The House at Baker Street (6 page)

Mr Holmes called out as he passed us, ‘The game, Mrs Watson, is afoot!’

Then they were gone. Mary closed the door behind them, turning to me, smiling sweetly, and said, ‘And our game, Mrs Hudson, is also afoot!’

And we laughed for the sheer joy of it.

But we had been dreaming our hours away, imagining ourselves detectives but merely playing the game. The reality hit us that evening, hard.

John and Mr Holmes returned after sunset, well satisfied. Their case was solved, judging by Mr Holmes’ suddenly prodigious appetite. Night fell, and it was bitterly cold,
the last gasp of winter. Mary and I were in the kitchen when suddenly the area door banged open. There stood Billy, barely a shadow against the darkness, and he was supporting someone slumped
against him. Someone, a boy – Wiggins! As Billy dragged him into the kitchen, I could see that Wiggins’ arm hung loose, and blood, oh my God, the blood, dripped from his head, from his
arm, from all over him. I grabbed him from Billy – who no longer had the strength to hold him after carrying him for miles through the streets like this – and propped Wiggins on a
chair. His eyes did not open, his breathing was shallow and rasping, and his clothes were damp and stiff with blood.

‘Mary,’ I forced myself to say. My boy, what had they done to my boy? What had I done to him? ‘Mary.’ I sounded so calm. ‘Get John. Now!’

It was Wiggins who had brought Billy to me nearly a year ago. Wiggins turned up one cold, wet night with a bedraggled child in tow. This boy, who couldn’t have been more
than ten, slightly built, with dark brown hair, took off his hat when he saw me, and said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in a refined accent. I sat him at the table and gave him a
huge helping of cold meat, cheese and a chunk of bread. I recognized the pallid tone to his skin, the hollows in his cheeks. It’s the way the children look when they’ve been in the
workhouse too long, and haven’t had enough to eat. He ate the food quickly as Wiggins and I talked in the pantry.

‘He’s from an orphanage,’ Wiggins told me, glancing over to Billy every now and again. ‘Both ’is parents up and died of the typhoid, and there ain’t no other
family, so he got sent to a Church orphanage. Nasty places, those, specially for them that’s used to a family and food and love. And he’s posh and clever, and they don’t like that
sort of thing.’

‘The other children bullied him?’

‘Not them. The bastards – ’scuse language, missus, but they are – the ones who run the place. They like their children small and quiet and obedient and knowing their
place. They don’t like children who know it ought to be different, and damned well say so.’ Wiggins’ voice, though low, shook with anger.

‘So that’s what he did,’ I said softly, glancing over to the boy at the table. He’d finished the meal and was now looking around him, curious and bright. ‘They
treated him badly. Beat him, punished him.’

‘They did,’ Wiggins confirmed grimly. ‘So I took ’im. That was right, weren’t it?’ he asked, a touch anxiously.

‘That was right,’ I assured him. I know I should have imposed authority, insisted Wiggins take him back to the orphanage, but I’ve seen those places. I wouldn’t even send
a dog I hated there. ‘Will he stay with you?’

‘He could,’ Wiggins said, slowly. ‘He could learn to be one of us, but he shouldn’t. He could make something of himself.’

‘You could make something of yourself, Wiggins.’ ‘Yeah, and I will, but not the kind of something he’ll make of himself. He could be a doctor or a lawyer or suchlike. Me
– I’m going to end up something a bit different, if you know what I mean,’ Wiggins told me, his eyes for a moment full of a burning intensity. He was right. Given how Wiggins was
growing up, on the street, no care, no guidance, precious little education and not always of the right sort, he could end up dangling at the end of a rope, or the richest man in London, but he
could never be a well-respected member of society. He’d always be on the outside, looking in. Knowing that must have hurt, sometimes, but he never said anything.

I looked across at Billy, who had got up from the table and was walking around the kitchen.

‘He notices things,’ Wiggins said. ‘Things I miss. And he works out what they mean.’

‘Like a detective,’ I said softly.

‘Like a detective,’ Wiggins agreed. ‘Maybe Mr ’Olmes could teach ’im. Like an apprentice.’

