The Adventure of the Temperance Society

by Deanna Baran

It was autumn when I returned to our lodgings to find Holmes working diligently upon his mementos past. A dozen piles of newspaper clippings were spread over the table, sideboard, and floor, and six or seven scrap-books lay spread about in a rough crescent before him. It was the first time I had seen him in three days.

“I take it you found a happy conclusion?” I inquired.

“Indeed I have,” he replied. “It was one of the assistant sommeliers, of course. The rough shape of the matter was obvious from the first, but it required a little effort to determine which one, because it would have been unjust to indiscriminately punish them all. Once I realized that I was seeking a colour-blind Belgian, things fell into place.”

“Now, surely, you’re being sarcastic,” I said. “A colour-blind Belgian, indeed!”

“I do not jest,” said Holmes placidly. “You would agree that the English spoken or written by a Londoner, a Scotsman, and an American is not the same, whether in accent or word choice or, perhaps, spelling? That there are regional differences, depending on one’s upbringing, that influence the way one conveys ideas? Just the same, there are differences between a Parisian, a Belgian, and a Québécois. They are not freely interchangeable. They may be told apart. Although, as it turned out, it had been his grandmother who was the Belgian; he himself was from Hornsey. But it was a timely reminder to me about the impact previous generations may have upon their offspring, and even after they are buried tidily in the churchyard, their habits may still be observed preserved within their posterity. It is an interesting thought. I must cultivate it.”

“I’m afraid you’ve quite lost me, Holmes,” I said.

“Take this man, for example. He is not French; he has never been to France or any other French-speaking country. Yet he learned his French at his grandmother’s knee. So he does not learn French of to-day; he learnt the French that his grandmother knew, and expresses his grandmother’s idioms of his grandmother’s day and his grandmother’s region. You may see a similar occurrence in the descendants of a left-handed woman, whose handedness has never been corrected. Perhaps she performs a common task, such as sewing or spinning or ironing, left-handed. She teaches her daughter how to sew or spin or iron, and her daughter teaches her own daughter how to sew or spin or iron. That characteristic of left-handed sewing or spinning or ironing may be preserved through infinite generations of right-handed women, if they never take the time to analyze the motions that have been taught to them.

“You may observe it in handwriting as well. One’s character brings certain distinguishing traits to a hand and will always make it unique unless pains are taken to suppress that character expressing itself upon the page, and making the shape of the letters conform to the dictates of the model. However, there are still those characteristics of the hand itself that change with time and fashion, and various hands become the handwriting of one’s forebears and are not normally seen upon modern correspondence. Suppose a man was taught the hand that was popular when he was a boy - say, perhaps, a fine Italian hand. That youth grows up, and acquires a job as a tutor. He teaches the hand he knew in his youth, even though thirty years may have passed and it is no longer in vogue. One of the girls of the household grows up, having acquired that fine Italian hand in her childhood, and proceeds to teach her own children to write in that hand, yet another twenty or thirty years in the future. And her children may continue to preserve that hand, even into their own old age. The hand is thereby promulgated, even though it may be a century out of fashion long before he ceases to write.”

“I almost fear to ask you how you hit upon the colour-blindness.”

“A person who is unable to properly perceive colour is more likely to stumble over certain mistakes that would never have been committed by someone who could properly observe the full spectrum. In this instance, it made no sense at all, because of the red jacket. But then it occurred to me - what if he mistook the red jacket for a green one? And then it all made sense.”

“Sometime, you will have to put down all the facts for me. I cannot possibly comprehend a story told in fits and starts and mild hints,” I said.

“Perhaps. It was so pedestrian, I fear to bore you with it any more than I already have. The other case might be more to your taste for the sensational, and would require significantly less embroidery to inject the romantic element. Before I left, I was able to clear up a small matter for an Indian maharajah who happened to be staying at the hotel. It had to do with a very fine turban ornament in pearls and emeralds. You would have liked it.”

“Was it stolen, Holmes?”

“Substituted in paste by a son who had come to England to study, and had fallen into gambling debt,” said Holmes absently, placing a clipping upon a page. “The boy’s mother had fallen out of favor, and the maharajah was happy for the excuse to disinherit him. I got a very fine Mughal ornament for my trouble, out of gratitude for clearing up a sticky family situation, and the Langham’s master sommelier, not to be outdone by a foreigner, arranged to send along a few of bottles of wine in addition to my fee from the hotel management. I was rather hoping you would share one with me this evening as we dined.”

