The House at Baker Street (14 page)

‘No, I’m always “Mrs Watson” but I persist in calling him Sherlock. He’s practically a brother-in-law to me, after all.’ Mary took a sip of tea, and then said
thoughtfully, ‘John says that does him good, too. He says at this rate Sherlock might begin to think of women as at least half as good as men by the end of the century.’ She glanced up
at Mrs Norton, laughing. ‘Between the two of us – I mean the three of us – we could reform him!’

‘I doubt that,’ Irene replied, though she laughed. ‘But ladies – excuse me, you were not in the neighbourhood for a gossip, or idle curiosity. You want something. How can
I help?’

Mary and I exchanged glances. This was it, the vital moment. The moment where we reached out, and knew not what the answer would be. We had enlisted the help of Billy and Wiggins, but we knew
them, we knew what they would say. Now we were going to ask this woman neither of us had ever met for help, and what’s more, we were going to ask her to help us with something utterly
illegal. We didn’t know what would happen next. She might be insulted. She might be angry. She might tell the police. Doubtful, but possible. She might tell Mr Holmes, which was more
possible, and then he and John would – in the gentlest possible way – either tell us to stop, or worse, push us to one side and take over the investigation themselves. Mary and I would
become bystanders again. This moment was quite a risk.

Ah well, as my Hector often observed, risks are there to be taken. I put down my tea cup, faced Irene, and said, very directly, ‘We want you to introduce us to someone trustworthy who
could pick locks and break into safes and generally burgle a house so no one knows we have been there.’

I said it quickly, all in one breath. Beside me, I heard Mary give a tiny cry of surprise at my audacity, which she quickly silenced. Irene stared at me, her tea cup in her hand, eyes wide.

Give me my due, I’d achieved something Mr Holmes never had. I’d surprised Irene Adler.

She put the tea cup down very slowly and said, ‘What makes you think I know such people?’

‘Because you managed to retrieve the photograph of you and the King of Bohemia, even though it was safely locked away,’ I said swiftly. ‘Because you knew enough about the
habits of burglars not to keep it in a safe. Because from all I’ve read about you, I suspect there are many other pictures and souvenirs you had to get back before you married and I
don’t think you could have got them all yourself. You must know someone with the necessary skills.’ I stopped. My mouth had gone dry and I could not have said more if my life depended
on it. Irene’s face froze. I felt my hands twist against each other in my lap, and I grasped them tight to control them. If she was going to feel insulted, that last statement should just
about do it. I braced myself for the inevitable flood of anger.

She took a deep breath and then said, ‘Why?’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Why do you need to find such a person?’

Well, that was not what I expected.

We told her. We told her of the crying woman and the man in the river and the attack on Wiggins. We told her of the Whitechapel Lady, and all those other women who had disappeared from their
ruined lives. We told her of the destroyed families, and the suicides and the whispering, the constant, corrosive whispering. We told her of the foul, faceless spider of a man who squatted in the
centre of it all, pulling strings and playing tricks and feeding off the pain, growing fat on terror and loss and heartbreak.

‘I see,’ Irene said when we were done. ‘What a horrible story. I never knew all this was happening. I should have understood, I have seen some terrible things, but I never put
all the pieces together. Blackmail is such a foul crime.’

‘He’s not even blackmailing for money,’ Mary said. ‘He just likes to destroy.’

The day had grown dark outside, and Irene rose to light the lamps. She took a spill from a jar on the mantelpiece, and lit it on the fire. She held the flame up to the gas lamp, briefly throwing
her face into a bizarre, flickering shadow.

‘You think you know who this man is?’ she asked, as she lit the lamp.

‘Sir George Burnwell,’ I told her.

She blew out the burning spill and turned to me in surprise. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘I am aware of him. The man is a heartless manipulative bully who hates women even as he
seduces them, but to go as far as this . . . It really does not seem to be in his nature.’

‘The evidence points that way,’ Mary said. ‘For now. It’s only circumstantial. We need something solid.’

‘I see,’ Irene said. She threw the spill into the fire, and walked up and down the room a few times, deep in thought. Then she turned to us, straightened her back, and said,
‘The person you are looking for, the trustworthy and skilled housebreaker, is me.’

‘You?’ I asked, surprised – but not actually that surprised.

‘I am quite good at it, I assure you,’ she said gently, but very seriously. ‘Actually, very good at it. Let me not underestimate my own talents. I had the best of all
teachers.’

‘But . . .’ Mary started to say. Irene sat down on the sofa opposite us again.

‘As you say,’ Irene confirmed, ‘there have been objects – photographs, letters, locks of hair – that I have needed to retrieve. I could trust only myself, therefore
I alone took back those objects from those who kept them. If anyone else had seen them, I would have been open to blackmail myself. I have some interesting, highly scandalous information. Even the
information I lodge with my solicitor must be sealed. I have had some narrow escapes in my time,’ she said, in a quiet voice. She shuddered, as if an old and bitter memory washed over her.
Then she turned back to us, and smiled brightly.

‘I accept,’ she said. ‘Whatever you need, I will do.’ Her smile became mischievous. ‘I’m in the mood for an adventure.’

‘Um . . . thank you, Miss . . . I mean Mrs Norton,’ I said, stammering in my surprise. Mary laughed, utterly delighted with the outcome.

‘Irene, please,’ she said. ‘If we’re to be criminals together, let us use our first names. I am Irene.’

‘And you know I’m Mary,’ Mary said cheerfully. They both turned to me.

Criminals. We would be criminals. We would rob and steal and who knew what else?

I looked up to see Mary and Irene looking at me, waiting. My first name? No one had used my first name since Hector died. I had not even told Mary my name. For a moment, I wasn’t sure I
could remember it.

‘Martha,’ I said to them. ‘My first name is Martha.’

