The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Page 2

  “Say no more. At any rate, Higgins’s book opened my eyes to another such polyglot city—London itself. I was so impressed with his work that I felt compelled to seek him out without delay.”

  Holmes lofted an eyebrow. “You voyaged halfway round the world because of a book?”

  “Sounds daft when you put it that way, doesn’t it? But here’s the truly astounding part: on my very first night in London, I attended the theatre—the American actor William Gillette. Tremendous stuff, had me on the edge of my seat. Who did I meet there, loitering about the porch of Saint Paul’s in the rain as if he’d come there a-purpose to meet me? Henry Higgins himself. Ten minutes after we discovered ourselves to each other, he had invited me to come stay with him in his home. And that was the very same night we met Eliza. What are the odds, eh? I ask you, what are the odds?”

  Holmes ignored the invitation to do the calculations. “Eliza is the girl he’s done away with?”

  “Miss Doolittle, yes. Or possibly no. She was selling flowers to the theatre-goers.”

  “This was how long ago?” he asked.

  “Six months? No, nearer to seven. Where does the time go?”

  “And you’ve resided with Professor Higgins since?”

  “I suppose that seems odd? Two bachelors with similar interests living and working together cheek by jowl?”

  I could not repress a smile.

  “When did Miss Doolittle join the household?” Holmes asked.

  “The very next day. She had got it in her head that she wanted elocution lessons. Determined to get them, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Wanted to talk like a ‘lady’ so she could get a position in a flower shop.”

  “Professor Higgins is a bachelor, you said?”

  Pickering nodded vigorously. “Confirmed. Anointed, you might bloody well say. If you’ll excuse the camp talk.”

  “Is it customary for him to provide lodging to his students?”

  “Couldn’t say. Eliza’s the only one of his students I’ve ever been acquainted with.”

  “The only student he’s taken on in the last seven months?”

  “Higgins caters to a very exclusive clientele.”

  “Yet that clientele consists solely of a Covent Garden flower girl.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell! On the one hand he’s the most sensible, logical man I’ve ever met. On the other hand, nothing he does makes the least bit of sense. It’s enough to drive a fellow mad.”

  “What about the girl? Was there anything unusual about her?”

  “Yes . . . well, no.”

  “Which is it?”

  “She was the most ordinary sort of girl in the world, nothing to look at, certainly. But there was something . . . something wrong with her.”

  “Something? Could you elaborate?”

  “Was it a cast in one eye? Or was there a swelling on one of her— perhaps her hip was turned—I know I sound feeble-minded, but there was something wrong with her, and I can’t recall just what it was!”

  “This something presumably has . . . gone away?”

  “Well, there was the fit, you know.”

  “She had a fit?”

  “I had a fit. Relapse, really. Malaria. Souvenir of my days in India. That’s when the transformation occurred.”

  “You were transformed?” I asked.

  “She was transformed. Am I getting things muddled? We both took ill. I was down nearly a fortnight. When I got back on my pins, I toddled down to breakfast. Same old Higgins, same old Mrs. Pearce— the housekeeper, you know—same housemaids in their snowy caps, same insolent footman. Different Eliza. No one offered a word of explanation. Acted as if nothing had changed. I thought I must still be awash in the dreams of my malady. Except I suppose you’d call this one a good dream.”

  “What had changed about the girl?” Holmes asked.

  “Hard to pin down. She seemed taller. Straighter. More—what’s the word?— willowy. And her features were far more pleasant. Sunnier. And then her language—well!”

  “You’ve said she was taking elocution lessons. Would that not explain the difference in her language? Could not every change you’ve mentioned be accounted for by a new position, new wardrobe, a new confidence?”

  Pickering pondered the question. He appeared ready to accede. Then: “No, by thunder! She’s not the same girl! I’ll stake my fortune on it, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Did you share your suspicions with anyone?”

  “I discussed it with Mrs. Pearce, in a roundabout fashion. Mrs. Pearce is a most formidable woman. Like a tigress with her cub. And I talked to the doctor, same fellah who looked after me and Eliza both, don’t you know, but doctors are such a close-lipped bunch. May as well talk to an oyster. No offense meant, Wobbly,” he added.

