The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Read online

  “That was when I was young and crime was my only passion. Ah, Watson, am I too old to go upon the stage?” He gazed dreamily into the middle distance.

  “You’re in a curious mood.”

  “By which you mean you are curious about my mood.”

  “Well, I don’t want to pry—”

  “Which is your downfall as a detective. Pry, Watson, pry like a nickel-plated jemmy!”

  “Well, then—”

  “Well, then, why am I so lighthearted? I cannot say precisely. But I have been sitting at that cramped little table in the laboratory all day long, practicing pronouncing perfectly poorly, watching Higgins and the girl from the splendid isolation of my earphones, and I have concluded thus much: they are keeping secrets!”

  This was his discovery? “I had thought we were agreed on that from the outset,” I ventured.

  “Yes, yes we were, Watson, yes we were,” he said, his enthusiasm dampened not one whit. “But they are not keeping secrets in common.”

  “Oh,” I said, still unmoved, then, “Oh!” as it struck me.

  “You see? You see? They are not confederates. They are not of one mind. They work at cross-purposes.”

  “What did they say that led you to conclude this?”

  “Not a word. Not one word. At least not one that I heard. The earphones made it impossible for me to hear. Which in turn made it easier for me to concentrate upon their facial expressions and gestures. The way they spy on one another, their hesitations and their distances.”

  “Could those not have been expressions of an unvoiced affection between the two?” I had harbored suspicions of such an affection almost from the start.

  Holmes laughed. “Not a chance. Of course there is a strong animal magnetism between them which neither will acknowledge even to themselves, but there is no sympathy of heart or mind.”

  “So this simplifies our problem?”

  “On the contrary. It becomes more complex. Which makes it far more interesting!” He giggled girlishly. He seemed absolutely exhilarated. Too much so, it occurred to me. It was unnatural.

  “Holmes, I hate to ask this, but you haven’t been indulging in any of the old habits?” There had been a time when Holmes had habitually turned to narcotics to combat the ennui occasioned when he had no cases to work upon.

  “O ye of little faith! It’s been years since I’ve resorted to the pharmacopeia. Can a man not glory in the intricacies of human iniquity without being accused of eating lotus petals?”

  I believed him, but only just. I brought a candle before his face. “Your pupils are dilated,” I said, “and your behavior erratic. Would you allow me to check your pulse?”

  Instead of agreeing, he put his own finger on his radial artery and held it there. “It’s fast,” he said abstractedly, as if considering a problem wholly unrelated to himself. “Why is it fast, do you suppose?”

  It was a puzzle. If it wasn’t cocaine or heroin, what had affected him so? Then a possibility more dire suggested itself. “What about the tonic Miss Doolittle took? Were you able to make anything of that?”

  “No, no, no. Not enough for a proper workup. No.”

  “You took it yourself.” I tried not to make it sound like an accusation.

  “Just after breakfast. Barely enough to paint the gums.”

  “And the effect?”

  “Only a temporary numbness and a mild euphoria. Lasting about an hour.”

  “As a doctor, I think I must disagree with you, Holmes. I think the effect of the tonic was so powerful that you are still under its influence, without your even realizing it.”

  Holmes opened his mouth, and then shut it. He seemed to look inside himself, as if he were examining his own nervous system, neuron by neuron. “Not possible!” he said. Then: “You really think so? Well, well, well. Perhaps you are right. But if that’s the case . . .”

  He sank back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, waving his arms to an imaginary orchestra.

  “Yes?”

  “If that is the case, imagine the effect of a full dose!”

