shook his head. ‘He left about eleven o’clock,’ he said. ‘No one knew where. Just left the club – the porter saw him hail a cab.’

‘So we still have a trail to follow, then,’ observed Sherlock.

‘Polly, the young woman, said one strange thing though – “Try a man called John Lee.” She seemed to think this fellow might be mixed up in the affair’.

‘John Lee!’ exclaimed Sherlock.

‘Why – do you know him?’ asked Lestrade, disturbed by the eminent detective’s agitation.

Sherlock was silent for a moment. He then said, with an effort, ‘I do know him, Lestrade. Will you leave this matter with me?’

Lestrade disguised any surprise he might have felt at this and replied, ‘Of course, Holmes.’ Then he, also with difficulty, asked, ‘Have you – have you seen Miss Holmes recently?’

‘I am just about to do so,’ said Sherlock Holmes grimly. ‘Have you any message for her?’

‘No,’ Lestrade said sadly, ‘no message. Merely my kindest regards.’ He added, ‘Do not be hard on her, my friend.’

Sherlock Holmes stared at him and said coldly, ‘Thank you, Lestrade, but please allow me to deal with my family affairs in my own way.’

On arrival at Charlotte’s cottage, Sherlock Holmes found his sister out. She was at the zoo, said Betsey, and would be back shortly. Attempting to converse on subjects of detection with the eminent sleuth as he waited for Charlotte’s return, Betsey met with a frosty reception. She was, in fact, invited to return to the kitchen and concern herself with her work. Sherlock then refused an offer of tea or any other kind of refreshment and sat waiting in Charlotte’s parlour, his feet planted together and his hands on the ferrule of his walking-stick.

Half an hour later, a party consisting of Charlotte, Prince Rudolph, young Alexander and Dr and Mrs Watson came cheerfully into the house. Faces fell when, upon going into the parlour, all observed Sherlock Holmes’ unencouraging expression. He rose to his feet, cast a reproachful look at Dr Watson and, bowing to Prince Rudolph, asked him if he might have a private word in the dining-room. Prince Rudolph agreed and he and Sherlock left the room. Nanny Macgregor then whisked Alexander away for washing, brushing and tea purposes, leaving Charlotte and John and Mary Watson alone in the parlour. Betsey provided tea for both parties – the group in the parlour and for the two gentlemen in the dining-room.

John Watson broke the long silence after Betsey had left the room: ‘I suppose Sherlock has come to canvass the idea of sending Alexander back to Kravonia.’

Charlotte nodded. ‘He disapproves of Alexander’s presence here. Queen Victoria has always been adamant that Alexander should remain in Kravonia. She detests morganatic marriages. She feels they erode the majesty of royal houses, weaken the dignity of royalty and subtly foster a republican spirit. I happily embarked on a morganatic marriage – a marriage, as you know, involving a commoner and a royal person, where the children of the marriage have no claim to the throne, or other royal position – because I love Rudolph. But I wonder if Queen Victoria believes that. Royalty perhaps cannot believe others do not want their thrones. And, of course, the Queen’s granddaughter is Tsarina of Russia, which wishes to gobble up Kravonia. And Mr Gladstone is hearing more and more often from the Foreign Service that Alexander represents a constitutional threat to the stability of Kravonia and that certain interests would be upset if he came here. And this, of a child of three!’

‘Kravonia seems to be one of those places where there is always a grave constitutional threat, if not a grave constitutional crisis,’ observed Mary.

‘Central Europe is always complicated,’ said Charlotte.

‘I must confess I can’t quite grasp the subtleties of a threat posed by a three-year-old boy,’ John said.

‘The difficulty is’, Charlotte told him, ‘that once Rudolph’s brother Oscar had returned to the bosom of the family and resumed being the heir apparent, he married the Countess Ursula of Holstein – previously, as you know, Rudolph’s designated bride. Unfortunately, up to now the couple has had no child. It’s not been very many years. The majority of couples would be philosophical but hopeful. However royalty is different. An heir to the Kravonian throne is needed for stability. It’s being said there will never be a direct heir to the throne. And Alexander, though he has no claim to the throne whatsoever, due to the nature of his parents’ marriage, is at present King Weland’s only grandson.

‘You can imagine the gossip, speculation and even conspiracy beginning to surround him, even before King Weland’s death and the accession of Crown Prince Oscar. This is why Rudolph and I brought him away. Up at Glamis Moira Macgregor guessed Alexander was our son and warned us, very tactfully, that we must. The fate of the unfortunate Duke of Clarence was much on our minds. For if Oscar and Ursula remain childless for a few more years, poor Alexander could well become a pawn in the game of making kings. There might be danger for him in Kravonia. In any case, I am his mother and I want him with me. I always have,’ she said, ‘but Rudolph wanted him in Kravonia, as is only natural, and Queen Victoria was so opposed to Alexander’s coming here that I decided we might be better off with his father. Now, both Rudolph and I are agreed he should be here.

‘I’m satisfied that even now Rudolph is explaining all this to Sherlock. In the meanwhile I’ve taken the lease on the house next door and got the landlord’s permission to put some doors through from here, to make a bigger house. I must say, John and Mary, I’m happy to think your coming child will not be subjected to being parted from either one parent or the other and going from one country to another like Alexander.’

‘You must be very eager to see Princess Ursula bear a son,’ Mary said.

‘I am,’ Charlotte said fervently.

The door then opened and Alexander came in. Meanwhile the sound of raised voices came from the dining-room. To cover the sounds of argument, Mary Watson seated herself at the piano and began to play a loud and cheerful song, ‘The Soldiers of the Queen’. They were into the third chorus of this rousing ditty when the parlour door again opened and Sherlock entered. He still seemed displeased.

Charlotte, leaving the group round the piano, now singing more quietly, said to him, ‘I hope Rudolph has explained.’

‘He has,’ her brother interrupted, ‘but Her Majesty is extremely annoyed. Gladstone is very disturbed. And I know many diplomats and members of the Foreign Office at a high level are worried by this. And there is the moral side.’

‘My marriage is perfectly legal,’ Charlotte declared, ‘and if it weren’t, that would still be nobody’s business but my own.’

‘The Holmeses’, Sherlock pronounced, ‘have always been a substantial family, ready to do their duty. Sir Charles Holmes was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, Captain Torquil Mycroft, as you recall, fell at Malplaquet and was highly commended by Wellington – but we have never aspired to enter worlds not properly open to us. This connection, Charlotte, brings us into Hanoverian circles.’

But they were interrupted by the arrival of a portly man in his forties, dressed in a dark suit. He had a black moustache and a red face, which bore an unhappy expression. ‘Tracked you down at last, Holmes,’ was his opening remark.

‘So you have, sir,’ responded Sherlock. ‘But I wonder why.’

‘I am Henry Mortimer. I’m here on behalf of my cousin, Lord Thursby.’

‘This is a family party in my sister’s house,’ Sherlock pointed out.

‘I have come all the way from Aberdeen,’ said the other gentleman unapologetically.

‘Perhaps I can offer you the hospitality of my dining-room,’ Charlotte Holmes said. ‘You can talk in private there.’