“Which should be imminent,” I remarked. “Do you suppose now is a good time to tidy up and allow them to lay our supper?”

“Note how the stones are polished, rather than cut,” said Holmes, casually reaching into his pocket and handing me a small golden object almost vulgar in the number of colorful gems it displayed. “And they are set into small golden cups, rather than the claws favored by our European jewellers. A detective runs into gemstones occasionally, and it’s good to have a working knowledge of such things.”

“My word, Holmes! This pendant must be worth a small fortune!”

“Undoubtedly. But the exchange rate for such things is rather poor. I suppose I shall keep it as a souvenir, as it is rather artistic in its own way, and I certainly cannot wear the thing.”

“If, someday, you ever become affianced, you may well find yourself pleased that you hung on to such an expensive bauble.”

Holmes paused in what passed for tidying long enough to fix me with a piercing look. “If I ever become linked with a creature who would be seen in public with that around her neck, I beg you to take the utmost pains to restore me to my senses.”

It was at that moment that dinner made its arrival. Momentarily flush with income from grateful clients, the ascetic Holmes had indulged in a huge Barbezieux capon truffled to the breaking point to complement the gifted vintage. It was some time before conversation resumed, as both of us turned our concentration to the scents, flavors, and textures that assailed our senses and demanded our full attention.

“I take pride in my abilities as a housekeeper,” remarked Holmes, considerably later that evening. “Would that I had the purse to properly pursue my ambition.”

“You prioritize your brain, at the expense of all the rest of you, neglecting sleep and food alike when tasked with a difficult problem. At times like these, it is surprising that one who is can be so deliberately bereft of creature comforts as a matter of course is able to keep a table such as this!”

“Perhaps I shall write a monograph on the pairing of food and wine on a moderate budget for a bachelor household,” said Holmes. “I shall find the research quite pleasant, but I admit that I prefer to be a connoisseur of crime than anything else, and will happily give up any number of feasts such as this for one truly masterful problem. Petty sneak-thieves pay the bills, whether they are of the better class of servants or the sons of nobility, but I freely admit I find myself in a drought for that which I truly crave.”

“I have never tasted a proper comet vintage before,” I said, eyeing the empty bottle with some dejection and my thoughts lingering upon the word “drought”. “I shall not be able to drink wine again until Christmas, for until the memory fades, it would only compare unfavorably with tonight’s vintage. I remember the Great Comet of 1874, but not enough time has passed to appreciate its effects preserved within the bottle. In fact, I’d say the only thing that marred my enjoyment of this most excellent repast was this stack of papers at my side.”

Holmes looked rather hurt, and I hastened to explain, not wishing him to think I had returned disparagement for his generosity.

“You see, the way the papers were shuffled in their stack on the floor by my chair, there was this handbill at the very top. It was published by the Temperance Coalition, you see. ‘The brittle artery, the softened heart, the gouty kidney, and premature decay’-and here I am on my third or fourth glass of the finest vintage I’ve ever consumed, yet my mind is distracted in thinking about its possible deleterious effects resulting in an irregular heart!”

His face cleared. “That! Oh, that was a memento of a case of mine back in ’79 when I was living in Montague Street.”

“Montague Street?”

“Very near the British Museum. I had made up my mind to become a consulting detective, you see, so I had migrated to London, the center of ever so much criminal activity, to establish myself in its combat.”

“Pray tell,” I said, settling into my comfortable chair, the better to digest both my dinner and his words.

“I would expect you to have been abroad at the time, but there was a gang of female thieves who were very notorious during a certain period. The modus of these ladies was to go about dressed in either full or partial mourning. Given the number of women who have lost someone dear to them - a husband, a child, a parent, a sibling - you can imagine that there is, at any given time, a number of women dressed in similar raiment, and as a matter of course, are generally treated with sensitivity.”

“The finest ladies usually stay isolated from society during their full mourning, and do not amuse themselves in public,” I agreed. “But women - yes. There is always life to tend to.”

“The reason, of course, was the very opaque and concealing veiling that is not amiss upon a woman in bereavement,” said Holmes. “It’s the most natural thing in the world for a woman, attired thusly, to preserve perfect anonymity. This gang of women took advantage of the etiquette that accompanies mourning to obscure their features. At some prearranged place, at some prearranged signal, fifteen or twenty of them would suddenly descend upon a shop, which, more often than not, was a jeweller’s. They would wreak destruction and havoc upon that shop for less than a minute, but what a minute it was! Their garments even were sewn to have special pockets to help facilitate their absconding with as much small, portable, valuable plunder as possible. Then they would melt away into the crowds of London in sundry different directions before the authorities could be alerted or sharp wits could delay them. This happened throughout the West End and Holborn. They might descend twice in a week, or go a fortnight without making a move. Needless to say, the shopkeepers of ever so many high-end stores lived in terror for the safety of their shop-windows and display-cases. Glass is not much of a deterrent for those who lack scruples in their dealings.”

