The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Page 19

  “But there was blood?”

  He nodded. “There was blood. I should have taken better precautions. But only think!”

  “What is it I’m thinking about?” I said, yawning. I could think of nothing but sinking into my own bed.

  “Hyde resorts to this drug on a regular basis.”

  “He must be somewhat inured to the effects.”

  “Somewhat is cold comfort when talking about a drug a drop of which turns a rational human being into a slavering ape. Miss Doolittle is in more danger than I had judged.”

  “Perhaps Higgins should take her to the continent after all.”

  “I suspect that was the whim of a moment. And no matter where she goes, Hyde can follow. We must find a way to keep her safe until we can bring him to heel.”

  “Does such a place exist?”

  Holmes touched his temple and winced. There was a purple bruise beginning to bloom there. “That, my friend, is a three-pipe problem.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Call Pickering,” he said. Tell him we must meet Eliza for breakfast at the Criterion. Nine o’clock. It is imperative that she be there.”

  He must have gone out for the morning papers. They lay in heaps around him like drifts of snow. Had he found an answer to our problem there?

  I placed the call. Luckily, Pickering was up, and he was able to communicate with Eliza. “She says she already has a breakfast date with Mrs. Higgins.” I relayed the message to Holmes.

  “Then she can bring her along. This is a matter of life and death.”

  The Criterion was a grand restaurant facing Piccadilly Circus. It was in the Criterion bar all those years ago that I had run into my old friend Stamford, who had subsequently introduced me to Sherlock Holmes. Besides the main restaurant, there were a number of rooms available for hire. It was to one of these rooms that Sherlock Holmes steered us when we were all met for breakfast that morning. It seemed to be an event for some sort of ladies’ group, but open to the public. The room was already filling up as Holmes commandeered a table for the five of us. The ladies were curious, nervous, perhaps even suspicious.

  “Who are these people?” Mrs. Higgins asked no one in particular. Pickering shook his head, signaling ignorance.

  “Please do be seated, ladies,” said Holmes, as he surveyed the room.

  “Mr. Morello? What’s happened to your accent?” asked Eliza. “Have you had a breakthrough in your lessons?”

  “Miss Doolittle, I am sorry to say I have deceived you. My name is not Morello. It is Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Sherlock Holmes? You mean like the fellow in the play? Running about after villains in a deerstalker cap?” Eliza was sure he was larking somehow.

  “Exactly like the fellow in the play,” Holmes answered gravely, taking his own seat.

  “Wait, you’re a character in a play? I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Higgins.

  “I am a private detective, Mrs. Higgins.”

  “Of no little repute,” put in Pickering.

  “Not American?” Mrs. Higgins was still trying to follow.

  “Entirely English, thank you.”

  “Well, that’s some relief.”

  “I told Freddy he was real! He used to capture all the bad men in London, but then one day he fell off a cliff and died.” Eliza looked at Holmes. “You don’t look dead, Mr. Morello.”

  Holmes gave me a sour look.

  “In fact, he did not die, Miss Doolittle,” I said diffidently.

  She looked from his face to mine, and then to Pickering. There was no doubt to be had that we were all three in earnest.

  “So . . . you’re not an American millionaire on the run from his gangster cronies? What a shame!” Eliza said wistfully.

  “Then what were you doing in my son’s home, Mr. Holmes?” Mrs. Higgins asked, climbing her high horse.

  “Spying,” Holmes answered flatly.

  Pickering looked uncomfortable. “I hired Mr. Holmes,” he admitted.

  “Because you thought I was in danger?” Eliza laid a hand on Pickering’s.

  “Let’s put it that way,” Pickering mumbled.

  We were interrupted by a platoon of waiters, dancing about with tea and buns. At the same moment, a woman began speaking from the dais, welcoming a roll call of distinguished guests and introducing an honored speaker. We took no notice, but we were obliged, after being shushed by surrounding tables, to lower our voices to just above a whisper.

  “Miss Doolittle,” said Holmes, “you have been associating with an extremely dangerous man.”

  “More than one it seems. But I suppose you’re talking about Edward.”

