Denis Smith - The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

‘Well, it’s north of here, anyway,’ returned the sandy-haired woman with an air of finality.

Mr Hardy chuckled and rubbed his hands together. ‘And how are you today, Jeanie?’ he asked, addressing the slim, auburn-haired woman, who was wielding the iron. ‘Jeanie is a woman of many talents,’ he remarked to us, ‘and has herself known the glamour of the footlights’ glare.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed the blonde-haired girl at the sewing-machine, in a quiet voice. ‘She played a duck in last year’s pantomime!’

‘Actually, it was the goose,’ returned Jeanie in an indignant tone.

‘And I am sure the goose was never played better!’ cried Hardy. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘to complete our introductions: over in the corner there is Katharine; and this very quiet young lady is Michéle.’ He indicated the blonde-haired girl, who nodded her head and mouthed some response, but so softly as to be almost inaudible. ‘Michéle has somewhat exotic antecedents,’ murmured Hardy to us.

‘She certainly has,’ said Kathleen. ‘Her father used to keep a pub out Hackney way.’

Hardy chuckled again. ‘Now, ladies,’ said he, ‘this is Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, who have kindly agreed to help me get to the bottom of our recent troubles. Was it you, Katharine, that had the – hum! – unpleasant experience yesterday?’

The small, dark-haired girl nodded her head.

‘I wonder then, Katharine, if you would be good enough to show these gentlemen where the unfortunate incident took place?’

The girl put down her sewing with an air of reluctance, and led the way out of the room and along the corridor to the open doorway of the costume store. Hardy lit a lantern which hung on a hook beside the door and we followed him inside.

‘I was standing by this rail, sir,’ said the girl, indicating a long row of elaborate evening-dresses which hung from hooks on a rail by the left-hand wall. ‘I heard a noise behind me.’

‘What sort of noise?’ asked Holmes.

‘It’s hard to say, sir,’ she replied after a moment. ‘A little noise. I thought it might be mice – that sort of noise. There are lots of mice down here.’

‘But not so many as there used to be, I trust,’ interrupted Hardy quickly. ‘We took steps to deal with them,’ he explained to us.

‘Not so many, but still a few,’ the girl responded. ‘Anyway, I stopped what I was doing and listened, but the noise had stopped, too, so I thought perhaps I had imagined it. I went back to looking through the dresses and the noise came again. It sounded as if somebody was pushing through a rail of clothes and seemed to be right behind me. I stood very still and the noise stopped again. Then something touched me on the shoulder, like this.’ She raised her right arm and touched her right shoulder lightly with the tips of her fingers. ‘I thought it was a spider and tried to brush it off, but there was nothing there. Then I turned. Just here, where you are standing, sir, was a horrible dark figure, all in black, with a black hood on, just standing, looking at me.’

The girl shut her eyes tightly and put her hand up to her face, as if to ward off the memory of the evil figure.

‘It must have been a horrible shock for you,’ said Holmes in a sympathetic voice. ‘I regret the necessity of asking you these questions, and thus rekindling the unpleasantness in your mind, but we must have all the facts. You say this figure was looking at you. You saw his face, then?’

‘No, sir,’ the girl replied, her breath short and sharp. ‘For he had no face.’

‘No face?’

‘There was nothing there, sir. Inside the big hood it was all blackness, just as if it was empty. Only the eyes showed, sharp and glittering.’

‘He was wearing a mask, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps, sir. I don’t know.’

‘What happened next?’ asked Holmes.

‘He lifted his hand up. It was all white and bony. He was holding one of these hooks.’ She pointed to the large ‘S’-shaped metal hooks, like pothooks, which hung on the rail, and from which the dresses behind her were suspended. ‘He held it up, then brought it down at me. I screamed and turned away, and covered my face with my hands. Everything went black and I heard him run off into the corridor. I don’t know what happened after that, sir. The next thing I remember, Kathleen and the others were here, telling me to stop screaming.’

‘And there’s no possibility, I suppose,’ asked Hardy, in a vaguely hopeful voice, ‘that you imagined it all?’

‘Certainly not, Mr Hardy!’ replied the girl indignantly.

‘You say the figure was all in black,’ said Holmes. ‘Were you able to see what sort of clothes he was wearing?’

‘It was like a monk’s robe, sir, with a hood attached.’

‘Do you have any costumes of that sort in your wardrobe?’ Holmes asked Hardy.

‘We do indeed. I’ll get Kathleen to show you. Among her other duties, she acts as wardrobe mistress and knows where all the costumes are hung.’

The sandy-haired woman was sent for and took us through to the chambers at the rear, which contained the men’s costumes.

‘These are the monks’ robes, sir,’ said she, stopping before a long rail of assorted clerical garments and holding up a lantern. ‘These are the white friars, these are the black friars and these are some brown ’uns.’

‘Could your assailant have been wearing one of these?’ Holmes asked the dark-haired girl. She nodded, averting her eyes as she did so. ‘Are all the black robes here?’ he continued, addressing the other woman.

‘I think so,’ she replied, as she counted them. ‘No, wait a minute, there’s only five of the black ones here now and I think there should be six. Isn’t that right, Mr Hardy?’

‘It certainly is,’ said Hardy, nodding his head. ‘We definitely made six of them, eighteen months ago, for The Gipsies of Bohemia .’

‘So it appears that your mystery intruder is indeed wearing one of these robes,’ said Holmes, ‘which he has still got with him, wherever he is. They are certainly commodious garments, perfectly suited to anyone wishing to conceal his identity. Now,’ he continued after a moment, addressing the sandy-haired woman again, ‘when you had calmed Katharine down, did you search these rooms to see if there was anyone still about?’

‘No, sir, we did not. We didn’t know what we might find! We went straight to Mr Hardy to tell him what had happened.’

‘I understand,’ said Holmes. ‘Thank you, ladies. That is all, for the present.’

‘What do you make of it?’ asked Hardy, when the women had left us.

Holmes shook his head. ‘It is a puzzling little problem,’ he replied. ‘The point of all this mysterious activity is not yet clear to me. In this latest incident – the first, it seems, in which your mysterious persecutor has been seen – his appearance was threatening and he no doubt frightened the girl out of her wits; but in the end he did not harm her.’

‘Perhaps he was deterred by her screaming,’ I suggested. ‘He would have realised that that would bring others here.’

‘Possibly,’ said Holmes. ‘But he had raised his arm as if to strike her, yet did not do so, even though it would have taken him but a moment. The inference is surely that he never really had any intention of harming her.’

‘What, then?’

‘He has never previously shown any inclination to reveal himself. It is possible, then, that the girl’s encounter with him in here was the merest chance and that he simply took the opportunity to frighten her which that chance had presented to him.’

‘Whatever the explanation, it certainly must have been unnerving for her,’ I remarked. ‘What do you make of the white, bony hands she described?’