Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

At one point, the beaming maid took away the soup plates and brought in a dish of lamb cutlets and a bottle of good claret.

When Holmes had finished his story, Madame Pujol sat back and considered. Holmes tucked into his cutlets.

At last, ‘You have missed something, Sherlock,’ she said in her accented English.

Holmes looked up from his plate. ‘What have you spotted?’

‘The nurse took the boat train and arrived at Victoria, did she not? There are many good hotels near Victoria. Why then did she book into the Grand Midland Hotel? It is on the other side of London. No woman travelling alone with a child would choose to prolong so arduous a journey without an excellent reason. Sherlock, I have told you before, you do not take the female point of view sufficiently into account.’

A thought occurred to me. ‘You don’t think the nurse had something to do with Arthur’s disappearance?’

She smiled at me. ‘No, no. Sherlock is right there, I am sure. She gave her life for that child. All the same, “ Cherchez la femme .” That is my advice. There is more to be discovered about that nurse and the circumstances of her disappearance.’

‘There is no one on whose intelligence and intuition I put more reliance, not even Mycroft,’ Holmes told me as we drove to la Gare du Nord.

Indeed, his first act on reaching Victoria after another wretched night crossing was to take a cab for the Grand Midland Hotel and question the manager. He learned that on the evening of her disappearance Mrs Shaughnessy had asked for a cab to be brought to the servants’ entrance. Clearly she had desired to leave the hotel unseen.

So began three days of the most intense frustration. Lestrade’s men questioned local cab drivers with no result. Holmes instructed the Baker Street Irregulars to find out if Mrs Shaughnessy had been seen in the streets around St Pancras. They found a chestnut seller who had seen someone fitting her description walking up Judd Street, only a few minutes from the hotel. She had been alone.

‘My theory is this,’ Holmes told Mrs Armstrong. ‘Mrs Shaughnessy feared there would be another attempt to snatch Arthur. She took him to a place where she thought that he would be safe, somewhere close at hand, for I believe she was walking back to the hotel when Moriarty’s men accosted her and tried to find out where the child was.’

Mrs Shaughnessy’s own relatives all lived in Ireland, but she had worked for a family in London for some years. This seemed to open up some possibilities, until Holmes discovered that the family was in America so she could not have lodged Arthur with them. But there the trail went cold.

Mrs Armstrong grew thinner, and the shadows beneath her eyes became more pronounced. She was supported only by the need to care for her little girl. It grieved me to see her and I know that Holmes felt keenly his failure to relieve her anguish.

On the morning of the fourth day, we had a late breakfast. Holmes was turning over his notes on the case, trying to find some chink in the darkness that had gathered around us.

He thrust the papers to one side. ‘It’s no good, Watson. There’s nothing.’

I caught sight of the ribbon that had been wrapped up in oilcloth and concealed in the bosom of the nurse.

‘We never did get to the bottom of that ribbon,’ I remarked, as Mrs Hudson came into the room with a tray of dishes.

‘We probably never shall, since Mrs Armstrong could throw no light on it.’

In his usual meticulous way, Holmes had also consulted a local haberdasher, but had learned nothing of interest. Cheap ribbons exactly like it could be purchased in any number of places.

He examined it. ‘Still, it is curious, the way this end has been cut in a jagged line. Lestrade may be right, some kind of lover’s token—’

Behind me I heard a gasp, followed immediately by a great crash.

I looked round to see kedgeree all over the carpet and Mrs Hudson standing with her hand to her heart.

‘What on earth is the matter?’ I cried.

Holmes was on his feet. There was an eager light in his eyes. ‘You don’t mean to say that you know the meaning of that ribbon, Mrs Hudson?’

She nodded. ‘I believe I do, Mr Holmes.’

We took Mrs Hudson with us and collected Mrs Armstrong from the hotel. Very soon we were drawing up outside a plain Georgian building off Brunswick Square. We asked to see Mr Brown, the warden, and were shown into an office with walls lined with ledgers.

A man of about fifty with keen eyes and mutton-chop whiskers rose from behind a desk.

‘How can I help you, ladies and gentlemen?’ he enquired.

‘I think you will recognize this,’ Holmes said. He laid the piece of ribbon on the desk.

Brown frowned. ‘Can you tell me how you came by this?’

‘It was concealed on the body of Mrs Shaughnessy.’

‘The body!’ He was visibly shocked.

‘You didn’t know that Mrs Shaughnessy was dead? It was in the newspapers.’

He shook his head. ‘I am a busy man, Mr Holmes, with many souls in my care. I rarely read the newspapers. Is this lady … ?’ He gestured to Mrs Armstrong.

‘Yes, this is his mother.’

Brown turned and took down a large and ancient ledger. He laid it open on the desk. As he turned over the pages, I saw other scraps of ribbon attached with rusty pins. What a tale of heartbreak and loss each one could have told! Near the back was a ribbon of the same design as the one we had brought with us. Brown fitted them together. They were an exact match.

‘The hospital discontinued this system in favour of a written receipt long ago,’ he said, ‘but in this instance it seemed wise to revert to it. Follow me.’

He led us down a long corridor and opened a door into a large room full of wooden tables and benches at which children were seated at a meal of bread and cheese. They were all boys, aged from about five up to around ten, all dressed alike in brown serge. Some of them looked up as we came in, but most were engrossed in their food.

A pleasant homely-looking woman came towards us.

‘Would you get Thomas Paine for us?’ Mr Brown asked. ‘Mrs Shaughnessy thought it best not to use his real name,’ he added.

‘Mama!’ It was a cry to wring the heart. A small boy started up from a table in the middle of the room.

‘Arthur! My Arthur!’ Mrs Armstrong took a few steps forward and her arms opened. Arthur came hurtling towards her and, the next moment, his arms were round her knees and she was pressing him to her.

I am not ashamed to confess that there was a lump in my throat. Holmes was strangely silent, too.

It was left to Mrs Hudson to ask Mr Brown how was it that Mrs Shaughnessy had thought to bring the little boy to the Foundling Hospital.

‘She and my wife were old friends,’ Mr Brown explained, ‘girls together in Ireland. She had reason to fear that Arthur was in imminent danger and we promised to take care of him and to surrender him only to the bearer of the token. We fully expected that she would return in a couple of days.’

‘A brilliant idea,’ Holmes admitted, ‘to hide him among paupers. It is the last place anyone would think of looking for the heir to a fortune. That nurse was a woman of genius.’

Holmes declined his fee, Mrs Armstrong insisted, and they compromised on a substantial donation to the Foundling Hospital and a handsome present for Mrs Hudson.

Holmes told her about it later that day when she brought up the tea tray.

‘That will be ample for a new gown and a bonnet or two, eh, Mrs Hudson?’

‘Indeed, Mr Holmes. Mrs Armstrong has been most generous.’

Holmes was too busy cross-referencing his index to the most infamous criminals in Europe to see the twinkle in her eye.