  “You know what it is that makes Edward Hyde so dangerous, don’t you?”

  “He—Dr. Guest, I mean—had compounded a drug which—”

  “Which he tested on Hyde. Which Hyde became addicted to.” She seemed loath to admit it. “Edward would never harm me,” she insisted.

  “Who are these women?” asked Mrs. Higgins. She was apparently the only one listening to the speaker. The speaker seemed to be saying something not very complimentary about the prime minister and Mr. Churchill. A waiter scooped kippers and fried eggs onto our plates.

  “You first met Dr. Guest when Colonel Pickering had a relapse of malaria?” Holmes was saying.

  “It was before that, just a few days after I first came to Wimpole Street. You were out that day, Colonel. Professor Higgins brought the doctor in to examine me. He said he didn’t want any “Lisson Grove plagues” invading the house with me. I nearly ran out the front door.”

  “Why was that?”

  “All that poking and prodding and questions about my privates? It didn’t seem decent to a girl like me who’d never seen a doctor before. And then he stuck a needle in my arm and took blood from me.”

  “You were perfectly healthy, but Dr. Guest insisted you needed some sort of inoculation.”

  “That was when Colonel Pickering took sick. Dr. Guest said it would keep me from catching what the colonel had. But that was a lie, of course. Dr. Guest lies.”

  “It was a powerful, durable sedative, which acted on your nervous system for weeks at a time.”

  Eliza hesitated. “At first. But as time went on, it became necessary to take the drug more and more frequently.”

  Mrs. Higgins leaned over to confer with one of the ladies from the next table. She came back to announce, “She says they’re with the WSPU. What is that?” Pickering was busy applying himself to the kippers and pretending to be deaf.

  “Suffragettes,” said Holmes offhandedly.

  “Suffragettes! How horrid! Bomb throwers, you mean! These women tried to blow up the House of Parliament! Eliza, we must leave at once.”

  “I’m sure these aren’t the same women, Mrs. Higgins,” said Pickering soothingly.

  “They are the very same women,” said Holmes.

  “Oh, dear,” said Eliza.

  “The drug altered your behavior and bearing so drastically that Pickering almost believed you were a different girl,” said Holmes.

  Fear came into her eyes. “I . . . almost was. It was meant to keep me docile. Like a lady, he said. I wanted so desperately to be a lady. At least at first.”

  It was then I noticed a grizzled old fellow in a dark suit standing by the door, and recognized him. Inspector Newcomen! I stood and waved to him. If he was here, it could be no coincidence. He must have come to see Sherlock Holmes. He didn’t notice me, however, or at least he did not look my way.

  “Holmes!” I said. “It’s Newcomen. From the Yard.”

  Holmes ignored me. He went on inexorably, questioning Eliza. “Hyde came to you because the drug you were given counteracted the effects of the one he was given.”

  “It weren’t—it wasn’t Edward’s fault. He and Guest had had a . . . a falling out. Guest was trying to poison him.”

  “You took pity on him. You shared what little you had, what you could beg from Guest.”

  There we
re three other men in dark suits, I noticed then, each standing by one of the doors. They were all staidly dressed, with blank official-looking faces looking at nothing and measuring everything. Scotland Yard men they must be, I thought. But why were they here?

  “Mr. Barton, please sit down! You’re attracting attention,” Mrs. Higgins scolded.

  “My name is not Barton, ma’am,” I said, aggrieved.

  “Not Mr. Hill Barton? Who are you, then?”

  “I am Dr. John Watson, Mr. Holmes’s associate.”

  “Isn’t anyone who they say they are?” She stared at Colonel Pickering.

  “I am Colonel Hugh Pickering, ma’am, in case you have any doubts.”

  Eliza glanced up at me. “You weren’t in the play.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Miss Doolittle, it is necessary for us to destroy these dangerous drugs,” said Holmes urgently. “Do you know where Guest keeps his store?”

  “I warned Henry that man was nothing but a social climber,” threw in Mrs. Higgins, apropos of nothing.

  “None of the antidote remains. After the first time he tried to break in, I became angry. I slipped into his laboratory and adulterated his supplies.”