“One can only imagine the cost of such loss!” I said.

“Insurance bore the brunt of it, but we all know who pays for such costs in the end,” said Holmes. “I may have acquired some small fame in certain circles these days, but at that time, I was fresh to London and quite unknown. I had visions of earning a reputation by solving this string of robberies and putting a stop to them.”

“What was your first step?”

“First, I ventured to the assay office to consult their registers. All goldsmiths, jewellers, and other allied traders are kept listed in a tidy little directory. From thence, it was easy to put together a map of London marked with pins with colored heads that allowed me to trace the gang’s work, both chronologically and geographically. I trod the streets and looked for common characteristics of the shops that had already been robbed. You understand that even when humans are trying to be random, they are very unsuccessful at it, and there is even a pattern to their randomness. I created a list of three jewellers that, if the gang of women proved true to their habits, were very likely future targets. Having determined this, I thereby found myself temporarily engaged by one shop, so as to have a better chance of catching the gang at work.”

“Gracious. Did you confess your identity to the jewellers? Were you employed as a guard of sorts?”

“No, my motives were my secret. While I had every confidence in my eventual results, I was still young in my career, and I did not care to cultivate the expectations of others regarding a project I had assumed upon my own volition. With expectations come time-lines and impatience and other feelings of entitlement that, when not accompanied by adequate remuneration, are tedious at best. But playing the part of a low-ranking shop assistant was excellent experience, and I learned quite a bit about the trade that came in useful in the future, especially concerning such things as paste duplicates. For example, with my maharajah this weekend, my solution would not have been nearly so neat had I not had those few weeks’ education behind me.”

“I take it not much time passed before the gang struck?”

“They were quiet for two weeks. I always paid careful attention to any women who arrived clad in any display of mourning, although, being so low in the hierarchy, I generally was not in a position to personally serve and interact with them. One morning, shortly after opening, I did notice a matron being fitted for some rings. Working-class and local, by her accent, but subdued and polite in her manner. She had some mitts made of a very thin, open-worked lace, and through them, I observed smudges of ink upon the top of her knuckles as she considered various mourning rings in pearl, amethyst, jet, and black onyx. Then one of the other clerks then sent me into the safe to retrieve some small objects for a young gentleman, and I went off to do so. In the time it took for me to go to the safe in the workroom, find the box, and return to the floor, the gang of women had descended, struck, and fled. It took them less than thirty seconds to abscond with nearly fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of jewellery.”

“The woman with the lace mitts - had she been part of the gang?”

“Certainly so, for it seems the moment her confederates entered the premises, she swept the entire contents of the ring tray into her handbag and swiftly departed amidst the confusion. In addition to my verbal cues indicating her economic status and geographic residence, I had two other clues to her identity: The ink-stains upon her hand, and the odor of mineral spirits clinging rather strongly about her. What would you have made of those observations?”

“An artist?” I hazarded. “Mineral spirits are used to thin paint, are they not?”

“Close, friend Watson,” said Holmes. “Rather, I was looking for a middle-aged working-class woman who worked in a printer’s shop, but very possibly was involved in its management. I was a little less certain on that point, as you see, having the extra income from a series of robberies does tend to allow one to dress above one’s station, but one cannot dress too conspicuously, lest someone start to wonder. Her absence from the premises could either be accounted for by not having to seek permission to absent herself for an hour or so, or possibly she could have been performing some regular errand, and took the opportunity for a detour. Yet would such a woman run errands, or would not those tasks be delegated more naturally to a boy? She had the signs of the form upon her hands, so she was not merely loitering decoratively in the vicinity of the letterpress, but a compositor is too valuable to be allowed to be absent from his station for an extended period. So my thoughts progressed as I strove to generate a picture in my head of the individual I sought.

“A few queries in the proper quarters quickly gave me a short list of printers’ shops that would bear investigating. I sought one not too far removed from the district in which the gang operated, possibly run by a female, perchance a widow - but not necessarily. Disguised as an eager young botanist with a horticultural newsletter in need of a printer, I proceeded to investigate the likely candidates.

