Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

She couldn’t be hearing this right. ‘Edward James Hardcastle, are you actually asking me to marry you?’

“Not tonight. Far too late to knock up a vicar. But yes. That seems to be the general consensus.’

But…Fizzy pulled away.

‘What about the painting?’

‘What about it?’ he rasped, drawing her back, and when they finally came up for air, he said, ‘I don’t imagine you’ll make a habit of stealing. I mean, the logistics of bringing the kids to visit you in the clink would be an absolute nightmare.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ she stuttered.

He gave her nose a little tweak.

‘Like my kid brother, darling, we all have siblings.’

He tilted her chin up to face him.

‘The eyes were the wrong way round, Fizzy. Yours,’ he said kissing them in turn, ‘are blue on the left, brown on the right and trust me, artists of Boucard’s calibre don’t get such details wrong.’

For the first time in her life, Fizzy knew what it was to be floating on air.

‘I suppose I might consider marrying you -’ she began, though her actual thoughts ran more along the lines of wild horses.

‘Very kind.’

‘- but what about money? Neither of us earns very much -’

‘True,’ he agreed, ‘but don’t you think this,’ he whisked off her cloche hat and pulled out Woman in a Mask, ‘should get us off to a good start?’

‘Do you mind!’

Fizzy snatched at her sister’s naked image and stuffed it back under the brim.

‘It’s worth a fortune on the black market,’ he rumbled.

‘Teddy Hardcastle, you aren’t seriously asking me to weigh my sister’s morals against cold hard cash?’

She rammed the cloche back over her bob.

‘Because if you are, you ought to know right now that I won’t use something as tawdry as this to pay my electricity bill!’

She adjusted the cloche and thought, silly cow. Shouldn’t have posed for him in the first place.

‘A honeymoon, on the other hand…’

Teddy’s laughter echoed into the darkness. ‘Which do you fancy, you wicked, wicked child? A fortnight in Antibes? Or would you prefer to see Venice?’

Fizzy snuggled back into his muscular arms. ‘Don’t care,’ she murmured.

Because with that painting they could afford both.

What annoys me most is that he doesn’t notice.

There are so few females in his life, and the ones that he does meet are usually in distress or hiding something. They’re titled, or troubled, or – well, one wouldn’t use the word in polite company, but it also begins with a T, and may be preceded by the word ‘Bakewell’. I see them all, because I see all of his clients. I open the door to them, I send them away or ask them to wait, or show them up the seventeen stairs to his room. You don’t let a stranger into your house without noticing something about them, and there’s usually something to notice. The ladies may have red-rimmed eyes and damp handkerchiefs, or may adopt a disdainful air to make me think they are the mistresses of their situations. The gentlemen are more obvious still, their rage barely concealed as they hop from one foot to the other, their eagerness to see my lodger brushing aside the most common courtesies. Sometimes our visitors are fearful, and search the street to make sure they have not been followed. These ones rush inside as if they have been scalded, and once my door is safely closed behind them, apologise for their behaviour, wringing their caps and glancing to the top of the stairs, half-expecting him to pop out of his rooms and solve their problems right in the hallway, as if I would allow such a thing.

I shouldn’t complain, for a landlady’s life is rarely interesting, and the comings and goings are a small price to pay for housing such a famous London figure. There are annoyances, of course; the infernal scratching of that violin, the muffled explosions from unstable compounds in the laboratory he has rigged up in my back room (without my permission), the immovable stains that appear on the carpets, the ghastly burning-cat smells that waft down from the landing, invariably at tea-time when I am about to tuck into a kipper, the unsocial hours kept by a man who finds sleep a stranger. Yet I am fond of him because his enthusiasm leaves him so unprotected. He knows the doctor is concerned for his well-being. But he never notices me.

Of course, he is the Great Detective, and I am only the landlady. To hear him pronounce judgement you would think no one else was born with a pair of eyes. We don’t all have to shout about it from the rooftops. But my job is to notice everything, though I get little thanks.

Allow me to present you with an example. Only last week, on a drizzling Tuesday night at half past ten, as I was readying myself for bed, there came a knock at the door. The girl had gone up to bed, and I was left to greet the caller, a frantic lady of some forty summers, in a dripping fur hat, clutching a wet fox-collar about her throat.

‘Is this the house of Mr Sherlock Holmes?’ she asked, without so much as a good evening.

‘Why yes,’ I replied, ‘and I am his landlady, Mrs Hudson, but Mr Holmes has left strict instructions not to be disturbed.’

‘I must see him,’ said the lady. ‘It is a matter of the utmost urgency.’ I say lady, for I assumed her to be one though she was not wearing gloves, and the wetness of her clothes suggested that she had not alighted from her own carriage, or even a Hackney. She had a bearing, though, and a way of looking that I have seen too often when ladies look at landladies.

‘If you’d care to wait in the front room I’ll see what can be done,’ I told her, and trotted off upstairs. I am nervous of no one in my own house, but sometimes Mr Holmes can be alarming. On this night he spoke to me rudely through the door, and finally opened it a crack to see what was amiss.

As I explained that a lady waited downstairs, I could see my lodger hastily rolling down the sleeve of his shirt, tidying something away and complaining that it really was too bad he should be disturbed in such a manner. Knowing him, I took this to be an agreement that he would see her.

‘Is she in need of medical attention?’ he asked briskly. ‘Dr Watson is still away.’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘but she is quite distraught, for she has run here in the rain without stopping to dress for visiting.’ And I showed her up. As she passed me, I smelled essence of violets on her clothes, and something else I recognised but could not place, a nursery smell.

I stood on the landing, listening. She introduced herself as Lady Cecily Templeford, but then the door closed and I heard no more. Still, it was enough. I read the women’s weeklies, so I knew that Lady Templeford’s son recently married beneath him. It was quite the scandal among the leisured classes, which I am not part of, but I make it my business to read about their small sufferings, who is engaged to whom, and why they should not be.

I went to the parlour and searched through the periodicals in the fire bucket. I soon came to the story. The Honourable Archibald Templeford married Miss Rose Nichols after a brief engagement. His mother refused to attend the wedding nuptials on account of Miss Nichols’ former profession, namely performing as a songstress in the twice-nightlies, where she was known as ‘The Deptford Nightingale’. Miss Nichols subsequently gave birth to a baby boy named Godwin. I was still reading this item when the door to Mr Holmes’ apartment slammed open.

‘If you do not help me, I do not know what I shall do,’ she said loudly enough to wake up the serving girl on the top floor. ‘I have no one else to whom I can turn, and need not tell you what this would do to our family should the news be made public.’ And with that she swept past me once more, almost knocking me flat, her grand exit only marred by her struggle with the front door latch.