‘That sounds an excellent idea,’ said Henry Mortimer.

‘If we must,’ murmured Sherlock. Raising his voice he asked, ‘Watson, is it possible I can drag you away from the glee club to assist me?’

‘Gladly, dear fellow,’ said the doctor genially. Bowing slightly to Prince Rudolph he left the room with Sherlock and Henry Mortimer, the cousin of the late, murdered, Lord Thursby.

Charlotte, Mary and Rudolph settled down with Alexander to play Lotto until Alexander’s bed-time.

‘Poor Mr Mortimer,’ said Mary to Charlotte some days later. ‘Apparently, he has the families not only of the present Lady Thursby, but of the late Lady Thursby, mother of the new Lord Thursby, all after him to take action over the murder.’

‘It’s surprising people so ill used by Thursby are so passionately keen to see justice done,’ observed Charlotte. ‘I gather none of them is now under suspicion, after questioning by the police.’

‘They have seen much scandal in their lives, thanks to Thursby when alive,’ Mary explained. ‘Now he is dead they simply want the mystery solved and the murderer convicted so that after a year or so they can hold up their heads again and begin to lead ordinary lives, uncontaminated by scandal or the fear of what that dreadful man would do next.’

‘Plainly, little progress is being made in the investigation,’ brooded Charlotte. ‘I wonder if the desire of the Thursby family to clear the matter up and return to society without shame will be satisfied? But happily,’ she said more cheerfully, ‘this is no business of mine, since my decision to retire to the comforts of domestic life. You have been right all along, Mary. Marriage, home and the satisfactions of domestic life are the greatest comforts a woman could have.’

Mary, regarding her friend’s smiling face, found herself unaccountably depressed by this statement.

‘Peace, that is what I require,’ said Charlotte, stretching in her chair under the sunny skies.

Unhappily, only a day later, the peace of both Charlotte and Mary was rudely broken. It was half-past six next morning when there was a frantic knocking on the front door of the Watsons’ house in Battersea. The Watsons’ maid, whose alarm clock had just gone off, arrived at the door in a wrapper to find Betsey on the step crying, ‘Get your master and mistress straight away. Miss Charlotte needs them. Hurry, girl. It’s urgent.’

The Watsons’ maid went straight upstairs to arouse her master and mistress. Mary Watson came from her bedroom and put her head over the banisters. ‘Betsey! Is that you? What is it?’ she cried in alarm.

‘Please come carefully downstairs, ma’am, and I’ll tell you,’ replied Betsey, not wishing to alarm Mary too much and certainly desiring to avoid a fall downstairs.

‘Come in, then,’ called Mary, for Betsey was still on the front step.

They met in the hall, Mary in her nightdress, Betsey with her uncombed hair falling on to her shoulders.

‘Alexander’s gone,’ said Betsey.

‘Gone!’ cried Mary.

John Watson, accustomed to being called out by his patients, had dressed rapidly and was downstairs in time to put a steadying hand on his wife’s shoulder and ask, ‘What do you mean, Betsey?’

‘Someone’s come in and took him, in the night,’ she said. ‘They put up a ladder and climbed in through his window. They drugged him. There’s a pad of ether on his floor. And the ladder’s still there up against the window.’

Mary turned and went quickly upstairs. ‘My dear …’ called John warningly.

‘I’m perfectly all right, John,’ she called back. ‘I shall get dressed and go to Charlotte straight away.’

‘The cab’s still outside, ma’am,’ Betsey told her. Mary’s bedroom door banged.

‘I can hardly take this in,’ John said. ‘Who on earth would take that little boy? Can it be for ransom?’

‘I overheard – Prince Rudolph thinks it’s political,’ reported Betsey. She sniffed, ‘Some bad Kravonians may have took him. If that’s the case, what chance for the poor little mite? Miss Charlotte’s in such a state. I’ve never seen her like she is now.’

‘I’d better come and bring my bag,’ said Watson.

Five minutes later they were on their way to Chelsea. In the cab John questioned Betsey about the kidnap, but there was little to tell. Mrs Digby, Betsey and Moira Macgregor had gone to bed at ten, Prince Rudolph and Charlotte at eleven o’clock. Prince Rudolph had locked up before retiring. At six Betsey got up and met Mrs Macgregor coming from Alexander’s room with a horrified expression on her face. On rising she had naturally looked in on her little charge – and found him gone. His bedroom window was wide open, the tip of a ladder projected over the sill, the air smelt of ether. The pad of gauze with ether on it was found later by the bed.

‘Does Holmes know about this?’ was John’s question.

‘They’ve sent messages to Baker Street,’ Betsey told him.

In Chelsea all was confusion. Mrs Digby was in the kitchen making cups of tea and bacon sandwiches. A constable was posted at the gate. Another was walking round the house with a man in a brown suit. Through the open door of the dining-room Rudolph was talking to a gentleman who, in spite of the early hour, was so clean-shaven and tidy he might have been standing in a tailor’s window. Charlotte herself sat on a sofa in the parlour, crying pitifully. Horrified, apart from anything else, by her friend’s uncharacteristic collapse in the face of trouble, Mary rushed to her. Charlotte was incoherent at first, but calmed a little, gasping, ‘Alexander. My poor little boy. I brought him so far – only to be stolen like this. Oh – Mary.’ Mary embraced the sobbing figure.

John, uncertain what to do, opened his medical bag and said, ‘Charlotte, I have a draught here. Take it – it will calm you.’

‘I can’t, John,’ said the tearful Charlotte. ‘I must keep a clear head – somehow. Though the thought of poor little Alexander coming to consciousness in a strange place, among strange people …’ and she began to cry again.

‘Really, my dear. It would be better to take some soporific and go and lie down.’

‘I can’t, John,’ she said again. ‘What good would I be to my child, lying upstairs in a stupor?’ She gasped, shuddered, calmed a little and said, ‘They think Chancellor Ristorin, or the Countess Seraphine of Kravonia are the kidnappers. But I – I’m not sure.’

‘Then who?’

She shook her head. ‘The footprints,’ was all she said. Tears began, again, to roll down her face.

‘If we ever needed Sherlock Holmes, we need him now,’ declared John.

‘A message has come back from Baker Street – he left home the night before last and has not returned,’ Charlotte said. ‘Lestrade is on his way. He may know where he has gone. Mycroft is coming also, to discuss the political aspect with Rudolph – who is with a gentleman from the Foreign Office. Oh, Mary. If only I’d left Alexander at Norvius this might not have happened. What a fool I’ve been.’

‘You must eat something, Charlotte,’ declared Mary. ‘And even if you will not take a draught, you must at least go upstairs and lie down. If you can become calmer you may be able to think better who might have taken Alexander.’

In the bedroom, Charlotte attempted to drink a cup of tea, on Mary’s orders, while Mary herself tidied the disordered room. Then Lestrade came in, twisting his bowler hat in his hands. ‘Charlotte – this is a dreadful business,’ he declared. ‘My heart goes out to you.’

‘Thank you, Jules,’ said Charlotte in a small voice. ‘That is very kind.’

‘It seems we have a political affair on our hands,’ he said.

‘So they say,’ she said.