“My primary candidate was a family operation. The father had died three or four years previously, and his widow continued with the business herself. They had eight children. The eldest girl and the three eldest boys did most of the presswork themselves. The middle two children looked after the youngest two. The mother was not present at the time I entered the premises, but the son who was in charge of the business during her absence was happy to show me examples of their work. There was a series of handbills about train expeditions; there was an internal newsletter printed for the Bacon Appreciation Society; some advertisements for things like clock repairs and dressmakers; sundry promotional posters for some local theatre productions; and there was the ‘gouty kidney and softened heart’ handbill that you see preserved before you, which the Temperance Society would distribute to passers-by at the local parks in their efforts to protect the working men of London from the deleterious effects of excessive drink.”

“And you concluded - ?”

“I thought my observations not insignificant. I surreptitiously relieved the Temperance Society of one handbill, which you see I have preserved to this day.”

“So you somehow perceived the Temperance Society to be, in fact, a gang of female robbers secretly imbuing phrases like ‘gouty kidney’ or ‘premature decay’ with felonious meaning? I fail to grasp your chain of reasoning.”

“That would be an idea! But it would require a code-book, which is not nearly as neat and penetrable as a cipher, from the perspective of law and order. Indeed, by your theory, ‘brittle artery’ may mean ‘Mappin and Webb’ and ‘gouty kidney’ may mean ‘Thursday’ and ‘premature decay’ may mean ‘11:30 a.m.’, and ‘softened heart’ may have no meaning at all, and good luck to an outsider attempting to find a correlation! But a cipher - a cipher may be more easily detected, and more easily cracked, especially when the cipherer is an amateur.”

“So, out of all the papers in a printer’s office, you lit upon this one as bearing a secret message?”

“Look at it yourself, Watson, especially at the first five lines. Do you not think that a compositor would, under normal circumstances, consider that to be an acceptable example of his work? It is very deliberately typeset to be so erratic, and it was my hypothesis that the irregularities would bear investigation.”

“Yet no one in the Temperance Society ever remarked upon it?”

“It may look odd to the eye in isolation, but handed out to passers-by strolling in a busy park, few minds would dwell for long upon the specifics of its visual effect, as long as the message was still clearly conveyed. I, however, have made a study of typeface, and can say, with reasonable confidence, that if presented with a small newspaper cutting, I am capable of drawing certain conclusions regarding its origins. Frequently, I am capable of identifying the type face and its source foundry, and I have a working knowledge of where it may be commonly encountered in print. If it is my hobby to unthinkingly process such facts when I encounter a line of text, is it not unlikely for me to equally be aware of instances where that print may have been clearly misused? And if a client’s copy has been deliberately mis-laid, when no other copy in the shop has been similarly abused, and when even the vast majority of that page has been set correctly, it must be for a purpose. What, then, would make a widow with eight children who is maintaining the family business risk a dissatisfied client with a few lines of careless composition?”

“So, you had a poorly-composited handbill,” I said. “Tell me what your thoughts were.”

“It was a germ of an idea that occurred to me when I was fortunate enough to see the handbill, juxtaposed next to the newsletter printed for the Bacon Appreciation Society,” Holmes explained. “That particular issue had a fine article about Baconian epigrams. Sir Francis Bacon! Philosopher, scientist, essayist, statesman. Diplomat. Steganographer.”

“Steganographer?” I asked faintly.

“The art of concealing a secret message in plain view,” Holmes explained, warming to his subject. “In his writings, he discoursed upon various methods that served him well over the course of his career, but one remains more famous than the others to this day. It was my hypothesis that this printer, while perhaps involved in printing an article on the subject for the Society, had learned of a method employed by the great Bacon nearly three centuries ago, and decided to employ it herself for her own means. In this case, I suspected I had stumbled across something that can be described as a biliteral cipher.”

“A ‘biliteral cipher’?” I repeated blankly.

“The genius of it is in its flexibility,” he continued. “Because a biliteral cipher is binary by its very nature. You need two types of one sort of thing. It can be lit and unlit candles. It can be red beads and green beads. It can be bold type and regular type, or italic type and regular type. It can be male and female. It can be forward-facing and profile-view. It can be eyes open and eyes shut. It can be any sort of thing, as long as there’s one to represent ‘A’ and one to represent ‘B’. The chances of a third party not only stumbling across the message, but suspecting that there’s a second underlying message present at all and taking the trouble to work it out - those chances are exceedingly slim.”

