George Mann: Associates of Sherlock Holmes

Mr Holmes jutted his bold chin at my torso as he lit a cigarette. “Your watch chain is an old family heirloom, but the type of locket hanging from it with the scalloped edge was in fashion some five years ago, before I met my untimely demise.”

“Thankfully very untimely indeed.”

“Your servant. The locket is a memento, and five years is approximately the amount of time it takes to lose a well-sewn button and for one’s hat colour to pass out of style. No offence intended.”

I shrugged. “None taken. So I have financial problems, and you say they point to a tragedy. Supposing I merely had onerous debts?”

“You’d have pawned the locket or the watch chain or simply the watch to ease your path.”

“What if they were all too dear to me?”

“After having gifted your beloved late father’s Bible to a cousin? Please. You aren’t a man driven by foolish sentiment, and your high expenses haunt you monthly, which is why you know better than to squander your keepsakes at a jerryshop. Economy is the only solution. Your mother posts you dinner, for heaven’s sake, or at least so the writing on your many savoury-smelling packages indicates. No, don’t ask, it’s too obvious and I’ve glimpsed the addresses – you write a male version of her penmanship.”

Despite my distress, I smiled ruefully. “The tragically afflicted – you said not a family member? It might be my sister.”

“If your sister were impoverished or afflicted, she would live with you and reattach your buttons, or live with your mother and eat her mince pies,” Mr Holmes said so smoothly that his tone might nearly have been called kind.

“Quite so.” I cleared my throat. “Mr Holmes, what is this about?”

Sherlock Holmes’s head swivelled to regard me fully, a bird of prey ruminating over a hapless mammal.

“You joined H Division at the age of twenty-five in the immediate wake of the Ripper murders,” he said with clinical detachment. “Why? Men spat at the uniformed constables in the streets, women refused to look at them. I was acquainted with canines that wouldn’t so much as bark in a bobby’s direction. You are intelligent, active, and approachable, and even if you’d no desire to be a clergyman, the world was still your oyster, and you chose to join an institution that had been hung out to dry. Pray refrain from telling me it was all thanks to The Strand , though the doctor has every right to be flattered some good has come out of his melodramas. There is another, darker reason, and if I am to rely upon your sober judgement, as I wish to do in future, I request you tell me what it is.”

Despite my reluctance to reveal the source of my heartache, there is nothing quite so persuasive as Sherlock Holmes urging a man to prove himself trustworthy. I straightened my shoulders, tugged down my waistcoat, and set to.

“I was engaged to be married in eighteen eighty-eight to a Miss Lilla Dunton. She was – is – a woman of finest character, and I’d known her if only peripherally since childhood. The suburbs in southeast London aren’t populous, Mr Holmes, and she attended my father’s congregation. I regret to say that her family life was not a happy one. Her father was born in West Africa to colonial parents and saw much hatred and degradation along the Gold Coast and as a young man in Freetown.

“Mr Dunton told Lilla tales, even as a little girl, which invested her with waking nightmares, and as her mother died in childbirth, there was no one at home to offset this morbidity save a doddering old nurse. When the Ripper crimes commenced, she was merely appalled, as we all were, but when they continued… she was reminded of brutal stories she never imagined would be brought to life here in England. Tribal massacres, soldiers ruthlessly quashing native unrest. By the time Mary Jane Kelly was left in shreds,” I finished hoarsely, “her mind was in a similar state.”

It’s obvious from Dr Watson’s writing that Mr Holmes can be affected by misfortune and grief – dashed if I hadn’t already seen it myself, when we encountered Arlie in Limehouse. On this occasion, his iron expression did not harden so much as it melted before snapping back into that perfect equilibrium he so famously maintains.

“My dear fellow. What steps did you take?” he asked softly.

“She lives at an asylum in the Sussex countryside – a humane and peaceable one, much lauded by both locals and professionals. The expense is… significant. My locket containing a miniature silhouette is all I have left of her, though I often dream she’ll write me one day. Despite our geographical proximity, during our engagement we used to exchange love letters absurdly often. I’d still give anything to see her handwriting in my post. Meanwhile, I promised myself I’d do everything possible to prevent such a monster from ever desecrating our streets again.”

“You may yet hear from her,” he observed as if making a remark about the weather.

My answering smile was one of thanks and not joy. “That’s past praying for, I fear, Mr Holmes. Highly improbable.”

“But not impossible.” The sleuth stood fully, gathering up the hat and gloves he had laid upon my desk. “Thank you for the candour of your reply. Inspector Hopkins, I intend to make a detective of you.”

“I… just a moment, you…” I trailed off, reduced again to a blithering neophyte, as appears to be my natural state when in the presence of Sherlock Holmes.

“One cannot help but agree that you would make an execrable clergyman, and so we must see what we can do about making you a crack investigator.” He winked, and for the first time I was granted a glimpse of the impish humour Dr Watson had so often recorded in early adventures.

“Do you really mean it?” I whispered in awe. “You’ll share your methods, allow me to ask questions, that sort of thing?”

“I’ll teach you the whole art of detection myself, only supposing you don’t mistake wheelbarrow tracks for bicycle tracks again as you did last –”

The unfortunate Mr Holmes was interrupted, for I was wringing his hand so hard he must have been in some pain.

“All right, all right ,” he gasped, laughing. “I ask a single favour in return, mind.”

“Name it, please,” I urged, half delirious with happiness. “Anything you like. I am yours to command. I was before, anyhow.”

“The name of this bucolic hospital in Sussex. Tut, tut! This is not about your former fiancée, whose health I hope improves by the hour – I’ve been struck by a sudden inspiration, one the doctor will enjoy tremendously, and keeping Watson in good spirits has direct bearing upon the quality of my living arrangements.”

Deeply puzzled, I wrote down the address. “It has nothing to do with me, then?”

“I did not say that either,” Mr Holmes chided, declining to meet my questioning eyes as he tapped his cigarette out against his boot sole and then flicked it into my rubbish bin. He took the paper with a flourish. “Good day, Hopkins. Until you have need of me.”

Dunce that I am, it took me all evening to work it out. What an ass I’ve been, and what a worthy hero I’ve chosen to guide me on my chosen path. As mired in penury as Mr Holmes and Dr Watson were in A Study in Scarlet , now they are internationally celebrated and sought after – and wealthy to boot.

Of course his asking after the asylum had nothing to do with my poor, precious Lilla.

It had everything to do with Arlie, however.

INCREDIBLE NEWS STOP AM TO TUTOR WITH THE GREAT DETECTIVE SHERLOCK HOLMES STOP WHO KNOWS BUT THAT YOUR BOY MIGHT NOT FIND HIMSELF IN THE STRAND ONE DAY STOP WILL BE HOME FOR SUPPER TOMORROW WITH CHAMPAGNE