‘I’m not sure . . .’ I didn’t know if I could impose a boy on Mr Holmes – but Wiggins knew how to play me.

‘Course, you’d be doing me a great favour, Mrs ’Udson. I can’t keep an eye on him on the street, he’d be getting into all sort of mischief in no time flat, and
I’d have to get him out of it. It would be a great relief to me to know he was safely here. In a proper home, learning a proper trade, where he belongs.’

‘Wiggins,’ I said warningly, knowing I was being manipulated.

‘And ’cos I worry about you,’ Wiggins interrupted.

‘Me?’ I asked, surprised and touched.

‘Mr ’Olmes has all sorts in here, day and night. Thieves, murderers, politicians, brutes of all kinds. I don’t like to think of you here all alone, having to show people of
that sort up to his rooms. And Mr ’Olmes could do with a boy he could trust hanging round the place.’

‘Could he,’ I said dryly.

‘Oh yes,’ Wiggins replied earnestly. ‘Very useful things, boys.’

He had talked me into it, though truth to tell I hadn’t needed much persuading. A woman who’d lost her son, a boy who’d lost his mother – the entire thing was just like a
story.

I took Billy on as page-boy. First I had a conversation with Mr Holmes and John. If Billy was going to do all the showing clients in and so on for Mr Holmes, they’d have
to contribute to his wages.

Mr Holmes was reluctant at first. He didn’t like change, and what ways he had, he was settled in, but John had sprung gallantly to my rescue, pointing out that at my age it wasn’t
good for me to keep running up and down the stairs at all hours, especially not with the kind of people who came to see Holmes. I’d had to show a drunken sailor in at 2 a.m. only that
morning, for heaven’s sake, and if this went on I’d have a heart attack and it would be Holmes’ fault. What’s more, I needed help to do all the errands to map shops and
telegraph offices and cab stands – at which point Mr Holmes interrupted him, accused him of as pretty a piece of emotional manipulation as he had ever seen, and gave in.

Billy got a uniform with two rows of brass buttons and a home and an education.

Once Mr Holmes realized how clever he was, he did start to give the boy an apprenticeship, of a sort. Mr Holmes taught Billy something of what he knew. John, too, gave Billy lessons in all the
knowledge Mr Holmes had forgotten (such as the solar system), though John’s lessons always seemed to segue into thrilling stories that couldn’t possibly have all been true. I do believe
John honed his story-telling skills on Billy. I sent him to a succession of different tutors every Tuesday afternoon, and Billy played his part, too, reading voraciously. Within a few weeks Billy
became an integral part of the household, and after a month even Mr Holmes called him ‘useful’.

But Billy never forgot who had rescued him. Every hour that he had free – usually on Wednesday afternoons and Sundays – he ran onto the streets to spend with Wiggins. The two of them
became close, as close as Mr Holmes and John. It touched me to see the care they took of one another, the concealing of their tight friendship with a joking manner, as boys do.

Now it was Billy guiding the injured Wiggins, with infinite care, to a kitchen chair. Wiggins was white and shaking. Thankfully John had come straight down as soon as Mary had
called him, and gently knelt before him, examining the blood all over him.

‘Where are you hurt?’ he asked. Wiggins shook his head. He didn’t have the strength to answer. I felt sick, watching him bleed, but Mary held me up.

‘His head’s bleeding,’ Billy answered for him. ‘A big cut, right here. Some other cuts and bruises, and his arm twisted under him when the man pushed him down the stairs.
I think it might be broken.’

‘Let me see,’ John said, taking my scissors from the table and cutting Wiggins’ shirt away. ‘Tea, Mrs Hudson, strong and sweet and lots of it. Billy, hold him up, support
him, he’s going to be in a lot of pain and may pass out. Mary, boil some water, this wound needs cleaning.’

I’d never seen John in his role as the doctor before. It was a new side to him for me – this gentle, firm, knowledgeable, authoritative man. No wonder he was on call at all hours
– it must have been comforting to have John Watson treat you. As soon as he touched Wiggins, the boy calmed, and let John take care of him. I wasn’t surprised Mr Holmes deferred to John
in all medical matters – he had a talent no mere learning could replicate.