‘I’m here awaiting instructions,’ he told her. ‘As soon as they’re issued we’ll have every man in London looking, be assured of that.’

‘My mind is so confused, Jules,’ she said. ‘Yet – yet I cannot feel these kidnappers come from Kravonia: Rudolph is so … there is every reason why they should – and yet …’ She passed her hand over her brow. ‘Oh, it’s no good. I can’t think.’

‘Your brother Mr Mycroft Holmes is on his way, that’s a mercy.’

‘Has Sherlock been found?’ she asked.

‘No. The last I saw of him was some days ago at Baker Street. We were talking of Lord Thursby. The young woman who – ’ He coughed. ‘The young woman who lived at Lord Thursby’s house mentioned a man called Lee. Mr Holmes said he knew where he might be found.’

‘John Lee!’ cried Charlotte.

‘Yes, that’s the name. What do you know of him?’

‘The footprint under Alexander’s window,’ she said. Mary was alarmed to see beads of sweat on her brow. She gasped out, each word dragging, ‘At first I was clear-headed. I filled the footprint with plaster of Paris. It has no sole or heel. But then I, I …’ And Charlotte Holmes fell back on her bed, breathing shallowly, barely conscious.

John came immediately, felt her brow, put a stethoscope to her chest. He shook his head. ‘She has a high fever,’ he told his wife. ‘It might be the result of shock – or something else impossible at this moment to diagnose. Will you take care of her, my dear?’

A prescription was written out and Betsey despatched to the chemist. And Mary got Charlotte into bed where she lay, evidently most unwell, barely able to speak. Rudolph then came to see his wife and Mary left the room. She went to the kitchen and found a very distressed Mrs Macgregor with the cook and Betsey.

‘She thinks it’s all her fault, ma’am,’ Betsey said to Mary. ‘We can’t do anything with her. Can you say something?’

Mary sat down opposite Mrs Macgregor and assured her, ‘Mrs Macgregor, my dear. It is not your fault any more than it is anyone else’s. No doubt if the domestic arrangements had been better settled you would have been in the same room as Alexander and then this might not have happened. But as things were, you had no better chance of preventing this than anyone else. And who would suppose that in London, in this age, kidnappers would come for a little boy?’

‘He is royalty, though. We should have thought of that,’ she said.

‘If anyone should have taken extra precautions on that account, Mrs Macgregor, it was not you. You did your duty. But you will be needed now, for Miss Holmes. That is to say …’ Mary hesitated and asked Betsey, ‘By what name is your mistress known?’

‘Countess Osteire, on formal occasions,’ Betsey told her. ‘Miss Charlotte in the house.’

‘Miss Charlotte is ill, and she will need some nursing. I shall stay here until she’s better,’ Mary announced. ‘So you had better come to me in case of difficulty.’ She said to Mrs Digby, ‘You had better make some invalid broth, Mrs Digby. Order a calf’s foot, and some beef for a beef tea. As for lunch, can you provide a cold meal for an indeterminate number of people, say six to eight, and something for the police?’

‘I’ve put that in preparation,’ said Mrs Digby.

‘That’s admirable,’ said Mary. ‘Now, Betsey, Miss Charlotte said something about plaster of Paris, and a footprint. Do you know anything about it?’

Mrs Digby said to Mary, ‘Miss Charlotte was in a terrible state, but she was out in the garden mixing something in a bowl not long after Betsey went off in the cab to fetch you. And she took a photo of the bottom of the ladder.’

‘Well,’ said Mary Watson, ‘you know her methods, Betsey, and you saw her do what she did, Mrs Digby, so you’ll have to spare ten minutes from your duties to come and show me.’

Betsey and Mrs Digby went with Mary into the garden. As she knelt on the grass, examining the two shallow layers of plaster of Paris lying on the ground under Alexander’s bedroom window, the rotund figure of Mycroft Holmes appeared round the side of the house.

‘Turning detective, Mrs Watson?’ he enquired.

Startled, she looked up at him. ‘No, Charlotte did this just after they found Alexander gone. What does one do with these things?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ he said. ‘That kind of detection is not my forte. I am here to discuss political matters. Please excuse me. I must hurry in. I hope to see you later.’

After he had gone Mary continued to stare at the two white impressions, one of which was that of a whole foot, the other, she assumed, of part of a foot, toe or heel. Baffled, she fell back on a housewifely instinct which suggested to her that anything left on the ground will soon be trodden on and broken. She therefore asked Betsey to fetch a spade and then levered the spade under the earth beneath each of the moulds and set them on a large tray which Betsey carried to Charlotte’s laboratory. ‘Put the tray gently on the laboratory bench,’ she instructed. Betsey, never reluctant to comment, did not question this, so Mary thought and hoped that what she was doing was in keeping with the principles of scientific detection. As the operation was conducted she stood in front of the french doors to the dining-room, attempting on instinct to mask what the maid was doing from the men inside. The dining-room now contained Lestrade, the early-arrived man from the Foreign Office, Mycroft Holmes and three other gentlemen. They were seated at the dining-room table, maps spread out, in earnest consultation, too preoccupied to notice what was happening in the garden.

Betsey had just taken the plaster of Paris moulds to the laboratory when Mary observed Prince Rudolph re-entering the dining-room. She said to Betsey, ‘Thank you, Betsey. Well done. I see Prince Rudolph has come downstairs, so I will go to Miss Charlotte. I think, as soon as your duties permit, you had better develop the photographs Mrs Digby saw Miss Charlotte take earlier on. I know this is not part of your work, Betsey, but we must all do what we can to help.’

‘No sooner said than done, ma’am,’ Betsey replied promptly, at which Mary was forced to admit to herself that this otherwise very undesirable servant had useful qualities.

She went upstairs, observing the smoke of many cigars and pipes billowing from the open dining-room door. She softly opened the bedroom door. Charlotte lay in bed, plainly in a high fever. She murmured, ‘Tell Rudolph I’ll be all right.’

‘My dear Charlotte,’ said Mary, as she bathed her friend’s brow and wrists with eau-de-Cologne and raised her a little so that she could drink some water. ‘Don’t worry, John will reassure Rudolph. You must rest, be confident and recover your health. Mrs Digby is making you some beef tea.’

‘They say rest – it is hard to rest, with Alexander gone,’ said poor Charlotte.

‘I understand,’ Mary said gently.

Charlotte smiled weakly. ‘You are a great comfort, Mary.’ Then more earnestly she pleaded, ‘You must help me. I cannot help myself now.’

‘Anything,’ Mary said, soothingly, observing Charlotte’s sweating face with grave alarm.

‘Tell me what is happening downstairs, what decisions they are making. I cannot rest – I dream such dreams.’

Mary was not sure whether Charlotte would be more able to rest if she were told of the deliberations downstairs or kept in ignorance. She concluded that, as long as Alexander was missing, Charlotte would never be easy in her mind. So she said quietly, ‘Very well, Charlotte. I shall go down and find out what Prince Rudolph and the others are thinking and what they plan to do. Try to rest. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Charlotte’s eyes closed. ‘Tell them to find Sherlock, at all costs. And Lee. Find Lee.’

