The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Read online

  “Your mastery of medical terminology does you credit,” Guest said, trying to arrange a smile upon his face.

  “Eliza’s a perfect mynah bird. Drop her in the road near Lincoln’s Inn and she’ll be arguing cases in Chancery within a week,” Higgins crowed.

  But the doctor had not yet finished probing. “Have you felt any shortness of breath or fluttering in your pulse?”

  She smiled daggers at him. “Would you care to palpate me here at the dinner table?”

  Pickering attempted to turn the conversation into a safer avenue. “Higgins, have you heard from your mother in Cornwall?”

  Miss Doolittle’s cheeks splashed with crimson.

  “She’s miserable, of course, as I predicted,” Higgins answered. “I don’t know why she goes. I don’t know why anyone would ever want to leave London. Is there a happier place on earth?” He looked to Miss Doolittle for affirmation and noticed the color in her face.

  “Eliza is no candidate for anemia, Doctor,” Higgins said, “but she might well be subject to apoplexy. I declare, her face is bright red!”

  So went one of the most miserable dinner parties it has ever been my misfortune to attend. Whether Higgins recognized the implicit rebuke in Miss Doolittle’s mourning costume I could never decide. He badgered her mercilessly and merrily, but then he badgered Pickering equally, as well as Dr. Guest, and even had some choice remarks for his new pupil, Mr. Morello. He did not address me at all. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted. Pickering kept trying to turn the conversation to less turbulent channels, but his muddle was evident as he repeatedly began remarks addressed to me, then drew himself up short when he remembered that we were meant to be acquaintances of an hour rather than old comrades. After her initial flare-up, Miss Doolittle consigned herself to the silence of the grave.

  But worst was Dr. Guest. Except for rather spidery compliments paid to Miss Doolittle at odd moments, each of which she studiously ignored, he refused to join in the ebb and flow of conversation, such as it was. When Higgins attempted to draw him out, he opted to relate gruesome anecdotes related to his medical practice, delivered in low, growlsome tones, laced with anatomical detail so explicit that even I blushed. Higgins seemed to relish these tales from the crypt and twisted them out of the young man like so many noisome corks from a bad vintage. A description of the wounds suffered by a young woman trampled by a team of horses in Saffron Hill seemed to gratify our host particularly—“so drunk she was, she never needed ether—Irish, of course” sent him into peals of laughter. After a gorge full of this entertainment, Miss Doolittle was not the only member of the company picking at her food.

  We were all relieved when the last course was served and we had pushed the food around on our plates enough to fool the cook into thinking we had at least sampled it. Eliza rose from the table and excused herself. She evidently felt she had fulfilled her duty as hostess.

  “Dr. Guest will see you up,” said Higgins.

  “I’m promised for the theatre this evening. I can’t be late.”

  “I won’t ask more than a few minutes of your time, Miss Eliza,” said the doctor silkily.

  Eliza’s eyes finally met his, and there seemed such a mix of dread and fascination in them as if she had discovered a swamp adder curled upon her pillow. Then her eyes dropped to the floor. She suffered Guest to take her arm and lead her upstairs. Higgins grinned like the Cheshire cat. Pickering sighed.

  “You take as much interest in that girl’s innards as if you were running her in the Derby,” said Holmes.

  “I think of her rather as a diamond in the rough, Mr. Morello,” Higgins answered. “There’s sherry in the laboratory, gentlemen.”

  As the company filed out of the dining room, a peculiar sight caught my eye. Through the window I spied a man, skulking outdoors in the shadows of the evening. I couldn’t make out his face, but he was without a doubt staring up at the windows of the house. I signaled to Holmes as unobtrusively as possible. He caught my gesture, an old signal that had passed between us a hundred times before. He glanced out the window and gave a curt nod. As he followed the others to the laboratory, I lingered in the hall. Then I slipped out through the street door as stealthily as I could manage.

  He was standing slap in the middle of the street, blind to the world, his eyes fixed on Miss Doolittle’s window. With the light from the window pearling full on his face, I recognized him as the same young man in the battered top hat who had pursued our cab earlier in the day.