“Like Morse code, and telegraphs?” I hazarded. “Dots and dashes?”

“Not exactly, but somewhat,” agreed Holmes. “So, for example, with the Baconian cipher, ‘A’ is represented by ‘AAAAA’, and ‘B’ is represented by ‘AAAAB’, and so on. If I wanted to write ‘DANGER’, it would be ‘AAABB AAAAA ABBAA AABBA AABAA BAAAA’,” he said, suiting the words to his actions, scrawling a string of letters on the back of an envelope. “Now, if I had a piece of paper such as this upon my person, how could it possibly escape arousing suspicion? The secret message is as plain as day, and invites anyone who comes across it to try their hand at cracking it. But! Suppose I have a woolen shawl with a fringe. Suppose I have a piece of fringe knotted in one way to represent ‘A’ and I have a piece of fringe left un-knotted to represent ‘B’. I gift the shawl to the individual I care to warn. And he, being made aware ahead of time of the significance of the fringe, will be able to work out the warning, given sufficient time to examine the shawl in private. That’s rather a clumsy example, but the means of communication could as well be a receipt for roast capon. All I would have to do is write my letters straight to represent ‘A’ and give the letters a subtle tilt, or additional pressure, or whatever we had agreed upon, to represent ‘B’.”

“I see,” I said slowly. “So, what you’re saying is that this gang was taking advantage of a regular, legitimate customer, who was known to distribute his handbills in public at a certain time and place, and thus coordinate their attack upon the next victim?”

“Exactly, Watson!” exclaimed Holmes. “It was a cunning plan, for it is the simplest thing in the world to have the women of the gang stroll through the park under some pretext and accept a handbill from the Temperance Society. And the distributor of the message itself would have no clue of the secret message, let alone whether the passers-by were members of a gang or members of the general public. The rest of the world would remain oblivious to the underlying secret message, and the nature of handbills is very ephemeral indeed, so there would be little paper trail that could be expected to last a week before they were transformed into spills to light ever so many London fireplaces.

“That was the method of communication as I envisaged it, but I get ahead of myself. So, having left the printer’s shop, I went home with my confiscated handbill, and examined it in private to determine if I was correct in my hypothesis. Could I wrest a message from the irregularities in the type? And as it turned out, I could. Taking the normal type for ‘A’ and the italicized type for ‘B’, the message appeared. I will save you the trouble of working it out - ‘LAMBERTS COVENTRY TUE TEN THIRTY’.”

“How exciting, Holmes! So, armed with advance notice of their next foray into crime-”

“It was merest child’s play after that,” said Holmes modestly. “A word or two in the correct ear at Scotland Yard, and come Tuesday by ten-thirty-two, we had seventeen of London’s fairest criminals apprehended and in custody. Although some of the gang failed to show up at the appointed time, the remainder quickly fell apart regardless. I considered it rather a coup, for, as I said, I had accumulated little reputation at that point in my career.”

“Amazing, Holmes! I hope some of the stolen articles were recovered?”

“A surprising number of the more valuable and distinguishable pieces, for in addition to being amateur cipherers, the women were also rather amateurs when it came to things like fences, although they did have a knack for organization and imagination,” said Holmes. “As it turned out, a number of them were indeed widows, and had banded together in their criminal enterprise. I failed to be sympathetic to their cause, as it is rather disingenuous to steal fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of stock from an honest shopkeeper, and then repeat the process five or ten times, and claim that one only did it for bread. However, the courts were rather indulgent with the criminals, and they got off with a lighter sentence than one would expect, after taking the children into account.”

“I don’t suppose you know if the children kept the printing business up during their mother’s incarceration?” I asked. “Having any business at all puts them ahead of so many other unfortunates in this city.”

“As a matter of fact, she was not at Lambert’s on the fateful day,” said Holmes. “The remnants of the gang were exceedingly suspicious, as I heard tell several months later. They wondered why those smaller fish happened to be caught, yet my ringleader was curiously absent on such a critical day. They jumped to the conclusion that she had been warned to stay away beforehand, and were not pleased at having been sacrificed. Although transportation had ended years before, the woman and her family found it prudent to somehow come up with the money for passage to Australia, and set up a very successful publishing business there. The family decided to supplement their earnings from printing with a little journalism, and put together a ladies’ magazine which ended up a very profitable niche for them to fill honestly. If you look a few pages deeper in that stack, you may find an issue or two which ended up in my collection of mementoes past.”