  Chapter Ten

  I set out again the next morning with an expanded brief. Holmes had urged me to canvass the public houses in the area, and gave me the names of several landlords he knew personally. I viewed the prospect with trepidation. Holmes had always nurtured a connection to the lower classes that I could understand no more than I could duplicate. Charity is one thing; familiarity quite another. The press of unwashed humanity in the open streets was bad enough; the fetor oozing from the walls and floorboards of the pubs was an assault upon the senses. Raw onion met with moldy cheese and sour beer blended with the navvies’ sweat. The barmen answered all my interrogations with blank, vulpine faces. Their clientele—rough workingmen and idlers, thieves and villains—eyed me with suspicion or open hostility. I returned to Wimpole Street at twilight with my tail between my legs. I had not stopped for tea. I had purchased a meat pie from one of the street vendors, and thrown it away after one bite told me it was more like to be cat meat than the promised veal. My stomach rumbled, and my feet ached. I had always admired my friend’s ability to sift what seemed like random information into a coherent explanation of a crime, but I had not quite fathomed the exhausting difficulty of collecting that information in the first place. I was discouraged enough to give up my inquiry altogether, but that Holmes was so obviously counting on me. I expected him to carve me up with sharp questions when we sat down together again in confidence, but his manner was subdued instead, almost gentle. He had Robert smuggle up a cold joint and some rolls to his room from the larder, and insisted I down half a pot of tea before we even began. What changes had the years wrought upon him? In the old days, when he was on the scent, Holmes had been like a hound straining at the leash, snapping at everyone about him.

  “A simple case of dyspepsia,” Holmes explained. “The cook put half a cup of pepper in the tournedos béarnaise. A talented woman, but blind as a bat. The pipes have been shaking in the house all evening.”

  I chuckled. The simple repast Robert had provided had gone a long way toward improving my disposition.

  “I’m sure you realize what that means,” Holmes said.

  Of course I had no idea what it meant. “We should dine out from now on?” I ventured.

  He raised an eyebrow in reproof. “The cook would be unaware of any change in Miss Doolittle’s appearance.”

  As usual with Holmes’s deductions, it seemed obvious once he’d said it. I had forgotten that line of inquiry entirely. “But there are still the three housemaids,” I returned. “And the footman. His eyes are sharp enough.”

  “All of them hired in the wake of Miss Doolittle’s illness.”

  “That can’t be right! Pickering said they were the same servants before and after his attack.”

  “I don’t want to cast aspersions on your friend, but I don’t think the colonel would notice the difference between one servant and another, as long as they wore the same uniform. But I spoke with Molly, the upstairs maid. She came into an empty house, except for the cook and Mrs. Pearce.”

  “But the former servants? What happened to them?”

  “One married, one let go for drink, one emigrated to Australia: at least that was the rumor. Which was which, she couldn’t say. So the only servant who could have witnessed the substitution was Mrs. Pearce. Loyal Mrs. Pearce.”

  Closemouthed Mrs. Pearce.

  “But shouldn’t the fact that they were all sacked tell us something?”

  “According to the cook, Professor Higgins has a reputation for going through staff like a postboy goes through horses.”

  “But if we could find them, they would certainly be inclined to tell us something.”

  “I have begun inquiries in that direction. But it may be hard to track them down if they have left service—or left the country.”

  Another thought struck me. “But if she’s not Eliza Doolittle— who is she?”

  “Ah, you’ve
come to that point, have you? From the outset, Watson, there were two possibilities: either the girl had been put away or murdered, as Pickering suspected, and another girl put in her place, or she had undergone a transformation so dramatic that Pickering could not recognize her. The latter supposition indicated the abuse of some powerful narcotic. I know something about the transformations induced by narcotics. Her liaison with the brutal underworld figure called Ned pointed strongly to the latter theory, but we could not rule out the former. But what reason could there be for that? Had Higgins had a prior relationship with the girl? Did she know some secret of his? Could she even be pregnant with his child?”

  “Holmes! Whatever else he may be, Higgins is a gentleman.”

  “The workhouses are full of the by-blows of gentlemen. But we can set that possibility aside for the moment. Well, then, might she be more than the child of the streets she seemed? Who were her people? Alternatively, it might not be about the flower girl, but about the young lady we had actually met. Perhaps she was no garden party duchess, but a real one, perhaps from one of the Hapsburg states that have seen such turmoil recently.”

  “But isn’t that just what Higgins has been trying to convince us of?”

