The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Read online

  Doolittle looked from her to me.

  “My apologies, sir. When I saw your wife, I thought—”

  “My wife? Is she here, too? Her and Eliza both? Sounds like conspiracy.”

  “I apologize again. This is not your wife?”

  “My wife? Of course not. My wife’s a respectable woman. Why would I want to tramp around Scotland with her? This is Fanny. Good old Fanny.” He gave her a pinch upon the bottom that nearly sent her jumping into my arms.

  “Miss Pritchard to you.” She stood upon her dignity, no matter how narrow that stand might be.

  I bowed. I had made an unmitigated ass of myself. But I hoped I could still save the situation.

  “Fanny’s been out of sorts lately, so I brung her wi’ me. Bit of a holiday for her.”

  “Torquay would ha’ been ever so much nicer,” the girl lamented.

  “Mr. Doolittle, I would like, if I might, to show you some photographs.”

  “Oh, I don’t go that way, mate. Give me real flesh and blood any time.”

  “No, sir, I apologize again. These are photographs of your daughter, Eliza. Not—not compromising photographs,” I added, seeing the look that came into his eyes. “I would merely ask you to confirm that the girl in the photos is in fact your daughter Eliza.”

  I handed him the photos. He fumbled inside his coat pocket. He handed the gin bottle to Miss Pritchard, who took it as an invitation to partake. He dove in again and came up with a pair of eyeglasses, which he set low on his nose. He moved the photo back and forth in front of him, trying to bring it into focus, something the gin bottle may have impeded.

  “This is Eliza?”

  “That’s what I hoped you could tell me.”

  “I haven’t seen that much of her in the past, well, twenty years, at least not sober. I thought she were twins for several years. We’re not what you would call intimate.” He almost seemed to be trying to stare the photo down. Then he bethought himself, handing the photo to Miss Pritchard.

  “Here, is that Eliza?”

  “Lemme look.”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss, you’re acquainted with Miss Doolittle?”

  “We grew up together, didn’t we? Even if she has moved on to spoonin’ her tea with duchesses and such.” She studied the photo. “She looks pale. And puny.”

  “That’s the fault of that Higgins I told you about,” Doolittle explained. “Feeds her buttermilk instead of gin. Slow poison, that.”

  I tapped the photo. “But you would say that is Miss Doolittle?”

  “Well, if it is, she needs a trip to Scotland to put her right!” She and Doolittle both burst out in laughter. I felt distinctly uncomfortable. I gave a discreet cough. Miss Pritchard perhaps caught the disapprobation in my face; her own turned sour. She handed back the photos.

  “No. It might be her, but then again it might not. I han’t seen her since first I trod the boards at the Gaiety. Diff’rent circles, don’t y’know?”

  By this I was given to understand that Miss Pritchard had had a career upon the stage at some point, however brief or ignoble, which vaulted her into a society superior to that of mere flower girls.

  “It’s a nice frock,” she remarked. “Like the cut ever so much. Couldn’t you find out from the birthmark?”

  “Miss Doolittle has a birthmark?” I asked, excited.

  “Dunno. But ain’t that how they always find out if it’s the true Duchess of Golliwog and not the evil imposter from the neighborin’ kingdom?”

  Naïve as the remark seemed, there was something in it. Why shouldn’t Eliza have a birthmark, or a scar, or some identifying feature? This girl didn’t know, nor would the negligent father, but who would? Her doctor!

  But that hare would not start. “Doctor? What’s Eliza need a doctor for?” said Doolittle when I asked. “She takes after her father. Iron constitution. Never been sick a day in her life.”

  Thus ended my mission to Edinburgh. It was hardly covered with glory. I did not look forward to being questioned by Holmes. Was there some way I could glide over the fact that I had chased a young woman up and down the halls of the university in the mistaken belief that she was another young woman entirely?

  I was lying in bed in my hotel room, about to give myself up to sleep, when it came to me that a woman who had never been sick a day in her life should not need to be under the constant medical supervision of Dr. Guest.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Any report I might make to Sherlock Holmes was completely overshadowed by the news I received on my return to Wim-Street the next evening. Mrs. Pearce met me at the door, her eyes like a spaniel’s. “Oh, Mr. Barton, thank heaven you’ve returned,” she said.