  “None taken,” I assured him.

  “But you did not take your misgivings to Mr. Higgins?” asked Holmes.

  “Couldn’t. On account of the wager.”

  Pickering then recounted the wager he and Higgins had entered into when Miss Doolittle was first admitted to the establishment. “Higgins had bragged that he could teach her to speak so well he could pass her off as a duchess at last month’s embassy party. I offered to underwrite the lessons and all the expenses if he could pull it off. Plus five pounds to seal the bargain. It was by way of being a friendly wager, but it was a wager, after all.”

  “So you believe that the girl may have been bundled off, or even done away with, and a second girl brought in to replace her, all to win this wager?”

  “I know it sounds absurd. But Higgins doesn’t like to lose. And she won it for him going away.”

  “By your own admission, you were recovering from a protracted illness which at times affected your perceptions.”

  “You mean I shouldn’t trust my judgment? Perhaps you’re right . . . but I do trust my judgment, and so must you, if you’re to take this case. Perhaps you’d rather not?” said Pickering doubtfully.

  Holmes sank back even further in his chair, until he was almost swallowed by the cushions. He cast a curious glance at me, as if sharing some secret joke. Then he steepled his hands upon his breast.

  “On the contrary. I find several points of interest. First, there is the remarkable coincidence of your initial meeting with Higgins and the girl. Second, the fact that you and the girl became ill at the same time, and were treated by the same physician. Then there is your own inability to pinpoint Miss Doolittle’s physical defect. Lastly, the fact that the wager is won, yet the girl remains beneath Professor Higgins’s roof. This seems a particularly thorny problem. With your permission, I will make further inquiry.”

  Pickering jumped up and shook Holmes’s hand again, nearly dragging him out of his chair. “Absolutely capital. I’m convinced there’s no man better suited to plumb the depths of Henry Higgins’s mind. Every time you open your mouth, it’s as if I hear him speaking.”

  Holmes grimaced, and I winced. He never liked being compared to other men, at least not in terms of equality.

  Chapter Three

  It was a glorious September morning the day the American millionaire came to Wimpole Street. The sky was blue as a Dutch platter. There was little traffic that morning in the well-ordered lane, most of it the horse-drawn kind rather than the bright, fierce chariots of the modern age. The gleaming red bonnet of the millionaire’s Moreau-Lepton seemed a brazen challenge to the august facades lining the street. Any loafer would have turned to watch as the car lurched to a stop in front of Professor Higgins’s establishment. The driver got out, an older fellow with a steel wool moustache, a bit shaky in the legs. He opened the door for his charge.

  The millionaire emerged, tall, thin as a whippet, with grey hair standing up like iron filings from his scalp, an aquiline nose, and a pencil-thin moustache smudging his lip. He entered the house like a summer storm, unexpected and unsettling. Mrs. Pearce had been given no warning of his advent, and would have turned him away on the basis of his barbaric language alone. Profe
ssor Higgins was not at home, sir. His assistant, Miss Doolittle, was not at home. The two men—the driver was also a secretary, it seemed, a stocky Englishman brought along no doubt to serve as interpreter—pushed right past her into the hall and thence to the professor’s laboratory, settling themselves unerringly into the two most comfortable chairs. She would have summoned the police, had not Colonel Pickering intervened.

  “What’s all this, then, Mrs. Pearce?” he asked, dropping in to the middle of the argument.

  Mrs. Pearce was a woman of erect carriage and dignified demeanor. Her starched grey uniform put one in mind of the prow of a battleship. “I’m sorry, Colonel,” she said. “I tried to tell them they should wait in the front hall.”

  The American pulled a thin cigar from his lapel pocket and lit it. The aroma was pungent. “G.B. Morello at your service, pal. You the butler? We could do with some drinks.”

  Pickering drew himself up. “I am Colonel Pickering.”

  “A colonel? We got a boatload of colonels back home. I was shooting for a duke, at least.”

  Mrs. Pearce was aghast, but the colonel seemed unperturbed. “It’s all right, Mrs. Pearce. These gentlemen are expected. Leave them in my hands. I’ll keep an eye on them.”