  He had taken no notice of me. I acted on instinct. I dropped into a crouch and darted across the road so as to come at him from behind. Then I grabbed hold of his arm and twisted it up behind his back. “You’re nicked, old son,” I hissed in his ear, affecting a police detective’s growl.

  His reaction amazed me. There was no resistance at all. He collapsed against me, hot tears springing into his eyes. “Don’t hurt me!” he pled. “I can’t stand pain!”

  “Come along quiet, then,” I rasped.

  “If I could just explain, constable—”

  “None o’ that!” I took the fellow by the scruff of the neck and propelled him up the stairs into the house. The noise brought one of the housemaids trotting into the entrance hall. She stared at us dumbfounded. “Bring Mr.”—what was the blasted alias Holmes had taken?—”Bring the colonel!” I cried. She stood rooted to the spot. “Go, girl!” She picked up her skirts and fled. I pushed the young ruffian before me into the front parlor, and had him face down upon a table when Holmes appeared with the colonel.

  Pickering’s eyes went wide at the scene before him. “What’s all this, then?” he asked.

  “This is the fellow I told you about!” I grunted, my knee planted in the interloper’s spine.

  “Not the one who punched the horse, I hope.” Pickering seemed almost amused.

  Higgins came in behind them. He took one look at the villain in my grasp, and said, “Hello, Freddy. You’re too late for dinner, I’m afraid.”

  It was evident I had misjudged the situation. I had my knee in the back of Miss Doolittle’s theatre escort.

  “Guess you can let the cut-throat go, Barton,” said Holmes, grinning.

  I released the young man. He turned on me. “You’re not a rozzer?” he asked. “What sort of fellow—how dare—and why—?” He went on spluttering till he was out of breath.

  Higgins sorted him out. “This is my latest student, Mr. Morello, Freddy. The fellow who assaulted you is his secretary. Who doubles as a bodyguard, apparently.” He gave me a new look of appraisal. “Mr. Morello, the Honorable Frederick Eynsford-Hill.”

  “I found him lurking in the street, spying on Miss Doolittle’s window,” I said stiffly.

  “No surprise there,” said Higgins pleasantly. “Day or night, you can find him at his post. Mr. Eynsford-Hill is madly in love with Eliza. Aren’t you, Freddy?”

  “Freddy, you know you’re not supposed to loiter in the street,” said Pickering. “The neighbors all think you’re some sort of cat burglar.”

  The young man was disheveled and practically purple in the face. “There’s a man in Eliza’s room!” he burst out in a frenzy. He surged toward the hall. Pickering laid a hand on his shoulder to restrain him.

  “That would be Dr. Guest,” said Higgins. “A routine consultation. Eliza’s health has been a bit spotty lately.”

  Freddy—and I will always think ofhim simply as Freddy, awkward and untoward and entirely vulnerable, the model of every young fellow teetering on the threshold of life—Freddy was in sad need of repair. He tried tucking in here and brushing there, all to little effect. Then he turned upon me once again, for the first time really screwing his eyes upon me. “You!” he yelped. This time he had recognized me from the afternoon’s adventure.

  “Freddy, you know this fellow?” Higgins asked. His nostrils seemed to quiver with suspicion.

  Freddy was still staring at me goggle-eyed. Would he expose me to the professor? Were we to be unmasked
so soon? How could I plausibly explain my role in the events in Swandam Lane?

  But Freddy backed down. “Yes, I . . . er, that is to say, no . . . For a moment he reminded me of my Uncle Algernon. Just around the ears—the eyes, rather.” He turned to Pickering, as if for confirmation. “Don’t you think? Oh, you never met Uncle Algie. Well, you never shall. Poor blighter died in a boating accident. Salmon fishing in Scotland. Refused to let go the line and the bally creature pulled him right under.” He shivered, as if making a physical effort to tear himself away from this tragic memory. Then he turned to Higgins. “Might I be announced to Miss Doolittle, sir? We’re engaged for the theatre this evening, and Eliza puts up a whale of a fuss if she’s late for curtain.”

  It struck me that Freddy might be as anxious to keep the afternoon’s events a secret as I was. Perhaps he too would have difficulty explaining his role in those events.

  “Here’s the little lady now!” said Holmes.