  “He may be playing a double bluff. Perhaps she had sought shelter from her enemies with Higgins, and the first girl had been brought into his home as pretext for the second, then sent away with a proper reward, or put out of the way to ensure her silence.”

  “Our little Eliza might really be a duchess! Perhaps even a princess!” I said. My mind whirled with possibilities.

  Holmes smiled at my enthusiasm. “First we must eliminate the flower girl from our calculus,” he said.

  It was on my third day of sleuthing that I had a turn of luck. I was in a foul hole down off Carting Lane called the Cormorant, which Holmes had recommended to me as a hotbed of underworld activity. It was indeed the vilest place I had set foot in since that long-ago day I walked into the Bar of Gold looking for Isa Whitney. It might have been midday when I stepped in off the street, but it seemed black midnight inside that house, the gloom relieved only by a couple of smoking lamps, the stench of decay oozing from the walls as from a corpse. The room stretched off into obscurity as if into nothingness. I asked for the proprietor, a Mr. Breckinridge, but the name only drew laughter from the moonfaced barman and five or six rapacious-looking fellows slouching round the bar.

  “You won’t find Teddy Brock in these parts, old geezer,” volunteered one of them, a tosher by his coat and lantern.

  I bridled at the word “geezer,” but let it pass. “Mr. Breckinridge is no longer proprietor of this establishment?”

  “He’s no longer the owner of his own precious neck, that’s what,” snickered another fellow. His nose was hooked like a grape knife and his eyes looked in different directions.

  “Strung up at Wandsworth last December,” explained a third man, whose cheek was corrugated with scars, “after he took a bungstarter to the old woman.”

  “Strung up?”

  “‘Anged by the neck until dead,” said the barman in a funereal tone. “And a few hours more, for good measure!” cried Grape-knife, to the delight of the others.

  “Ah. Well, thank you for your time.” I started for the door. They were all staring at me, at least half a dozen of them now. Realizing I had their attention, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. Raising my voice, I asked, “Would any of you be acquainted with a Miss Eliza Doolittle? She used to sell flowers in the streets round here. Daughter of one Alfred Doolittle.”

  It was a mistake. I could see it in their eyes. Idle curiosity had been replaced by active suspicion. I should have ended it there. Instead I stumbled further into the morass.

  “Angel Court? Could anyone direct me there?”

  “If you’re looking for a girl, old flint, there’s four on every corner. They all know the same tricks.” This from a broken-nosed navvy who tittered at his own joke.

  “I am not looking for a girl,” I said, drawing my dignity round me.

  A red-faced fellow with a filthy kerchief and the shoulders of a coal heaver slammed his glass down on the bar and turned around to look at me. He had seemed oblivious of my presence until that moment. “What you lookin’ for, then, eh? Oo are you marchin’ in here askin’ all these questions, upsettin’ folk? A copper, maybe?”

  “I’m a friend of Miss Doolittle’s,” I said, a trifle primly.

  “If you’re a friend, why not bloody ask ’er oo she knows, eh? We don’t want toffs swaggerin’ in here disturbin’ the peace and shovin’ their toffee noses where they don’t belong.”

  “I assure you I meant no harm, my good fellow.” I was amazed at how quickly misunderstandings multiplied among these men. They seemed absolutely determined to misconstrue my every intention in the worst possible way.

  “‘Arm? It’s ’arm you want, you come to the right shop, Mr. Toffee Nose.” The coal heaver stepped toward me, lowering his head like a bull, and his friends closed in around us. It was no good arguing with these men. Reflexively, I raised my stick to ward him off. It was an unfortunate gesture. He grabbed hold of the shaft and wrenched it from me as if I were a wayward child. Then he raised it above his head. Animal rage smoldered in his eyes. The career of John Watson, M.D., was about to come to an abrupt and inglorious end.

  Then a voice rang out from the heavens:

  “Doctor Watson?”

  Of course it was not really the heavens speaking, although the impression was hard to shake. The voice echoed from the other end of the room, wreathed in smoky obscurity.