  The housekeeper gave the interlopers a last baleful glare.

  “Run off to the kitchen and count the silverware,” sneered the American.

  “Come, come, Mr. Morello, she’s only doing her duty. Thank you, Mrs. Pearce.” The housekeeper turned on her heel and went out, huffing to herself.

  Morello, that was his name. G.B. Morello. It was the name on the tags on the luggage in the boot of the automobile out front. Mrs. Pearce was not unaware that there was an American millionaire of the same name. Since she was Mrs. Pearce, and no one’s fool, she was also acquainted with the rumors of the illicit means by which he had acquired his millions. Well, if this were the same fellow, the robber barons of America were no more civilized than the rabble, she told the kitchen maid. Then she forbade her to repeat it.

  In the laboratory, Pickering was pouring sherry for Mr. G.B. Morello and his secretary—that is to say, for Sherlock Holmes and myself. (I use the word “laboratory” with reservation. The room we were in combined drawing room, library, and music room all in one. It was a scholar’s room, with a fine layer of dust over every piece of furniture but the piano, which was polished to a sheen. I was reminded of Holmes’s injunctions against Mrs. Hudson dusting his rooms at Baker Street. The peculiar equipment devoted to the discipline of phonetics was confined to one crowded corner of the room. But Henry Higgins always referred to the room as his laboratory, so everyone else followed suit.)

  “Your timing is fortunate, gentlemen.” Pickering barely spoke above a whisper. “I’d wanted you to meet Eliza without Higgins being present. She’s always more constrained in his presence.”

  I had expected Sherlock Holmes to transform himself into an American gangster with some elaborate costume and makeup, but the spiky hair, the American cut of his suit, and the moustache he had grown in the week since our meeting were more than enough to seal his new character. I had even feared I’d be required to wear some kind of disguise myself. But Holmes had vetoed the notion. “Even the most elaborate disguise holds up for only a short amount of time, Watson,” he had said. “We shall rely on the latter-day obscurity of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to mask our identities.” My costume consisted of rather sulky tweeds, worn at the elbows and grimed at the cuffs.

  Now Mr. Morello stood in the middle of the room, drinking in every detail. I knew from experience that a few minutes’ patient observation of the surroundings would tell him more about his subject than most men would learn after months of intimacy. I wondered what he would make of the Piranesi engravings on the wall, or the score of Our Miss Gibbs on the piano. Some fascinating sidelights would follow shortly, or so I hoped.

  “Tell me about Miss Doolittle when she first came to you,” he directed Pickering. “Before her transformation. What was she?”

  Pickering stared hard at the sherry decanter. “‘Guttersnipe.’ Is that harsh? ‘Slattern.’ That’s not much better, is it? ‘Trollop?’ No.”

  “No better than she ought to be?” I suggested.

  “Really, Watson!” I had somehow managed to cross a line Pickering’s sense of chivalry would not allow.

  “I don’t mean to blacken her name,” he explained. “I felt a sympathy toward her from the very first. But she was a creature of the streets, a bit of rough and tumble, as we used to say in the regiment.”

  “Can you offer any reason why the professor would wish to foist such an elaborate deceit upon you as you propose?” asked Holmes.

  The colonel shook his head. “Higgins is straight as they come.”

  “Yet you said he tried to pass the girl off as a duchess?”

  “He succeeded, too. But that was merely sport. Part of the wager.”

  “So, by your own account, he’s a deceiver and a gambler.”

  “And has a tongue on him like a sailor. But . . .”

  “He is a gentleman,” Holmes said acidly.

  “An English gentleman!” said Pickering. “Not some French powder puff or Oriental doormat.”

  “Of course not.” Holmes seemed amused by Pickering’s staunch defense of the man he was asking us to investigate. “Let’s return to the girl, then, and this singular transformation Higgins is supposed to have effected upon her.”

  “Everyone said it was because she’d been ill. But what kind of illness puts color in the cheeks and light in the eyes?”

  On that cue, Miss Eliza Doolittle burst into the room like the ingénue in a Covent Garden comedy. She was a petite thing, barely twenty years of age, but sturdy and full of bounce. She was dressed in the latest mode, all tall-necked and cinched waist, with a jacket like a sailor’s, and a gay straw hat with cherries on it perched rakishly upon her head.