  As he spoke, Miss Doolittle was descending the stairs on the arm of Dr. Guest. There was no sign of the fractiousness she’d displayed earlier. Indeed, she seemed radiant and serene.

  “Freddy, how are you, dear? We missed you at dinner,” she said.

  “How does your patient, Doctor?” Higgins asked.

  “Sound as a bell!” Guest said jovially. The doctor’s mood seemed to have lightened with his patient’s. He radiated a manly confidence that had been sadly missing during dinner. He handed the young lady over to the professor as if she were a coat newly mended.

  “I feel greatly improved, Professor. Thank you for asking the doctor to visit me,” said Eliza.

  This sentiment was so at odds with the young lady’s behavior at dinner that I almost bit my tongue. Pickering was jabbing his elbow into my ribs, just in case I might have missed her about-face. Even Holmes, whose face is normally a mask of calm, looked nonplussed. Only two people seemed unsurprised: Higgins’s face was wreathed in smiles, while Freddy looked as though he were thinking of poor Uncle Algernon again.

  Dr. Guest seemed to savor Freddy’s discomfort, but evidently felt the wound needed more salt. “We’re entrusting this precious parcel to your care for the evening, Mr. Eynsford-Hill. Please return her undamaged,” he said.

  It was an affront that would have offended any man. Freddy looked as though he would make a withering retort, if only he were capable of one. Alas, though his eyes glistened and his face turned bright vermillion, he spoke not a word. The salmon had pulled him under.

  Miss Doolittle attempted to come to his rescue. “Would you get my wrap, Freddy? We’d linger, gentlemen, but it’s a detective mystery and we can’t miss the first act.” She gave the young man her arm and wafted out the front door like a June breeze.

  The evening had already taken so many hairpin turns that it was hardly astonishing we spent the next hour in the laboratory, listening to Dr. Guest hold forth with his morbid case histories. He had shed his diffidence entirely and decided it was his solemn duty to entertain us. Whether it was the wine from dinner or a private decoction of his own, the Dutch courage was in him. He had spent some little time as an army doctor in India, it seemed, and proceeded to lecture us on that part of the world as if he were the only member of our company ever to tread the wharves at Colaba. His patients all seem to have been either fever victims or madmen. I took advantage of my lowly status, excusing myself to catch up on Mr. Morello’s correspondence. By the time I returned, his recitations had reached a fever pitch. He was in the middle of a story about the Tiger Men of Punjab, who he claimed were not merely savage but striped with orange and black fur like their namesakes. Whether he was telling it as a fairy story or a naturalist’s account I could not determine. Holmes’s mind seemed far away, and Pickering had frankly fallen asleep in his chair. Higgins, on the other hand, seemed to hang on the doctor’s every word.

  Eventually the evening shuddered to a close. Holmes and I retired to his room. Jealousy nagged at me again as I took in the cheerful floral wallpaper, the mahogany dresser, and especially the brass bedstead with snowy mattress and turned-down coverlet. Holmes once again set aside the American cigars in favor of his old pipe.

  “Watson, would you send a cable to my housekeeper? I’d do it myself, but it might arouse suspicion. Ask her to engage Mr. Tarbell to look after the bees for a day or two. It looks as if we’ll have to stay the night.” Holmes pulled off his boots and set them aside. “A first check to my theories, eh?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” I replied.

  “I will mention but two names, and you will understand: Jabez Wilson and Hall Pycroft.”

  The veil was lifted. The men he had mentioned were former clients who had each been the victim of an elaborate hoax meant to keep them at arm’s length from the scene of a criminal endeavor.

  “When the colonel mentioned the amazingly fortuitous coincidence of his meeting Higgins and the girl beneath the pillars of St. Paul and their hurried removal to this house, I was certain that some such deception was being played upon him. I expected to have the answer to your mystery by dinnertime.” He paused, contemplating. “At this time of life one perhaps begins to depend too much upon past experience,” he said ruefully.

  Had Holmes been shamming? “But what about the several points of interest?” I protested. “You called it a particularly thorny problem. Particularly!”

