Anthony Horowitz - The House of Silk

‘I love him as only a sister can. My mother too. And do not believe for a single minute that she died as a result of an accident. We are a respectable family, Mr Holmes. My father was a printseller who came to London from Manchester and it was he who opened the picture-dealership in Albemarle Street. Alas, he died when we were quite young and since then the three of us have lived together in perfect harmony. When Edmund announced his determination to ally himself with Mrs Marryat, when he argued with us and refused to listen to reason, it broke my mother’s heart. Of course we would have liked to see Edmund married. His happiness was all that mattered to us in the world. But how could he marry her? A foreign adventuress we had never met and who, from the start, was clearly interested only in his wealth and position, in the comfort and protection he could give her. My mother killed herself, Mr Holmes. She could not live with the shame and the unhappiness of this accursed marriage and so, six months after the wedding day, she turned on the gas tap and lay on her bed until the fumes had done their work and the kindness of oblivion had taken her from us.’

‘Did your mother communicate her intentions to you?’ Holmes asked.

‘She didn’t need to. I knew what was in her mind and I was hardly surprised when they found her. She had made her choice. This has not been a pleasant household from the day that the American woman arrived, Mr Holmes. And now this latest business, this intruder who has broken into our home and stolen Mama’s necklace, our most cherished memory of that dear, departed soul. It is all part of the same evil business. How do we not know that this stranger has not come here on her account rather than to pursue some vendetta against my brother? She was with me in the sitting room when he first appeared. I saw him from the window. Perhaps he is an old acquaintance who has followed her here. Perhaps he is more. But this is only the beginning of it, Mr Holmes. So long as this marriage continues, we will none of us be safe.’

‘Your brother seems perfectly content,’ Holmes responded, with a degree of indifference. ‘But setting that aside, what would you have me do? A man can choose whom he marries without the blessing of his mother. Or, indeed, of his sister.’

‘You can investigate her.’

‘It is none of my business, Miss Carstairs.’

Eliza Carstairs gazed at him with contempt. ‘I have read of your exploits, Mr Holmes,’ she replied. ‘And I have always considered them to be exaggerated. You yourself, for all your cleverness, have always struck me as someone with no understanding of the human heart. Now I know that to be true.’ And with that, she wheeled round and went back into the house.

Holmes watched her until the door had closed. ‘Most singular,’ he remarked. ‘This case becomes increasingly curious and complex.’

‘I have never heard a woman speak with such fury,’ I observed.

‘Indeed, Watson. But there is one thing I would particularly like to know, for I am beginning to see great danger in this situation.’ He glanced at the fountain, at the stone figures and the frozen circle of water. ‘I wonder if Mrs Catherine Carstairs is able to swim?’

Holmes slept in late the next morning and I was sitting on my own, reading The Martyrdom of Man , by Winwood Reade, a book that he had recommended to me on more than one occasion but which, I confess, I had found heavy going. I could see, however, why the author had appealed to my friend with his hatred of ‘idleness and stupidity’, his reverence for ‘the divine intellect’, his suggestion that ‘It is the nature of man to reason from himself outwards.’ Holmes could have written much of it himself, and although I was glad to turn the last page and set it aside, I felt it had at least provided me with some insight into the detective’s mind. The morning post had brought a letter from Mary. All was well in Camberwell; Richard Forrester was not so ill that he could not take delight in seeing his old governess again, and she was evidently enjoying the companionship of the boy’s mother who was treating her, quite correctly, as an equal rather than a former employee.

I had picked up my pen to reply to her when there was a loud ring at the front door, followed by the patter of many feet on the stairs. It was a sound that I remembered well, so I was fully prepared when about half a dozen street Arabs burst into the room and formed themselves into something resembling an orderly line, with the tallest and oldest of them shouting them into shape.

‘Wiggins!’ I exclaimed, for I remembered his name. ‘I had not expected to see you again.’

‘Mr ’olmes sent us a message, sir, summoning us on a matter of the greatest hurgency,’ Wiggins replied. ‘And when Mr ’olmes calls, we come, so ’ere we are!’

Sherlock had once named them the Baker Street division of the detective police force. At other times he referred to them as the Irregulars. A scruffier, more ragged bunch would be hard to imagine, boys between the ages of eight and fifteen, held together by dirt and grime, their clothes so cut about and stitched back together that it would be impossible to say to how many other children they must have at some time belonged. Wiggins himself was wearing an adult jacket that had been cut in half, a strip removed from the middle and the top, and the bottom put together again. Several of the boys were barefooted. Only one, I noted, was a little smarter and better fed than the others, his clothes slightly less threadbare, and I wondered what wickedness — pickpocketing, perhaps, or burglary — had furnished him with the means not just to survive but, in his own way, to prosper. He could not have been more than thirteen years old and yet, like all of them, he was already quite grown up. Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.

A moment later, Sherlock Holmes appeared and with him, Mrs Hudson. I could see that our landlady was flustered and out of sorts and she did not attempt to hide her thoughts. ‘I won’t have it, Mr Holmes. I’ve told you before. This is a respectable house in which to invite a gang of ragamuffins. Heaven knows what diseases they’ll have brought in with them — nor what items of silver or linen will be gone when they depart.’

‘Please calm yourself, my good Mrs Hudson,’ Holmes laughed. ‘Wiggins! I’ve told you before. I will not have the house invaded in this way. In future, you alone will report to me. But since you are here and have brought with you the entire gang, listen carefully to my instructions. Our quarry is an American, a man in his mid-thirties who occasionally wears a flat cap. He has a recent scar on his right cheek and, I think we can assume, is a stranger to London. Yesterday, he was at London Bridge Station and has in his possession a gold necklace set with three clusters of sapphires which, needless to say, he came by illicitly. Now, where do you think he would go to dispose of it?’

‘Fullwood’s Rents!’ one boy shouted out.

‘The Jews on Petticoat Lane,’ cried another.

‘No! He’ll get a better price at the hell houses,’ suggested a third. ‘I’d go to Flower Street or Field Lane.’

‘The pawnbrokers!’ interjected the better-dressed boy who had first caught my attention.

‘The pawnbrokers!’ Holmes agreed. ‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘It is Ross, sir.’

‘Well, Ross, you have the makings of a detective. The man that we seek is new to the city and will not know Flower Street, Fullwood’s Rents or any of the more esoteric corners where you boys find trouble for yourselves. He will go to the most obvious place and the symbol of the three golden balls is known throughout the world. So that’s where I want you to begin. He arrived at London Bridge, and let us assume that he chose to reside in a hotel or a lodging house close to there. You must visit every pawnbroker in the district, describing the man and the jewellery which he may have attempted to sell.’ Holmes reached into his pocket. ‘My rates are the same as always. A shilling each and a guinea for whoever finds what I’m looking for.’