George Mann: Associates of Sherlock Holmes

“Are we to communicate what we’re looking for through pantomime, or learn Mandarin?” he asked dourly.

Mr Holmes smirked, flipping open his notebook to reveal three Chinese characters. “I rather think the signature of the maker might be of greater immediate use.”

“Capital, my dear fellow!” Dr Watson approved, grinning.

“How the devil did you find that out?” I cried.

“It was a positive tour-de-force of inferential reasoning,” Mr Holmes drawled. “When I flipped the box on its side, I discovered the mark had been scratched very subtly into the base.”

Dr Watson had the decency to study a stray cur worrying at an oxtail as my face flamed, but Lestrade gave a low whistle.

“Oh, come, none of that.” Mortified as I felt, I was grateful that Sherlock Holmes sounded impatient rather than pitying. “ Ut desint vires, tamen est laudana voluntas . You mistook the characters for more ill-use visited by the Thames – resolve to do better during your second case. Now. I’m acquainted with one or two nearby apothecaries in this warren, and I’d wager a fiver my friend Wi Cheun will do right by us. Do wait here, for the poor fellow suffers from a tremendous sensitivity to strange Englishmen.”

We watched his gleaming black hat bob away in the throng of men fully a foot shorter than he. Or I did, while Lestrade and Dr Watson complacently lit cigarettes under a mud-spattered gaslight, as if they had waited for Sherlock Holmes to consult Chinese apothecaries some dozens of times. Decades seemed to pass. I’ll be dashed if glaciers didn’t melt.

“I feel such a fool,” I confessed.

“That was nothing,” Lestrade scoffed.

“It wasn’t nothing. My father was a clergyman – I do have some Latin, enough for Ovid anyhow. I suppose it’s too much to hope he’ll forget about it?”

The men continued smoking. I forced my jaw not to clench in dismay.

“Never mind, Inspector,” Dr Watson offered along with a genuine smile. “If everyone were Sherlock Holmes –”

Lestrade mock-shuddered, and the doctor chuckled gamely.

“I say, if everyone were Sherlock Holmes –”

“Then my career would be ruined,” the man himself finished, fairly vibrating with energy as he materialised in our midst. “I’ve traced the box, and we’ve a brief trudge. I’ll tell you on the way that I dislike Wi Cheun’s account extremely for the hypothesis it suggests to my mind, and yet – well, we refuse to draw conclusions before the evidence is scrutinised. Quick march!”

We set off briskly towards the Limehouse basin and soon were crossing its dingy footbridge under the octagonal hydraulic tower, surrounded by the clatter, shouts, and bangs of the lifeboat manufactory. As we walked, Mr Holmes shared what he had learned.

Five years previous (according to Mr Holmes’s druggist acquaintance) the mark, which read “Wu Jinhai,” would have designated Wu Jinhai himself, an immigrant from the outskirts of Shanghai who had once made his living carving teak. Upon arriving in London, he discovered that he could procure a few shillings by foraging driftwood along the riverbank, creating landscapes and animal menageries and the like on the flotsam’s surface, and afterward staining the piece to a high sheen. In time, he earned enough not merely to buy wood and commence crafting boxes, for which there was a perennial demand, but to marry a beautiful young Chinese woman and set up both shop and household in Gold Street near to Shadwell Market.

“A single domestic canker blighted this idyllic scene,” Mr Holmes explained. “Wu Jinhai and his wife were childless, and no amount of visits to the local physicians could banish their infertility.”

So distraught were they over their lack of progeny that one day, when Mrs Wu was scattering wood chips and sawdust over the ice in the back alley and spied a pair of white children on the brink of starvation, she did not chase them away as most would have done with street arabs, especially those of another race – she invited them in for soup. The Wus did not lack for money, and she saw no harm in gaining a reputation for both status and generosity amongst all manner of neighbours.

“In Chinese society, benevolence is often a way to reach across social boundaries and forge acquaintances that would otherwise be impossible,” Mr Holmes continued. “In this case, however, there was a catch which manifested almost immediately.”

Mrs Wu by this time spoke good English and discovered over empty bowls of dumpling soup that the children were mudlarks – the most wretched of the destitute, scouring the riverbanks for scraps of rag or coin or metal, as her own husband had once been forced to scrounge for wood. Far worse, the girl suffered from a spinal deformity – possibly brought on by polio, Wi Cheun had theorised to Mr Holmes – and the boy, though a few years older, was simple, only speaking in monosyllables. The girl revealed that they were siblings escaped from the cruelties of a nearby orphanage, and neither knew who their parents had been nor where they had lived before the bleak institution.

“The Wus took them in,” reported the detective. The intersections we now crossed, though no less cramped nor refuse-strewn, were populated with as many Italians and Jews as Chinese, though queerly picturesque Oriental writing remained slashed across many ashen shop placards. “As employees at first – or so Mrs Wu presented them – but later, apparently they were indistinguishable from her children save for their skin. The sister, Liza, worked on accounts and answered supply orders after learning her sums and letters from a paid neighbour. Arlie, the brother, never learned eloquence, but showed an immense aptitude for carving once Wu Jinhai taught him technique.”

“What happened five years ago?” I inquired breathlessly, for our pace had been set by the man with the longest stride.

“Five years ago,” he reflected. “Yes, five years ago Mr and Mrs Wu passed away from an influenza outbreak, leaving Arlie and Liza alone to run the family business as best they were able. And that, gentlemen, is the part I do not like, though I decline to make inferences in advance of tangible data.”

A chill stroked my spine, and my companions’ faces froze, for we had all seen Mr Holmes’s mind. A doltish brother, a defenceless sister who might have been thought a burden, a frail white arm hacked away and consigned to the Thames. None of us wanted to contemplate such a thing, and I’ll be dashed if the world-famous problem-solver did either.

“You’re right, Mr Holmes. We know too little as yet to condemn anyone,” I declared.

The sleuth’s steely jaw twitched. “Are you being fawning or optimistic?”

“Neither. I’m being magnanimous, or attempting it. I was meant to become a clergyman like my father,” I said wryly.

“Disinclined to resemble the patriarch?”

“On the contrary, I admired him more than anyone I’ve ever known. Didn’t share any of his talents, more’s the pity. Always stammering my way through catechisms. Dreadful. He passed some eight years ago and Mum thought I’d finally see the light, but all I saw was the noose in the prison yard. When my cousin took the cloth, I gave him Dad’s Bible with heartiest blessings and a helping of good riddance.”

Dr Watson nodded sympathetically as Lestrade sniffed in mild amusement. A flicker of a smile ghosted across Mr Holmes’s lips and vanished.

Then we had arrived, and I’ll never forget it as long as I live: the crooked house in the middle of the row, runoff trickling down Gold Street, rivulets sparkling despite their leaden colour. The Wu residence’s steps had not been cleaned since the last snowfall melted, streaks of soot painting black waterfalls down them, and one of the windows was patched with four or five layers of rotting newsprint.