Downstairs Mary met Lestrade coming out of the dining-room. ‘What’s happening, Inspector?’ she asked urgently. ‘Charlotte is upstairs, unable to get out of bed, barely able to speak and terribly anxious about what plans are being made to recover Alexander.’

‘She should not be agitating herself. It will make her illness worse,’ Lestrade said with a preoccupied air.

‘How can she rest with her son missing?’

‘Well, in a nutshell,’ Lestrade said, ‘Scotland Yard is no longer searching for Alexander.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the astonished Mary.

‘Government instructions,’ Lestrade said. ‘The matter is political. The search will be conducted by undercover agents under the personal control of the Foreign Secretary, who will report directly to the Prime Minister.’

‘But Charlotte is not sure a Kravonian faction is involved – and your manner indicates you do not wholly believe in this theory.’

‘I do not,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s nearly enough evidence to assume such a faction is responsible. And even if the villains are politicals it’s better to use experts to find the boy – and we at Scotland Yard are experts. Candidly, Mrs Watson, I detest these blundering political police who go round London implausibly disguised, trying to introduce themselves secretly into groups of Irishmen, foreign revolutionaries and the like. What has that to do with finding a missing child?’

‘My goodness, Inspector,’ Mary said despairingly. ‘How can I tell her this, when she is so ill?’

Lestrade shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t be wiser to leave her in ignorance?’

‘She would only fret more,’ Mary told him. ‘And have you found Sherlock?’

Lestrade shook his head. Mary sighed.

‘I’ll come up and see her,’ Lestrade decided.

‘Be quick then,’ said Mary. ‘I’m sure my husband would disapprove of disturbing the patient.’

As they reached the landing the dining-room door opened and two men, one of them Mycroft Holmes, came out. They heard Mycroft say, ‘Very well, Standish. I will contact Constantina von Helle and see what she knows of the Countess Seraphine’s recent conversations with Zuckermann.’

Lestrade shook his head despondently. ‘Dear oh dear,’ he muttered under his breath.

When they entered Charlotte’s room she opened her eyes. Mary went to the bedside table, poured some medicine into a glass and propped Charlotte up to drink it. Charlotte asked, ‘News?’ weakly and apparently without much hope. Lestrade shook his head. There was a pause, during which Mary gently lowered her back on to the pillow. ‘Tell me, Lestrade,’ Charlotte said weakly, as Mary bathed her flushed face.

Reluctantly, Lestrade said, ‘They believe Alexander’s kidnap to be political.’

Charlotte uttered a groan.

‘Scotland Yard is not to be involved. The Secret Service has been put in charge. But, my dear, rest assured that unofficially I shall do all I can to find your son. I shall employ my spare time on that work, and there are others who will help me.’

‘Thank you, Jules. I know I have upset you. I am so grateful …’

Lestrade kissed her brow. ‘You have made your choices. I cannot deny I had hoped – how can I tell you of my ridiculous hopes? But now,’ he said resolutely, ‘to work. We must get started.’

‘Find Sherlock,’ she whispered. ‘And find John Lee.’

‘As you say. Meanwhile, when you are a little better, it would be useful if you could persuade Prince Rudolph to exert some influence over the Foreign Office to persuade them to re-employ Scotland Yard in the effort to find your son.’

Mary looked at him despairingly. ‘This is too much for her.’

‘Nothing’s too much – Alexander. My poor little boy,’ was all Charlotte murmured.

Outside the bedroom door Lestrade wiped a tear from his eye and vowed to Mary, ‘I will not rest until that boy is found.’

‘Pray he is still alive,’ said Mary, in a low voice. Then, more firmly, she said, ‘Inspector, I am going to see that woman, Polly Fowles. Please give me her address. I wish to ask her about John Lee.’

‘Mrs Watson!’ expostulated the Inspector.

‘I want to do it,’ said Mary.

‘I understand. But – I do not wish to be indelicate – in your condition, Mrs Watson, is it wise?’

‘I must,’ said Mary.

‘Your husband, for example, could go in your stead.’

‘A woman speaks more freely to another woman. Particularly a woman who may think she is in a vulnerable position in regard to the authorities, who are, after all, men.’

So Lestrade sighed and gave her Polly Fowles’ address in Kilburn.

In the little front parlour of a small, very clean house in Kilburn, one of a long row of similar small houses, Mrs Watson sat with Polly Fowles and her mother, drinking tea.

‘Well, I don’t deny I was a silly girl,’ Polly said frankly. She was small and very pretty with a great deal of fluffy blonde hair piled on top of her head. Her mother was an older, plumper version of the daughter. They had welcomed Mary, exclaimed when she told them of the kidnapped Alexander Osteire, and offered any help they could give in the way of information in the matter of Lord Thursby’s death if it would help to achieve the recovery of the boy. ‘I’m no detective,’ Mary had confessed. ‘I am here to try and help my poor friend Charlotte, the boy’s mother, who is prostrated by grief.’

‘And what about his father?’ demanded Mrs Fowles.

‘His father believes relatives of his are involved in the kidnap,’ Mary told her, ‘but my friend does not.’

‘His must be a funny family,’ commented Mrs Fowles. ‘But I’ll back a mother’s instinct any time. So tell Mrs Watson all about it, Polly. She’ll have to spare you nothing, Mrs Watson,’ the mother said in an aside. ‘I hope you won’t be shocked by her conduct. She’s been a silly, stupid girl, but let’s hope she’s learned her lesson. It’s being on the stage ruined her – there are too many temptations.’

So – ‘I don’t deny I was a silly girl,’ Polly Fowles had begun. ‘Especially as I’d just been promoted from the D’Oyly Carte chorus and was getting small parts. Nothing stood in my way to playing all the Gilbert and Sullivan parts, the big ones, and then I went and spoiled everything. It began one day, with a huge bunch of flowers delivered to my dressing-room after a performance at the Savoy Theatre. And with the flowers, there was Lord Thursby’s card. And next day more flowers, and the next day more, and I was tired of being a good girl and seeing all the others go out with important men, titled sometimes, and get big presents from them, such as jewellery and fur coats.’

‘Dear, dear, dear,’ interrupted Mrs Fowles. ‘I warned you, Polly. Didn’t I warn you?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ said Polly. ‘But there it was. I allowed him in the dressing-room. Mortimer was a good-looking man, immaculately dressed and very polite – to begin with, anyway. He took me out to dinners, and to Ascot races, and all sorts of good places. He had plenty of money and he bought me a lovely little enamel watch and, to cut a long story short, I fell for it. I forgot everything Ma had told me, fancied myself in love and decided I was the heroine of a silly novel, yielding to a love that could not end in marriage because he had a position and a wife, but – well, you know all that silly nonsense. There it is – he got round me good and proper. I was a mug. I moved into his house in Manchester Square. And there I had to stay, for then the company sacked me for flagrant immorality. They don’t like company members to be obvious sinners and I’d actually gone and moved in with Mortimer, committing the biggest sin of all, getting caught. So I was trapped with no money coming in and nowhere to go. I didn’t dare come back here. I hadn’t even told Ma I’d been sacked. Then, needless to say, Mortimer turned nasty. I don’t know why. I think he became bored quickly with anything, me included. He’d spent a lot of time out East and it’s true what they say, white men go rotten out there in the tropics. Or maybe he’d have gone rotten anyway, wherever he’d been. But one thing was for certain, he had some dirty tricks up his sleeve, wherever he’d come across them. I won’t go into details, Mrs Watson, but suffice it to say that some violence against my person was involved.’