‘He’s losing so much blood,’ Mary whispered to him, as she placed the bowl of hot water and cloths on the table by John’s side. She glanced up at me, and I saw she was
stricken with guilt. How could we have put a boy, this boy, in so much danger?

‘It’s a scalp wound,’ John said, taking one of the cloths and dabbing at the cut on Wiggins’ head. It went across his forehead into his hair, a sharp straight line. He
must have hit it on the edge of something. ‘They always bleed heavily,’ he continued. ‘You’ll have a scar, Wiggins, which will make you very popular with ladies. Tell them
you got it duelling.’ John winked, and Wiggins, thank God, laughed, just once, a queer, choking laugh.

John unpeeled the last scraps of Wiggins’ shirt just as I put the tea on the table. I gasped – I could not help it; Wiggins’ torso was covered in bruises. Wiggins saw the
horror in my eyes, and in John and Mary’s too. Even Billy winced.

‘I fell down some steps. Stone ones,’Wiggins said hoarsely.

‘Fell?’ John said, disbelieving. ‘Billy said you were pushed, and I’d say you were pushed with some force.’

‘I fell,’ Wiggins repeated stubbornly.

I could have told then, I would have. I would have told John all about the letters, and Mrs Shirley, there and then, and he would have told Mr Holmes, and it would all have been taken out of our
hands. But then Wiggins glanced at me, he stared at me, and his message was clear. He was in on our secret now, had suffered worse for it than we had, and he didn’t want it told. I gave in
and sat down silently. If that was what Wiggins wished, that was how it would be. I owed him that.

I swear that is the only reason I kept silent.

‘Some of these bruises are old,’ John said, examining the mass of yellowing, purple and black patches on Wiggins’ torso.

‘Lots of fights on the street,’ Wiggins told him, clenching his teeth. John’s touch, no matter how gentle, must have hurt, but he would not react to it, not even a gasp of
pain. It was I who gasped, and winced and wept.

‘He always wins,’ Billy said, half proudly, half anxiously. I saw his glance at Wiggins and wondered how many fights Billy had pulled Wiggins out of, how many bruises he had. Did he
worry that, one day, Wiggins would not win? There was so much that went on in the lives around me that I only knew through glances, and glimpses, and half-overheard conversations. I did not have
the authority to demand the truth, but I had the skill to watch and listen and understand what they would never say.

John, having bandaged up the cut on Wiggins’ head and gently smoothed ointment across his bruises, turned his attention to the arm that hung swollen and misshapen at Wiggins’
side.

‘Well, it’s sprained, rather than broken, but it’ll hurt like the devil for a while,’ John told him, as he bandaged it up. ‘I know you’re eager to be gone,
but you need to rest, for a couple of days at least.’

Wiggins looked at him mutinously, but Mary laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘Please, Wiggins,’ she said softly. ‘Give us a chance to make our amends to you.’

Wiggins went quiet, secretly grateful, I thought, and lay back against the chair. John stood up, snapped his bag shut, and turned to me.

‘Mrs Hudson . . .’ he started to say.

‘Don’t tell Mr Holmes,’ I interrupted.

‘Do you honestly think Holmes could miss one moment of a bleeding and battered Wiggins!’ he cried, as close to angry as I’d seen him.

‘John,’ Mary said softly, and he turned to her. He could not help but look at her with love, and she gazed up at him. ‘We can’t tell you, or Sherlock, how Wiggins was
hurt, but please, I ask you, trust us.’

‘For heaven’s sake, this house is full of secrets!’ he snapped.

‘They’re not our secrets to tell. You have secrets you cannot tell me,’ Mary said reasonably.

‘Holmes’ secrets,’ he said gently, not wanting to argue.

‘Exactly. Other people’s secrets,’ she whispered. He looked down at her, and she up at him, and they looked like Hector and I once did. When we were young, and in love, and we
did not have to speak to have a conversation, we just looked at each other and knew what we thought. For a moment, as I watched John and Mary Watson, my heart ached for my dead husband and lost
youth, and I had to look away.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ John said softly, and I glanced round to see him looking at me. ‘I can’t tell Holmes anything, anyway. You haven’t told me
anything.’