  “Colonel Pickering? Do you have money for a cab? Oh, I didn’t realize you had company!” Her eyes flashed a challenge at us.

  “Eliza, this is Mr. Morello from New York. He’s here to enlist Professor Higgins’s professional services,” said Pickering. “Mr. Morello, Miss Eliza Doolittle.”

  “My sympathies, Mr. Morello. And— ?” Her eye rested on me.

  “My jack-of-all-trades, Barton,” said Holmes, again slipping into his American accent.

  I bowed obsequiously. “Secretary, mum. Pleasetomeetyou, mum,” I mumbled.

  I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. Eliza Doolittle had a way of looking at one that was direct and almost daring, not precisely offering a fight, but totting up your strengths and weaknesses in case she were to get into the ring with you somewhere further down the line. There was not merely light in the eyes but a quick intelligence; not only color in her cheeks but also a firmness of purpose in her line. It was a pleasure to look upon her.

  “Welcome, Mr. Barton. Colonel, I’m offto Mrs. Higgins’s at-home. And I’m desperately late.”

  “Want to borrow my heap, Miss Doolittle?” Holmes asked. “Barton can get you anywhere you need to go in a New York minute. I’d take you myself, but all your streets go the wrong way and I just about break my neck every time I get behind the wheel.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t care for autos. I shall take a cab.”

  I said a silent prayer of thanks. I had nearly cursed out loud at Holmes’s suggestion. We had dropped off our hired chauffeur a few streets away and I had managed to bring the vehicle to a white-knuckle stop in front of Higgins’s door as part of our deception. It was my maiden voyage as a motorist, and I had no desire to tempt fate further. As for Holmes, he could no more drive than he could fly. The car would shortly be removed to a nearby garage and forgotten. But I thought it boded well that the girl preferred a hansom to a motorcar. Too many young persons in these decadent days are enraptured by the spell of roaring motors and exhaust.

  Pickering pressed a pound note into her hand. “You�
�re a dear,” she said to him. She kissed him on the cheek. He beamed.

  “You going alone?” said Holmes. “Girl like you? City like this?”

  “I’m perfectly capable of managing, thank you, Mr. Morello,” she answered with some asperity. “London is not New York. We are civilized here.” She turned to Pickering, dismissing the newcomer. “I may not be home till late, Colonel. There’s to be a speaker on temperance, or child labor, or the housing question. Or perhaps it’s all three. But it’s bound to be thrilling.” She made us an insolent little half-curtsey and was out the door, almost running.

  “So that is the transformation you spoke of?” said Holmes. He extinguished the cigar and took pipe and tobacco from his pocket.

  “A charming young lady,” I offered diplomatically. There was nothing in her bearing that marked her as a girl of the streets.

  Holmes frowned. “A sharp-tongued minx.”

  “The younger generation are more direct,” I ventured.

  “No question, no question,” said Pickering, looking flustered. “But she’s also a brass-faced liar.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Holmes.

  “Because I happen to know that Mrs. Higgins is in Cornwall.”

  “Watson!”

  After years with Holmes, a word and a nod was enough. I snatched up my hat and stick and made for the door.

  “Don’t let her see you. Don’t let anyone see that you are following her!”

  As if I needed to be told.

  Chapter Four

  I sprang down the steps of 27A. Miss Doolittle was already settling herself in the seat of a hansom. There was not another cab in sight in the quiet lane, and I had no time to whistle one up. Determined in my mission, I sprang up on the step next to the driver’s seat at the rear of the cab. He gaped at me in astonishment. I doffed my hat. He doffed his. As he leaned toward me I tore the hat from his hand and gave him a shove, sending him tumbling into the street. I jumped into the seat, pushed his hat upon my head, took up the reins and gave them a shake. The horse broke into what it must have imagined was a gallop, leaving the driver sputtering and shaking his fist in the dust of the road. I silently vowed to seek him out later and make restitution. My first responsibility, though, was the girl. “What was that address again, miss?” I called out.