  “Why, Mrs. Pearce, what’s the matter?”

  Mrs. Pearce poured it all out. Eliza, the girl who was never sick a day in her life, was ill once again. She had locked herself in her room and would admit no one. Food and drink were left at her door, but barely touched.

  How Mrs. Pearce thought I might remedy the situation, I could not think. I found myself patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. The men in this house all had their heads in the clouds, she complained, and Professor Higgins the worst of them, helpless as a baby—was it wrong for a woman to wish for a single person she could rely upon?

  Had Dr. Guest not been summoned? Summoned indeed, peremptorily, imperiously, imploringly, desperately. Guest did not come. At first Higgins’s messengers had been turned away without a word of explanation. At last came a reply: Guest would not come, could not come, was himself too ill to leave his bed, much less attend upon his patients. There were thousands of doctors in London, Pickering protested. Higgins dug in his heels. He would have none other but Guest, and Guest would not come.

  I had seen Higgins storm and rage before, but his tantrums had always had an element of the theatrical in them, as though he relished watching his own performances. Now he paced the halls muttering dark imprecations against the doctor as the hours turned to days. Mrs. Pearce was distraught, moving through the house like a ghost, and the other servants all hid downstairs, whispering to each other.

  Worse than Higgins was Freddy. Freddy was gnawing his fingernails off with worry. If he had been Eliza’s spaniel before, he was now her Doberman, trotting back and forth before the gate. He’d have worn out the stones in the street had Mrs. Pearce not taken pity on him and invited him into the kitchen for sustenance. Would that he had been a less faithful watchdog!

  The atmosphere was suffocating. A brown fog settled in over the city. You could look out the window and not be able to make out the houses across the street. The air crackled with danger. Holmes felt it, too. “Soon, Watson, soon, we shall see a break in this fog about us. Then let us be on our guard,” he said.

  That night I saw him again. He might have been invisible save that the brass on his jacket was polished to cavalry standard. He stood watching the house, erect as a sentry, solitary as a menhir. I signaled for Freddy to join me at the window.

  “Mr. Eynsford-Hill. The man across the road. Have you seen him before?” I asked.

  Freddy peered out, squinting. Then a smile came to his face, the last thing I expected. “Ah, yes! Colonel Von Stetten! Has a terrific pash on Eliza. Poor fellow must be chilled to the bone.”

  “This poor fellow has threatened to murder you in a duel.” I thought that would give him pause. It did not.

  “It’s not murder if it’s a duel, that’s what the colonel says. Anyway, we already had the duel.”

  I was dumfounded. “How is it then that you—that both of you yet live?”

  “Oh, yes! Rum thing, that. I won the toss and fired first. Of course I missed. I would have missed if he were an elephant, or a herd of them. Then he took aim at me. I expected to die at any moment. He held out that pistol so long he might have been painting my portrait. Then he fired—into the air. He came over to me, shook my hand, and said I was the most courageous fellow he’d ever met. He thought certain that I’d turn tail and run.”r />
  “I applaud your courage as well.”

  “Courage! I was too frightened to move a muscle! I wonder, should I ask the girl to make him some cocoa.”

  “But you’re rivals! Shouldn’t you be jealous of him?”

  “Jealous? He’s out there. I’m in here.”

  The point was well made.

  I found Holmes pacing in his room. He was in the volatile mood that used to call for the violin back in our Baker Street days. Unfortunately, G.B. Morello did not play the violin.

  Of course he did require from me a full accounting of my Scottish adventure, and of course he winkled every humiliating detail out of me. Well, then, we had a good laugh about it, or he did, anyway, and we moved on to matters of more import.

  “Colonel Von Stetten!” he replied to my overture. “I haven’t brought you up to date. Adjutant to Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, whom you’ll remember was recently widowed. Attached to the Bavarian embassy. Apparently as matchmaker plenipotentiary.”

  “He’s a madman! He almost killed Freddy.”