‘How shocking,’ Mary said.

‘Worse than you can imagine, I think.’

‘Dear, dear, dear,’ said Mrs Fowles. ‘You never told me that. How dreadful. You might have been stupid, but you didn’t deserve that. What a villain.’

‘Well, he’s dead now, for his pains,’ Polly announced without emotion. ‘Anyway, after all that my eyes were well and truly opened. He had two friends – and – and they were almost as bad as he was, up to anything at all, gambling, women, drinking, and on many mornings I’d find them all in the study, lying in chairs or on the couch, half unconscious with opium.’

‘Oh!’ cried Mrs Fowles. ‘You never told me that, either, Polly.’

‘Didn’t want to upset you, Ma,’ Polly said phlegmatically. ‘The opium was a habit he picked up out East,’ she said. ‘He tried to get me to join in, but I told him I wouldn’t. Well, I did once, but it was terrible. I choked on the smoke.’

‘Never do that again,’ Mary said. ‘I speak with authority. I am married to a doctor.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Fowles interestedly. ‘Let me ask you a question …’ A conversation on women’s complaints ensued. Mary wondered how to introduce the subject of John Lee and what use the information Polly had given her so far might have, for it all seemed very far from the kidnapping of Alexander. Then, accidentally, she found out what she needed, for Mrs Fowles, interrupting an account she was giving of the afflictions of her cousin during an awkward confinement, her tenth, broke off to say excitedly, ‘Ah, I have it. You are the wife of the famous Dr Watson. His friend, Mr Holmes, was here several days ago. What a thrilling time we’re having here. Mr Holmes didn’t mention the kidnap of the little boy, though.’

‘Mr Holmes was here?’ said Mary. ‘What did he ask? What did you tell him?’

‘He wanted to know about Lord Thursby’s friends and business interests. He seemed most interested in one of his business partners, a Chinaman, John Lee,’ answered Polly.

‘John Lee – at last,’ Mary muttered to herself. ‘What were you able to tell him?’

‘I only told him he’d been in and out of the house a good deal until one day, about a month ago, he arrived during dinner. Mortimer got up in a rage when the butler announced John Lee’s name. He left the table and rushed into the hall. I heard him shouting, though I couldn’t hear what he said. After that I think they must have gone into the study together, and I didn’t hear any more.’

‘And what did Mr Holmes say when you told him this?’ asked Mary.

‘Nothing – but for a long time after I told him he just sat thinking and brooding. He’s got very keen eyes, hasn’t he? Then he just said, “I see.” We spoke for a little longer, then he said goodbye and left.’

‘How did you know that Mr Lee was a business partner of Lord Thursby’s?’

‘Because late that night Mortimer came to bed drunk and as he was getting out of his trousers he said in a rage, “That’ll teach me never to do business with a Chink again.”’ Polly looked a little shame-faced, then added. ‘Honestly, I didn’t like to tell Mr Holmes that, with trousers being involved and myself present. So I kept quiet about it.’

‘Do you know where this man could be found?’ asked Mary.

Polly thought. ‘I asked the butler, Mr Richmond, about it in the morning, because of the shouting in the hall. He told me he’d been told not to let Mr Lee in the house again. I’d already told Mr Richmond I was planning to leave and there might be ructions when I was found to be gone – just a friendly warning, as you might put it. Mr Richmond wasn’t stuffy with me, because he knew I wasn’t exactly out of the top drawer myself. We were quite friendly. He said his brother-in-law, who’s a market gardener in Kent, had seen John Lee going up the steps of the house to the front door once, while he’d been on his way round to the back to visit Mrs Richmond. Mrs Richmond’s brother knew Lee because he supplied a restaurant Lee had an interest in with vegetables from his market garden. He recognised Lee because he’d seen him often in the kitchen of the restaurant when he delivered the vegetables. Richmond said, though, you can’t tell one Chinaman from another, they all look the same as everybody knows.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Mary, ‘it might help to know the name of the restaurant and where it is.’

‘I think Richmond said it was in Soho. I don’t know any more than that. But I can’t see how this Lee is involved with taking the little boy. You are telling me the truth about the kidnap, aren’t you?’

‘Heavens, yes,’ said Mary. ‘I can hardly bear to think of my poor friend lying there helpless in a fever knowing the boy is still missing. I’m so grateful you have spoken to me frankly, Miss Fowles, and to you, Mrs Fowles, for permitting me to come. I shall take all this information to Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard, and see if he can make any sense of it.’

As Mary was leaving, Mrs Fowles asked, ‘And when do your own troubles begin?’ looking frankly at the gently swelling bulge in Mary’s print dress.

‘At Christmas,’ she said, blushing.

From Kilburn, Mary went straight to Scotland Yard where, finding Lestrade out, she left a message. Then, rather tired, she returned to Chelsea. The house was now empty, except for Charlotte and the servants. Cigar smoke still drifted through the hall and Betsey was in the dining-room, clearing up ashtrays and glasses. Mrs Macgregor had opened the door to Mary and commented, ‘Mrs Watson, you look exhausted. Have you had lunch yet?’

But Mary had said that first she would visit Charlotte in the sickroom. ‘Is she any better?’ she had asked.

‘No,’ said Mrs Macgregor. ‘But who could rest with all the disturbance in the house? Not fifteen minutes ago there were three carriages in the street, taking gentlemen off in all directions. And I believe Prince Rudolph said something which disturbed the Countess Osteire – Miss Charlotte – when he came to say goodbye. He meant no harm, but I’m afraid she wept when he had gone.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mary, and went upstairs to Charlotte’s room. To her consternation Charlotte was out of bed, sitting by her dressing-table, brushing her hair with a weary arm.

‘Charlotte – you shouldn’t be up,’ said Mary. Then she caught sight of Charlotte’s dress, lying on the bed. ‘You can’t be planning to go out!’

‘I must. I must find my poor boy,’ said Charlotte.

‘Go back to bed at once,’ ordered Mary. ‘You are no use to us if you collapse. I’ll ring the bell for Betsey. She may have developed your photographs of the footprint at the bottom of the ladder by now. If you must do something, just lie down and think, and study the scientific evidence. Meanwhile I will tell you what I found out from Polly Fowles, Lord Thursby’s mistress, whom I have just visited. The information is quite promising and I have communicated it to Jules Lestrade.’

Charlotte, at the dressing-table, summoned a smile and said, ‘Mary – you astonish me.’

‘I would do anything for you and that poor boy,’ Mary said resolutely. ‘Now – back to bed with you.’

When Betsey came in she asked, ‘Have you developed the photographs yet?’

‘No, ma’am,’ Betsey said. ‘I’m ever so sorry but with the house in turmoil Mrs Digby needed me.’