Martha, Mary and Irene. Criminals together. So be it. It was for the best of causes.

We planned late into the night, accompanied by a lovely supper, only stopping at ten, when Mary mentioned her husband might possibly be wondering where she was. I knew Mr
Holmes would not care where I was. If I was not there to serve his supper, he would merely go out to eat at his favourite Italian restaurant. Everything was settled for two nights hence, when the
moon would be new, and cast less light. Mary and I walked up to the main street to hail a cab. Mary ran ahead, seeing one in the distance. I, trailing behind, happened to turn as we left
Irene’s street.

It was empty now, apart from one last, solitary straggler. He lounged against a postbox, not even bothering to hide the fact that he was watching us. He could have been there all day. He must
have been there ever since it was dark. He could have watched us through the well-lit window of Irene’s house. I did not recognize his face – the street was too dark, his face too
plain. I looked at the arm of his jacket. There was no paint, but I could just see, under the gaslight, a paler patch where it had been cleaned vigorously. He tipped his hat to me and strolled
away.

I had led the Ordinary Man right to Irene Adler’s door.

John glowed the day he came to tell me he had won his Mary. I wept – I told him it was for joy, but it was loss. John had been the tie that bound us all, and now he was
slipping away. I know that Mr Holmes felt it keenly, but he never said a word. He merely sat and brooded in the dark. His adventures for a while became more frenetic and more dangerous, and I sat
in the kitchen and listened.

The afternoon before his wedding, John came to visit. I was touched he chose to spend this time with me, and I would not stop talking, for fear if I fell silent, the afternoon would end. But
dusk will always fall, and soon it did.

‘I have bought a medical practice,’ John told me, as I rose to light the gas lamps. ‘Not so very far away.’

‘But not here,’ I said, before I could stop myself.

‘Close,’ he said, and reached to light the highest gas lamp for me, the one I had to stand on a chair to reach. ‘A short cab ride away. You and Holmes will always be welcome
there.’

‘Good luck getting Mr Holmes to leave 221b for anything other than a case,’ I said, more brightly than I felt, putting the matches away in the kitchen drawer.

‘Mary is talking to him now,’ John told me. ‘There is a room set aside for him in the new house, and she is consulting him on how he would like it to be decorated.’

For a moment my heart fell away, and I had to grasp the kitchen dresser for support. If Mr Holmes left too . . .

‘Not that he will use it,’ John said quickly. ‘He is too fond of 221b.’

‘He’ll miss you,’ I said softly, my back still to John.

‘Billy is bright,’ John said lightly. ‘He soaks in everything Holmes teaches him, and Holmes has noticed. He’ll enjoy making an apprentice of the boy.’

I said nothing.

‘I will visit,’ John promised. ‘Not a week will go by that I will not be here. I will still keep a bed here, if I may. Billy will be here too. And Mr Holmes . . .’

‘Is used to me,’ I finished for him, straightening the plates on the dresser, still refusing to turn to look at John, in case he saw the tears in my eyes.

‘Is fond of you, in his own brusque way,’ John said gently. ‘Highly insulting way sometimes. He’s the same with me. Calls me all sorts of things, usually around the theme
of “idiot”, day and night, but I know I am his closest friend. Only friend, I think.’ John came over to me, and placing his hands on my shoulders, turned me to face him. ‘We
will neither of us abandon you, mother to us that you are,’ he said, and kissed me on the forehead.

I wept again, as he wrapped his arms around me, but this time I wept with relief.

‘Now,’ he said to me. ‘I want you to meet my Mary. Yes, I know you’ve met her before, but I want you to meet her properly, as my wife, well, my wife after tomorrow. You
will love her.’

And I did.

This had been seven months earlier, and I felt a little ashamed of how weak and foolish I had been. Of course Mary would not take John away from me. It was, in fact, quite the opposite –
he had brought Mary to me. Given we were now working on our case, I felt Mary and I were as much partners in work and friendship as Mr Holmes and Dr Watson.

In work as long as we could solve this case, that is. The morning after meeting Irene, I sat down to sort through what we had learnt and see what I could deduce from the few facts and many
suppositions. Mr Holmes was out, John and Mary were, for once, in their own home, and I had sent Billy to instruct the Irregulars to discreetly watch Sir George’s house. Therefore, I was left
all alone in 221b.

You mustn’t feel sorry for me, that I was alone so much. I was of that nature that thrives on solitude. Much as I loved Mary and Billy and the others, sometimes I felt as if I could only
breathe when I was alone. In solitude I found a peace and freedom I could never find in company. Even my husband and my child had known to give me time alone just to become myself again. Only when
I was alone could I think. I have to admit, some of the most content moments of my life were spent alone, in the kitchen of 221b, the sun streaming through the window, with absolutely no demands on
my time.

But then again, being alone by choice is so very different from being alone in an always empty house.

That day I was trying to get my thoughts in some sort of order. This case had started as blackmail and libel, evolved into attempted murder and had now become something so dark and disturbing I
did not have a name for it.

What did we know? We knew this man held secrets. How did he gather them? He must have had help – disgruntled servants, foolish relatives, corrupt officials. But he himself hid in the
background.

Just like me.

I doubted that it was him who had whispered in the Whitechapel Lady’s ear. I should imagine he went to great lengths to keep his distance from his victims. He watched. He did not act
– unless he had to. He set in motion a chain of events and stepped in only at an opportune, final moment. Only at the moment of greatest satisfaction, when his work had finally come to
fruition. He must be a man of supreme control over himself – able to twitch and pull and loosen and tighten the strings of his puppets without ever giving himself away or going too far. At
least not until the time was exactly right.

I sat back in my chair and sighed. This speculation was all very well, but as Mr Holmes would say, I needed data!