  “Wouldn’t he simply manufacture more?” I asked. Neither Holmes nor I felt it prudent to inform her that the first burglary was actually engineered by the intrepid Wiggins.

  “One of the components is a drug that comes from India. It’s called argo—ergo—something—”

  “Ergotamine?” asked Holmes.

  “Yes. Some special strain of it that can only be found in the Punjab. The ship that carried his supply went down off the Goodwin Sands a few weeks ago. It may be months, even a year before he can get another shipment.”

  “None left?” Holmes kept driving at her. “Then why did he break into your room the second time?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. He must have thought I still had a supply. I wish to heaven I had never fallen prey to the drug, Mr. Holmes. I won’t touch it again. I don’t care if it kills me. I only want to be restored to myself, even if that means I’m a Drury Lane flower girl without a friend in the world.”

  There was the sound of a whistle, high and clear, answered by more whistles. The hall suddenly went silent, then erupted into chaos as constables poured through the doors.

  “Colonel Pickering, I shall never forgive you if our names get into the papers!” cried Mrs. Higgins.

  As the constables moved through the room, the women—ordinary, middle-class women though they appeared—rose up against them, in a terrific show of resistance. Out of handbags came stones, and even hammers. Cutlery was turned into weaponry. The speaker on the dais was urging the women to fight, and fight they did. The police, who it appeared had come only to arrest a few known malefactors, were unready for such an assault. The result was tumultuous.

  As the din rose around us, Holmes’s voice became urgent. “Three names, Miss Doolittle: Betsy Chubb, Nancy Kelly, and Susan Wallace.” Eliza was on her feet, looking about anxiously. The Scotland Yard men were calling out names and charges, making arrests, ignoring the chaos on every hand. There had been a bombing of some sort, they said. But Holmes repeated the three names, commanding Eliza’s attention.

  “I never met them,” she said, but she looked sick with terror.

  The room had descended into madness, screaming and clawing, some women on the attack, others being dragged away in handcuffs, the constables wielding their truncheons with a right good will. Then Newcomen was with us, and a group of constables. I expected him to reassure us, but that was not his aim. He pointed to Eliza. Two constables grabbed hold of her arms. “Christabel Pankhurst, I arrest you on charges of conspiracy to assassinate the prime minister,” he announced.

  Under duress, Eliza reverted to her old Cockney ways. “’ere, get your mitts arff me, you!” she yelled. She stomped hard on the foot of one of her captors. He hopped away in agony, but his partner was still able to slip the cuffs on Eliza.

  “Inspector, unhand that young lady!” said Mrs. Higgins in highest dudgeon. “Her name is Miss Eliza Doolittle, and she has done no wrong! I shall write a letter to the minister about this appalling behavior.”

  “And who might you be, eh?” Newcomen asked gruffly.

  Sherlock Holmes interposed. “I believe this is the mother, Mrs. Emmiline Pankhurst. You have a warrant against her as well, do you not, Inspector?”

  “Like mother, like daughter, I always say. Take her, you men.”

  “Have you taken leave of your senses? Colonel Pickering, tell them who I am!” Holmes caught Pickering’s eye. Pickering turned away guiltily. “Barbarism!” she cried as the handcuffs were clamped on her tiny wrists. “This would never have happened under Mr. Gladstone!”

  Holmes again, almost chanting it: “Betsy Chubb. Nancy Kelly. Susan—”

  Eliza let it out in a sob. “She came to me. I hadn’t seen her since we were children. She came to warn me.”

  “About the effects of the drug.”

  She shook her head. “About the effects of withdrawal. I refused to listen.”

  Then it came back to me, that itch I couldn’t scratch. Betsy Chubb and Nancy Kelly had shared rooms in Angel Court with another girl. Eliza’s last address before she came to Wimpole Street had been in Angel Court! Eliza was the third girl!

  Holmes nodded to Newcomen. Eliza and Mrs. Higgins were dragged away through the roiling mass of women and police.

  “My God, Mr. Holmes!” breathed Pickering. “Please tell me how that was necessary.”

  “We wanted Eliza safe from Hyde. He won’t be able to get at her in gaol.”