‘This is hopeless,’ Mary said. ‘And it’s unlikely to improve. I shall shortly send a message to my servant Martha Jane that she’s needed here and must come immediately. Now – develop the photographs.’

Once Charlotte was back in bed Mary told her what Polly Fowles had said. Charlotte breathed deeply. ‘John Lee is the key to this,’ she said. Her eyes closed. ‘We must find the restaurant.’

‘My message for Inspector Lestrade asked him to find out the address from the butler at the home of the late Lord Thursby,’ said Mary. ‘Now, try to sleep.’ And Charlotte, worn out, appeared to do so.

Mary had some lunch while Mrs Macgregor stayed with Charlotte. She was dozing on the parlour sofa when Lestrade came rushing in. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Watson,’ he said contritely. ‘I came over to tell you the butler’s wife supplied the name of the restaurant. It’s the Green Dragon in Gerrard Street. We have it under observation at the moment. As soon as we spot John Lee we’ll follow him and see what he’s up to.’

‘Why don’t you arrest him?’ Mary said.

‘Miss Charlotte, though ill, seemed to think Lee could lead us to the boy. I must speak to her about this. But in the meanwhile I thought it of paramount importance to do nothing to alarm Lee. The child’s life must be our first concern. The beauty of the situation is that, although forbidden to go near the matter of little Alexander’s kidnapping, we have, thanks to you, Mrs Watson, information which connects Lee with the murdered man, Lord Thursby. That little business is urgent police business – now I can use the full resources of the Yard to see what Lee is up to.’

‘Where is Sherlock Holmes?’ asked Mary.

Lestrade looked anxious and said, ‘That’s the worry. Where is he? Missing for two days, with no word. These appearances and disappearances are, of course, part of his method. But I confess, Mrs Watson, I feel a little alarmed. This case is getting deep, very deep, and what concerns me most is that it is no longer a case of finding the murderer of a dead and largely unloved man, but of finding a little boy who we dearly hope is still alive.’

‘Pray God,’ Mary said. ‘Inspector, there are now two members of the Holmes family missing, Sherlock and his nephew. Do you think that is only coincidence?’

Lestrade considered, then said slowly, ‘Well, all the money, if you’ll excuse my putting it this way, has been so far on the theory that the boy’s kidnap has been connected with his father and the peculiar doings of the Kravonian Royal Family and its various hangers-on, plotters and conspirators. But if you look at it another way …’ He frowned, then said, ‘I’m not sure, Mrs Watson, that you haven’t put a different light on the affair. Same pieces of jigsaw, but a different picture when you make up the puzzle, so to speak.’

‘I only said what was obvious,’ Mary told him.

‘Ah, madam, but spotting the obvious when a hundred theories abound is often the hardest thing to do. And how is Miss Charlotte? Or perhaps,’ Lestrade said rather gloomily, ‘I should now call her the Countess Osteire?’

‘She was sleeping when I left her.’

There was a knock at the parlour door and Betsey came in with two photographs.

‘What’s this then?’ asked Lestrade.

‘I’ll go and see if Charlotte’s awake, and fit enough to see the pictures. Betsey, fetch the tray with the footprints on it,’ Mary said, and ran upstairs.

‘Photographs? Tray with footprints?’ mused Lestrade aloud.

Charlotte was indeed awake and a little brighter. Her temperature was lower and, hearing that the Green Dragon was being watched by Lestrade’s men, she said, ‘I believe Alexander is still alive, and I believe we’re on his trail. Let me see the photographs. Fetch my magnifying glass.’

This was done. The photographs showed the impression of the footprints in the flower bed, and the bottom of the ladder which had been put up to Alexander’s window.

Charlotte then studied the plaster of Paris footprints on the tray brought to her in the bedroom.

‘So,’ Charlotte said, ‘we have Lord Thursby’s body in the Houses of Parliament, a piece of opium in his pocket. Funny thing that, wouldn’t you say, Jules? And then a kidnapping and the impression of a Chinese shoe in the earth under the bedroom window. This is not dissimilar from the damp footprint I saw on the floor in the House of Commons after the murder. We know there was a dispute between Lee and Thursby over a matter of trade. And Sherlock, who went to find Lee, is missing. There are some odd connections here, Jules.’

‘I had the impression your brother knew Lee,’ Lestrade told her. ‘He was shocked when I said his name.’

‘Lee’, Charlotte told him, ‘is an importer of opium. No doubt he supplies the opium dens of Limehouse as part of his trade. He probably has somewhere a factory converting the substance to morphine. He is, I have to say, the supplier of my brother with morphine.’

Lestrade drew a deep breath. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘These Chinese are devils.’

‘You can hardly blame the Chinese for peddling opium,’ Charlotte said. ‘It was we who went to war with them to insist they use it.’

‘Politics isn’t my strong suit,’ Lestrade said. ‘All I know is every time we shut down one of these opium dens another one opens up.’

‘There’s no law against them, surely.’

‘No. No – but I’d dearly like to see one,’ Lestrade said. ‘My best course is to get men to Limehouse straight away and start asking questions among the Chinese.’

After he had left Betsey said, ‘I don’t like this. Policemen blundering about making enquiries might make things worse. These Chinese all know each other. They’ll clam up when the Inspector starts asking questions. Then one of them will warn Lee.’

Suddenly Mary was putting on her straw hat. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You’re from the East End. Will you come with me, Betsey, and help me?’

‘No, Mary,’ said Charlotte. ‘It’s too dangerous. You are expecting a child – ’

‘You can’t stop me,’ Mary told her. And Charlotte realised she could not.

‘Then I’ll come,’ declared Charlotte with a determination equalling Mary’s. ‘I feel better. I’ll sit in the carriage while you make enquiries in these insalubrious places. There’s safety in numbers even if one of the number is not very able.’

‘Charlotte – no!’ exclaimed Mary.

‘Alexander is my son,’ she said. ‘Do you think I will make a very good job of recovery as I lie here at home, knowing you are going to these dangerous places? We’re at a disadvantage, though. We do not know quite where to go.’

Betsey said, ‘In my opinion, neither of you should be involved at all. But I see there’s no stopping you. So we might as well find my brothers, Len and Thomas. They know some of the Chinese boys from Limehouse. They’re not meant to mingle with the Chinese, nor are the Chinese boys meant to fraternise with our lads, for the Chinese are very clannish. But I know they go gambling together. Len and Thomas go to play their gambling games down in Lime-house, though Ma would have a fit if she knew. Then the Chinks come up our way and play cards. Mum keeps telling the boys they’ll get killed down in Limehouse but nothing can stop them. They’ll have as good a notion about where to go and who to talk to as any of Lestrade’s policemen. Probably better.’

Before they left Mary sent a message to her servant, requesting her to come and help in Charlotte’s household. She also asked her to bring with her, without the knowledge of anyone else, a certain item from Battersea. Then Betsey and Mary wrapped Charlotte in a blanket and put her in a cab. Leaning back in her seat, Charlotte, though weak, said with satisfaction, ‘Good. This way we can get ahead of Lestrade’s men and perhaps avoid alarming Lee.’

In Upper Thames Street they turned left into Whitechapel and stopped outside a small house in a narrow, dirty street.