  “All bosh! You brought an old friend to see me, hoping to impress him with your friend the Great Detective. How could I deny my Watson? A day’s jaunt to London, Watson’s friend saved from sinister plotters, dinner at Simpson’s, home on the last train. But 27A Wimpole is no hollow shell. Eight guest bedrooms are beyond the reach of the most prodigal fraudster. Mrs. Pearce is solid as Gibraltar. And the dust on Higgins’s father’s medical books is older than Miss Doolittle. So my theory can be wrapped in the newspapers with yesterday’s fish.”

  It appeared that he had taken on the case merely to humor me. “So you think there’s nothing in it at all?” I asked, crestfallen.

  “I did not say that. Now that we are on the scene, there actually are a few points of interest. How is it that Mr. Eynsford-Hill is always on the watch? Why did the cook ruin the Béarnaise using thyme rather than tarragon? Why does Higgins not employ a butler? And why does our Irish doctor so disdain the Irish?”

  They seemed to me fairly trivial points, but I seized upon the last one with gusto. “It seems obvious to me that this man Guest is behind the whole affair!” I said.

  “He’s not the spirit of bonhomie, I grant you. But what affair is he supposed to be behind? Has a crime been committed, or a hoax perpetrated? We don’t have the least idea what we’re up against.”

  “But you saw the difference in Miss Doolittle after she was closeted with the doctor!”

  “It is no crime for a doctor to give a fractious female patient a tonic to calm her nerves.”

  “Tonic indeed. The man has some sinister power over the girl.”

  “Perhaps. We shall certainly ask Colonel Pickering to consult with his friends in India as to the doctor’s antecedents. Lestrade tells me the colonel cultivated quite a set of informants during his time there.”

  “You had Pickering investigated?” The notion was intolerable.

  “Save your indignation, Watson. When a fellow tells you an impossible story, the first thing you must do is make sure the fellow is neither a madman nor a mountebank. Your man passed that test with flying colors. Now we must consider our next move.”

  For a moment I considered telling him not to bother, that the affair was obviously too trivial for the great man’s talents. I had forgotten how casually he could trample one’s feelings.

  Then I remembered what I had found. “Perhaps you can make something of this.” I drew a small glass ampoule from my pocket and handed it to him.

  “It appears to be empty. I suppose it is not?”

  “A few drops remain, I believe. It must be the tonic Guest gave the girl. Perhaps there’s enough
for you to analyze?”

  He scrutinized the ampoule. “Watson, you’ve become a veritable sleuth! What need is there of the wreck of Sherlock Holmes?”

  I blushed at his praise. “I slipped it out of his bag while he was entertaining you.”

  There was the sound of footsteps in the hall. Holmes immediately began speaking in a loud stentorian voice, and I whipped out a notebook and pen case to write. This was a stratagem we had agreed upon beforehand. He dictated a letter to Morello’s cousin Luigi in New Jersey, rife with details about the dispersal of a thousand tons of canned tomatoes up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States. It was the first of many such letters Holmes would dictate to me over the course of our stay at Wimpole Street, duly sent on through the mail after first being steamed open and read by our host. The address on the envelopes belonged to a retired New York policeman, Mr. Wilson Hargreave, an old friend of Holmes who was privy to our deception.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Robert. “Want your boots blacked for the morning, sir?” he asked.

  “Thanks, kid, you’re all right,” said Holmes, once again falling into his gangster persona. He picked up the boots and lofted them, one at a time, to the boy. Robert seemed scandalized by the informality, but he caught each boot as it was flung. He executed a little dip, something between a friendly nod and a formal bow, and went to go.

  “Hold up, kid.” A glimmer of mischief had come into Holmes’s eyes. “Second thought, leave the boots. Go get yourself some shut-eye.”

  Robert turned back. He looked for a moment as if he might try tossing the boots back to Mr. Morello, but his courage failed him. He set the boots next to the wardrobe.

  “Hit me next time,” said Holmes. Robert dipped again and left us in peace.

  “Hand me those boots, Watson. I think we yet have need of them tonight,” Holmes said.

  My spirits rose. Perhaps my old friend was not so jaundiced as he had seemed. “You have an excursion to make?” I asked as I handed him the boots.

  “We have an excursion. The board is laid before us. Time we rolled the dice.”