  “But Mrs. Higgins, man!”

  “Will look after her like the lioness with its cub.”

  I said nothing. It was arguably a disgraceful thing Holmes had done. But it was unarguably necessary.

  “Higgins will kick up a furious row,” I warned.

  “Undoubtedly. But it will still take him a few days to get the ladies out of custody. Newcomen will see to that. In that time we should be able to track down Hyde.”

  We made our way out to the street as the police were hustling an ever-growing crowd of arrestees into the vans, surrounded by jeering suffragettes and a sea of gawkers.

  “I suppose I’ll have to follow them to Holloway. I don’t look forward to facing Mrs. Higgins,” Pickering lamented.

  “I must ask you to do one thing first, Colonel.”

  “Name it,” said Pickering.

  “Search the girl’s room. We must find her store of the drug.”

  “But she said she destroyed it,” I said.

  “She was lying.”

  Pickering was appalled. “What? Rummage through a lady’s boudoir? Absolutely not.”

  “Not to save her life?”

  Pickering thrust his hands in his pockets and stared down at the pavement. He had the look of a man struggling with his soul. Finally he looked up, nodding. “You are the serpent in the garden, Mr. Holmes. I will do as you ask.”

  With that, he parted from us, walking off disconsolately, looking for a cab. Holmes and I took to the streets. I had no idea where our steps were directed, but Holmes’s face was urgent with purpose.

  “How do we proceed?” I asked.

  “We return to Montague Street. We must try Dr. Guest again. Guest is the key to finding Hyde.”

  But there was no trying Dr. Guest. When we arrived at his home, his man greeted us with the news that the good doctor had removed himself to a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, to help complete his cure. He offered to give us the address. His face was bland and unreadable.

  We retreated across the street and took up a post behind a plane tree, which afforded us a view of the house from relative concealment.

  “Look at those windows, Watson. What’s behind those curtains? Is someone watching us?”

  There was nothing to be seen, of course, even with Holmes’s keen eyesight, but his gaze was so intense one would think he could burn
a hole through the curtains—even through the walls.

  “You think Guest is still in there?”

  “Guest may have gone abroad. But that still leaves Hyde.”

  “What about his flat in Greek Street?”

  He shook his head. “The police watch it. And the landlady knows better than to help him, even if she were so inclined.” Holmes considered for a moment. “Wire Wiggins. Ask him to stretch his contacts. Anyone who knows Edward Hyde. Anyone who’s heard of him or anyone like him. Tell the Irregulars the hour of need is upon us.”

  “What about you?”

  “I shall remain here. The servant must go out sometime during the day. When he does, I propose to have a look behind those curtains.”

  I remembered when Holmes burgled a suspect’s house before. It had nearly ended in disaster and arrest. “Take care, Holmes,” I said.

  I did not see him again until the next morning. I rose just after dawn to a clatter in the kitchen. Holmes was at table, wolfing down whatever comestibles he had foraged from the larder. From the state of his dress, he must have just come in. He had used to be all fire and dash when on the scent, but in the grey light of early morning his face was etched in disappointment. I put the kettle on.

  “Any word from Wiggins, then?” he asked.

  I had no news for him. “Did the curtains ever move?”

  He shook his head. “I handed over the watch to the Freddies.”

  “The Freddies? You mean—?”

  “Yes. Von Stetten offered me their services. He’s also posted a man at Wimpole Street, and another at Hyde’s. Our erstwhile foeman is now our valued ally.”

  “Pickering telephoned. The police are still insisting that Eliza is actually Miss Pankhurst, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.”

  “That’s Newcomen’s fine hand,” Holmes said with a grin. “He’ll gum up the works as long as he can. Higgins will have a hard time getting round him.”

  “Higgins does not intend to lift a finger. He thinks Eliza and his mother are getting their just desserts for associating with suffragettes. Pickering wisely has not mentioned your role in the proceedings.”

  “Guest was using Hyde and Eliza both as human guinea pigs, just as he did with those poor soldiers in India and the three girls driven to murder when the drug was withdrawn. He hoped to find a cure for his own madness, but he was not so mad as to test the cure on himself.”