‘How the poor live, eh?’ said Betsey. ‘Not much, but it’s home. Let’s hope Len or Thomas is in. It depends how much work they’ve got at the foundry.’ She ran into the house, and out again soon after.

‘Whitechapel Road,’ she told the driver. To Mary and Charlotte she explained, ‘They were on half-time at the bell foundry before, but orders have picked up. We’ll find them there.’

At a large building in Whitechapel Road she put her hands over her ears and ran in to the clamour, coming out later with two short, lightly built young men, both very like her. A stocky man in a bowler hat with a black beard followed them. Betsy put her head in the cab window. ‘This is Mr Jameson, the foreman,’ she said. ‘Can you explain we need Len and Thomas badly?’

‘Can you spare them?’ Mary asked, leaning out. ‘We will gladly pay their wages for the day if you release them now. It’s to help the police,’ she added.

This did not reassure the bearded man, who looked suspicious and glanced warily at his two workers, making it plain he thought the only help either would ever give to the police would be his own confession to a crime.

‘Please, Mr Jameson,’ cried Betsey. ‘It’s only the once.’

Finally, he grudgingly agreed and Len and Thomas squeezed into the carriage, making themselves as small as possible, out of politeness.

‘You’ve got to get us to Limehouse, where the Chink opium shops are,’ Betsey said.

‘What?’ said one.

‘This lady’s baby’s been taken. They think it’s probably a Chinaman, called John Lee.’

Both young faces expressed alarm. ‘You don’t want to go messing about with John Lee,’ Len said. ‘He owns half Limehouse – he’s clever, and he’s got a lot of men behind him. Even the police are wary of Lee.’

There was a silence in the motionless carriage. ‘It’s just not safe,’ said the other brother Thomas. ‘If your boy’s gone, madam, I’m very sorry, but if Len and me start nosing about in John Lee’s business it could be very bad for us. And as for you ladies, and Betsey – ’

Len interrupted. ‘We’re off work now, Thomas. Let’s go and see Harold Chung.’

Thomas nodded. ‘Can’t do any harm.’

Mary and Charlotte exchanged glances. Charlotte, Mary saw, was very pale. ‘Tell the driver to go there,’ she said. They went through the crowded, poverty-stricken streets and as they drove Len explained, ‘Lee’s a very rich man but his great enemy is a fellow called Chung. Don’t ask me what it’s all about but the Lees and the Chungs have been enemies for generations. They come from the same place in China and it all goes back hundreds of years. Lees and Chungs – dog and cat – that’s it. The police don’t understand. All they see is a load of Chinese cutting each other up down by the waterfront. But me and Thomas have known Harry Chung since we were boys, and maybe he can help – or his father. Old Chung’d do anything to damage John Lee, if he thought he could get away with it.’

The carriage drew up in a narrow street not far from the river. Thomas and Len disappeared inside a house converted into a shop. There were stalls outside selling strange vegetables and unfamiliar china and pots and pans. Meanwhile, on the pavement, a crowd of Chinese men, women and children had collected, to stare at the carriage. The men had their hair in pigtails, the women in knots on their heads. Betsey said, ‘I don’t like the looks of this. They carry knives, you know.’

An elderly Chinese man then came from the shop, with Len and Thomas, who introduced him as Mr Chung. Polite greetings were exchanged. Then Mr Chung and Len and Thomas went back in the shop again. The crowd, in the meanwhile, had dispersed.

‘What is going on?’ wondered Mary. ‘Have you any idea what’s happening, Charlotte?’

Charlotte, looking extremely ill, just shook her head.

‘I think we should give this up and go home,’ Mary said. ‘You are really too ill to be out. And let’s be frank, we don’t know why we’re here or – ’ But now Len and Thomas emerged from the shop, without Mr Chung this time, and got back into the carriage.

‘What’s the verdict?’ asked Betsey.

‘Chung doesn’t give much away,’ said Len. ‘I talked to him. He said John Lee was mixed up in something too big for him. He seemed pleased about it, but wouldn’t give details, even if he had them. But Thomas had a quiet word with his son Harry – what did he say, Thomas?’

‘Grimshaw’s Wharf,’ Thomas said promptly. ‘Lee’s warehouse is down there. And there’s been some unusual traffic in and out. The Chung family keeps an eye on it when they can. Mr Chung says to tell the police to raid it. That’s an unusual thing for a Chinese to say. They don’t trust the police. Even when they’re feuding they prefer to keep them out of their business.’

Len said, ‘I reckon he’s nearly sure there’s something there that will finish John Lee if it’s discovered.’

Charlotte opened her eyes. ‘If my son is there, what will happen to him if there’s a police raid? He might be killed.’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Mary said.

As the driver of their carriage turned to ask where to go next, the shining head of a small Chinese girl on tiptoe appeared in the carriage window.

‘Miss Holmes?’ she pronounced clearly.

‘Yes – what do you want?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Please follow me,’ said the girl.

‘Why?’

‘Message from your brother, so please follow,’ commanded the girl. She began to run along the pavement, the carriage following.

‘Sherlock?’ said Charlotte. ‘What is this all about?’

Mary took her pulse, shook her head. ‘Whatever it is, you must go home soon.’

They went through narrow streets then into a wider one, then stopped outside a church surrounded by a large graveyard.

‘Here,’ said the little girl, and disappeared.

Charlotte got out of the carriage and stood on the pavement, leaning on Mary. An unshaven, poorly dressed, but very familiar figure came through the tombstones and out into the street.

‘Charlotte,’ Sherlock said, ‘I heard you were ill. I have had to go to ground. Disguise and disappearance seemed my only choice until I had worked out a problem. I have been living in a poor lodging house, hiding from John Lee.’

‘Alexander has been taken,’ Charlotte burst out.

‘Taken by Lee,’ he agreed. ‘That is the problem. I know how and why Lee killed Thursby. He knows I could get him tried and hanged. Now he has my nephew as a hostage and will kill him if I speak.’

‘Then – do not speak,’ said Charlotte. ‘Who cares who killed Thursby? The world is better off without him.’

‘I was tempted to think that,’ Sherlock answered. ‘But I cannot trust Lee’s word. He might anyway kill your child, Charlotte, then make his escape. I have been here for days now, evading Lee’s spies, trying to form a plan for getting Alexander back safely. But now,’ he said, almost cheerful, ‘the die is cast. Lee will know by now you’re here and will understand that to mean others are on his trail – we must do something immediately.’ As he spoke he scribbled something on paper. ‘Betsey – you go to Scotland Yard with this note. Get Lestrade to Grimshaw’s Wharf as soon as you can. Only Lestrade, mind. I trust no one else. Meanwhile, we’ll go to the wharf now and face out Lee. There’s no other choice.’

They had to leave the carriage at the end of a dark alley. They walked between rows of dark, soot-blackened warehouses, Charlotte supported by Sherlock on one side and Len on the other, while Thomas lent Mary his arm.

Before they got out of the carriage Sherlock had attempted to dismiss all of them. ‘You’re ill, Charlotte. Mary, this is no place for you. Len and Thomas – this is not your fight.’ But no one had wanted to retreat. Mary’d said, ‘We may not make up much of an army, but there are five of us, and a little boy probably lying terrified in one of these dark buildings.’