  “Of course he’s mad. Most aristocrats are mad. In the German states it’s practically a prerequisite. I was Freddy’s second. He was never in any real danger once I doctored the pistol muzzles. Still, there was a glorious Tolstoyan atmosphere to the whole affair. The sun rising bloodred over the Serpentine, the combatants posed in silhouette, bareheaded, lithe of limb, pistols raised—both museum pieces. The cacophony of morning birdsong silenced by the explosion of young Frederick’s pistol—”

  “To no effect.”

  Holmes shrugged. “The sun was in his eyes. Von Stetten takes aim—”

  “But never fires.”

  “A magnificent display of noblesse oblige upon the field of honor. It only lacked a gypsy violin. Pity you weren’t here to witness. You would have written it up splendidly for one of your vignettes in The Strand.”

  “As I recall, this Von Stetten also vowed to murder you.”

  “And you as well, old friend.”

  “Yes, but I was safe in Scotland.” Even as I said it I realized, to my chagrin, that the true purpose of Sherlock Holmes in sending me to Scotland had been to keep me out of harm’s way while he dealt with the German. I bit my lip and let it pass. Instead I asked, “How then did you scotch the snake?”

  “It became necessary to unmask myself to him.”

  “Holmes! Was that wise?”

  “It was, thanks to your spadework. The colonel has read every one of your accounts of our adventures. He despised Morello, but he worships Sherlock Holmes. He has called off his Italian friends, convincing them that I am not the same Morello they are sworn to assassinate. Of course, there is every possibility that one or two of them may not have believed him, so we must still be on our guard.”

  “Does he still plan to whisk Miss Doolittle off and deliver her to his prince?”

  “Only if she is in fact Princess Sophie or Princess Augusta, or some other lady of highest station. He awaits my verdict in the matter.”

  “He’s out there waiting in the fog now.”

  Holmes looked out through the window, and nodded. “He shares our concern for Eliza in her indisposition.”

  All right, then. A mortal enemy had been transformed overnight into a jolly good fellow while I was chasing pixies in Scotland. There were other flies in the ointment. “Dr. Guest doesn’t seem to share that concern.”

  “Dr. Guest is himself gravely ill, or so his man informs us.”

  “It seems a remarkable coincidence.”

  “Perhaps. By the by, Pickering received a letter from his friend Bentley in Calcutta. He never met Guest in person, he said, but knew him by reputation. Guest was considered a most promising young doctor in Lahore. Took part in Ross’s malaria trials at Mian Mir. Spent his free time treating inmates in the lunatic asylum. Very much the pukka sahib.”

  Holmes seemed all too forgiving for my tastes. “Then where is he in Eliza’s hour of need?”

  “Bentley also mentioned that Guest contracted malaria himself during his tenure in the army. I think it not unlikely that he has suffered a relapse.”

  I felt a sudden unaccountable dejection. I subsided into a chair before the fire, and stared into the glowing coals. It seemed that I had led my friend on a fool’s errand. Every time I thought we were close to an answer, it slipped from our grasp.

  “Never fear, Watson. The case is drawing to a close,” said Holmes.

  I was used to him reading my mind. “What makes you think so?” I asked glumly.

  “Autumn is upon us. I have to get home and prepare my bees for winter.”

  “What, then, should our next step be?”

  “I still believe the man who calls himself Hyde holds the key to this mystery. I think we might profit by interviewing the Misses Chubb and Kelly. I’ve already spoken with Dr. Scott at Holloway Prison and he has agreed to make the arrangements.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The next morning we set out for Holloway. The weather continuing dismal, we took the Piccadilly line to Holloway Castle. The Underground, with its swift, quiet electric carriages had become a favorite mode of travel for me in recent years, but Holmes seemed dispirited. He drew strength from the noise and crowds of London’s surface as Antaeus drew his from the earth.

  We left the Underground at Parkhurst Road and emerged into a sea of fog. The frowning towers of Holloway Prison, constructed some half-century ago as some perverse homage to the Dark Ages, reared out of the mists, dampening the soul further.

  Then we heard the singing. Women’s voices raised, muffled perhaps by the mist, but still strong and stern, almost rousing, singing a march. We looked at each in wonder.