As they went up the cobbled alley the sky overhead seemed to grow darker. Although there were thumps and thuds from the wharves beyond the buildings, there seemed, where they were, to be no life at all.

‘We must be cautious,’ Sherlock muttered, with an anxious air. ‘These warehouses go straight out on to the river – we must be careful Lee does not escape by boat.’ Then he stopped and banged four times at a small door set in blackened brickwork. A trapdoor opened. He put his face towards it and said some words in Chinese. The trapdoor closed. Moments later, the door opened. An old woman stood there. ‘Come in,’ she said in English. ‘Mr Lee is waiting for you.’

They went down a short corridor and through a dark and dirty room. All around on bunks in alcoves or on mattresses on the bare floor lay the opium smokers, Chinese and European. One was a European woman in a soiled white silk dress, lying on the floor, face up to the ceiling, the opium pipe beside her white hand on the grimy floor. At a table lit by one candle an old Chinese woman was stuffing the opium pipes. Someone coughed. A door at the end of this room opened into a windowless dusty office and there behind an empty desk stood a handsome Chinese in a dark suit and a very white shirt. There was a leather suitcase beside the desk.

‘John Lee,’ said Sherlock, advancing with Charlotte into the room, ‘I am here to ask for the boy. The police are almost here. It will be better to give him up. I give you my word I will say nothing to anyone, ever, of Thursby’s death.’

‘Mr Lee, I implore you – he is my only son. He means nothing to you now,’ Charlotte pleaded.

‘My boat is ready on the river outside,’ Lee said. ‘I shall be taking the boy with me. If you inform the police, if they follow me, I will kill him.’

Then Charlotte gave a cry, and fainted into her brother’s arms.

Mary Watson took a step towards Lee. ‘Mr Lee, you are a very cruel man,’ she declared angrily. ‘Will you give that boy back?’

‘Ladies should stay at home,’ Lee said implacably.

‘Not when you gentlemen kidnap our children,’ said Mary. Charlotte meanwhile moaned, reviving slightly. Her eyes met Lee’s in fear.

It was then that Mary produced from her handbag Dr Watson’s revolver, the item she had asked her maid to bring over from Battersea – and shot Lee through the breast. The sound reverberated round the dusty room. The door was flung open and the old woman stood there, a long knife in her hand. ‘Get back!’ cried Mary, now pointing Dr Watson’s revolver at the woman.

‘My God!’ said Sherlock. ‘Mary – what have you done?’

Dazed, Charlotte murmured. ‘The female of the species …’

‘You’d better take us to the ship,’ Mary told the old woman. ‘We intend to get the boy back.’ She waved the gun at the woman.

Sherlock, still supporting Charlotte, flinched. Len and Thomas pressed themselves against a wall. Without a word the old woman opened a further door, leading into a vast, raftered room packed with bales. She almost ran across, Mary behind her, the others following, then unbolted and flung open a huge door. There in front of them was the wharf, and beyond that the wide expanse of the Thames. Moored against the dock was a small, trim craft. Two sailors stood on deck. Mary stepped on to the gangplank, still holding the gun and said, ‘Where’s the boy?’

Defiant looks vanished as the hooting of approaching boats began. ‘River Police,’ said one of the men, as two steam craft belonging to the River Police chugged towards them. Both sailors charged down the gangplank and on to the wharf to make their escape. Mary, Charlotte and Sherlock ran on deck, down a small ladder and, throwing open a cabin door, found Alexander sitting at a table with a Chinese woman. He flung himself into Charlotte’s arms.

Much later that night, in Chelsea, with Alexander tucked up safely in bed and Charlotte comfortably on the sofa beside Prince Rudolph, Sherlock and Dr Watson smoked their pipes by the open window. Mary sat quietly in her chair sewing.

John said, ‘Lestrade is managing matters so that John Lee’s death will be attributed to a policeman, who, it will be said, was obliged to shoot him for resisting arrest. He feels it would be better, and so do I.’

‘I’m sure that’s more suitable,’ murmured Charlotte.

‘I would much prefer it,’ Mary said, looking up from her sewing. ‘It was a terrible thing to do, but I could see no alternative.’

‘I am surprised you could shoot so straight, my dear,’ said John.

‘A complete fluke, I assure you,’ Mary told him. ‘It is surprising what one can do in an emergency. I shall never pull a trigger again – unless,’ she added grimly, ‘that awful parrot drives me mad.’

‘It’s a mercy Lee won’t have to be brought to trial,’ said Sherlock. ‘It’s as good as certain he killed Thursby for cheating him over a consignment of opium, but it might have been hard to prove in court. Charlotte found the wet prints of a Chinese shoe on the carpet by the Speaker’s chair, indicating that Lee had killed Thursby in Limehouse, then brought him to the House of Commons by boat. But dried-up footprints on a carpet hardly constitute evidence. Nor does a piece of opium in a pocket.’

‘Why should Lee kill Thursby for a commercial fraud, when he could have taken him to court in an ordinary way? And, having done so, why prop him up in the Speaker’s chair?’ asked John.

‘Lee may have thought’, answered Sherlock, ‘that he had little chance as a Chinese of getting justice in a British court, against a peer of the realm. If Thursby lied, an English jury might well take his word. So Lee killed him, for revenge, and treated the corpse in a grotesque way to indicate to anyone else who might feel like cheating John Lee that he was a clever, cunning, unmerciful man, not a man to cross. It was easy for him to bring the body up-river, thus the wet footprint cleverly noticed by Charlotte. He knew the piece of opium in Thursby’s pocket would be found. That was his way of indicating the reason for which Thursby had been killed. But he knew also I was on to him and feared being tried for murder. When he seized little Alexander I honestly did not know what to do. Even my silence might not have saved the boy’s life. How could I trust John Lee to release my nephew on my word that I would say nothing about him? He would not believe that, once Alexander was back, I would not go to the police. An appalling dilemma.’

‘You had ceased to see Alexander as a political problem and begun to see him as a little boy,’ remarked Charlotte.

‘And John,’ said Mary, rolling up her sewing and putting it in a little bag, ‘I am very weary and must go home.’

‘Of course, my dear,’ said John.

After they had gone Sherlock yawned. ‘I too must leave.’

Once the farewells had been made he turned in the doorway and said to Rudolph and Charlotte, ‘I should like you to know that however ungraceful I have been in this matter I am now pleased, indeed honoured, to be a brother-in-law and an uncle. I hope you’ll accept my apologies for anything I might have done or said to indicate the contrary.’

‘My dear fellow,’ said Prince Rudolph, ‘that is generous of you.’

‘Even so,’ mused Sherlock Holmes, ‘imagine Mary Watson shooting a man.’

‘Imagine,’ murmured Charlotte.

But Sherlock continued to speak. ‘I am astonished by what has happened today. I am without doubt the foremost amateur detective in the world, but I believe there is something I shall never understand.’

‘And what is that, Sherlock?’ asked Charlotte, smiling.

‘Women,’ said the great detective – and was gone.