  The governor had dispatched a wardress to meet us at the gate. A capable young woman she appeared in her blue holland dress and black bonnet. “It’s suffragettes, sir,” she said as Holmes nodded toward the courtyard, where the singing seemed to originate. “They send ’em here to break their spirits, it’s said. But they seem to leave here as termagant as they come, or more. That’s their anthem.” She seemed to harbor a rather unprofessional sympathy for their cause.

  She led us through the courtyard to the main building. Women’s faces, raised in song, shining and potent, appeared and disappeared like ghosts as we moved through the fog.

  “Have no fear, sirs,” she said as we gained the great hall. “None o’ them suffragettes here, only the real hard cases. Miss Chubb, she’s come down ill and can’t see anyone, but Miss Kelly will talk all day long to anyone about anything.”

  The singing, indeed all sound save our own footsteps, seemed to die away in the silence of the tomb as we moved into the wing that housed “the hard cases.” The wardress sorted through her keys and unlocked a door, opening it just wide enough for us to pass through.

  “Knock when you want out,” she said, and bolted the door behind us. We were alone in a narrow cell with a murderess.

  She hardly looked the part. Nancy Kelly was seated in the only chair in the room, in front of a small deal table, for all the world like a fine lady at her vanity, save that there was no mirror, nor brushes, nor any of the accessories one would find in a lady’s boudoir. She was dressed in dark green serge with a blue check apron, the same we’d noticed on the other inmates. She turned to us to reveal a boyish face framed by dark cropped hair, with hollow, probing eyes.

  “You’re the prison inspectors?” she asked. “There’s rats in this place big enough to pull a mail-coach up Holborn Hill.”

  “I’m a private detective, Miss Kelly. My name is Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Sherlock Holmes? I heard o’ you!”

  “You enjoy stories of detection? My associate Dr. Watson is responsible for those.” He nodded toward me.

  She glanced at me in confusion, mixed perhaps with contempt, and then locked eyes with Holmes. “My mum told me about you. Said you was a right ole billy goat. My mum knew lots of famous men. Knew Disraeli, she did—he wasn’t really a Jew, y’know—k
new the Prince of Wales, not this one, but two back: Bertie. Said he liked to be whipped with a silk curtain sash.”

  “I’m sure you have a wealth of anecdotes,” Holmes replied, unperturbed. “Perhaps you could tell me about Herbert Jaggers and Norris Shaw.” Those were the names of the men she had stabbed to death.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why should I tell you anythin’ about anythin’?”

  “Why not?” Holmes already had her marked as an inveterate prattler.

  “All right, then.” She mulled it for a moment, as if they were not printed on her memory. “A pair o’ flash coves they were. Shaw was a real cover-me-proper. Jaggers not so spruce, but he had the chinks, and didn’t mind to spread ’em.”

  “How came they to you?”

  “Stage door Johnnies. From my days in the Gaiety.”

  “You were a Gaiety girl? For how long?” Holmes sounded dubious.

  “You needn’t take that tone with me, Mr. High-and-Mighty. I was a different girl in those days, togged out proper and rouged up like an apple. I danced in the Gaiety a whole season, near-like. Two years ago. Seems a lifetime.”

  “How’d you land a plum crib like that, Nancy?”

  “That was the doctor, y’see. He fixed it all up for me. A few words in the right ear and I was in clover.” She reached out, embracing the memory.

  “Tell us more about this doctor.”

  “Oh! Dr. Henry, he was a real gent, through-and-through. An angel from heaven that one was.”

  “How did you come to meet him?”

  “Women’s Hospital. He fixed my split lip along of a Saturday night after my husband flogged me once with a firedog.”

  “Your husband sounds a man of singularly violent disposition.”

  “He was like that. He’d say, ‘here, what’re you lookin’ at me like that for?’ and fetch me a clout on the head. When I wasn’t even lookin’ at him. Men are like that, though. Brutes, every one.”

  “Where’s your husband now?”

  “Australia? Argentina? One of those places they say the gold is layin’ out in heaps on the ground right for the takin’. Not a word from him since he lit out.” There was bitterness in her voice, though you’d think she’d be glad enough to see the back of the man.