  “It’s Doctor John Watson, isn’t it?”

  It struck me that anyone who recognized me in such a place would likely be one of the dozens of villains Holmes and I had sent to prison in the old days. My nightmare was spinning down into darkness.

  Then a young man emerged from the gloom. Early thirties perhaps— too young to be an old foe. Tall and narrow. A lupine face with calculating eyes, yet there was a smile waiting to break forth on those liverish lips. “Don’t say you don’t know me, Doctor Watson!” he begged.

  Suddenly twenty years dropped away. A line of ragged boys standing in the street, waiting for instructions from Sherlock Holmes. “Wiggins! It’s Wiggins, isn’t it?” I could have wrapped the fellow in my arms and kissed him.

  “Right you are, Doctor!” he shouted, taking my hand.

  Wiggins had been the eldest, and the de facto leader of that ragtag band of boys dubbed by Holmes the Baker Street Irregulars, who had helped us in any number of investigations. They could go anywhere, follow anyone, listen at doors, spy at windows, melt into crowds, and were absolutely fearless. Mortal danger was a great game to them, encouraged by Holmes’s own reckless example. Now here was their chief, a grown man, with muttonchops and thinning ginger hair. He wore a rusty fustian jacket that reminded me of myself twenty years ago, and a courier bag slung across his shoulder.

  “Look here, lads,” he cried, “this is Doctor John Watson, friend and partner of the great Sherlock Holmes! If he says he’s a friend of someone, he’s a friend!”

  Silence fell among the men. You could feel them wavering in their hostility.

  “And he wants to stand the next round!”

  The storm clouds broke. The men surged round me, all trace of hostility wiped away. They tipped their caps and shook my hand. The taps were opened and fellowship poured out. The tosher thanked me personally for my supposed assistance in some dire mystery that would have sent his wife’s uncle to the gallows back in ’93. Sherlock Holmes had solved the case as the work of an afternoon. These men forcefully reminded me that Holmes’s efforts had cleared the innocent as often as they had condemned the guilty. The coalheaver returned my stick to me as if it were a gift he’d made special and offered to stand me the next round. I took it from Wiggins’s wink that it would be a bad idea to refuse.

  We talked of the old days. Even at that I was clumsy. I asked after his family, only to be
reminded that Wiggins was an orphan; nor, he assured me, had he ever married. “What’s good enough for Sherlock Holmes, that’s good enough for me!” he said, laughing it off. I asked if he still saw any of the Irregulars. “Well, course you know about Teddy,” he said.

  “Teddy? Little curly-headed fellow, always wiping his nose on his sleeve?”

  “Aye, that were Teddy Brock,” he said with glistening eyes.

  Then I realized that runny-nose Teddy and Teddy Breckinridge, former landlord of the Cormorant, since executed for murder, were one and the same. There was a reason, after all, why the Irregulars were irregular.

  “The Cormorant were a bit of haven for the old Irregulars back in the day,” said Wiggins. “But times change, eh?” He told me about the other boys, jostling my memory with long-forgotten names and faces. None of the rest of them had come up against the law, at least not seriously. Two had emigrated to Australia, one to Canada, and one was a cowboy in the Argentine: such immense vistas for boys who had once “traveled extensively” in London, as Mr. Thoreau might put it. In return I did my best to recount for him the little mundane doings of two old men who had once been his idols. It made for slow storytelling, and I could see impatience building in his face. “So who’s this doxie you’re looking for, Doctor? You on a case?”

  I admitted the fact.

  “Holmes and Watson, the game is afoot!” Wiggins laughed good-naturedly. “I knew you had something up your sleeve, Doctor. What’s the play?”

  “We’re not looking for the girl, Wiggins—we’ve got her safe in our pocket. We need to find someone who knew her before she came to us.”

  “Ah, the old former friends and associates. A tidy business, that one.”

  “’Ev another pint, Doctor Wilson!” Grape-knife slammed another tankard in front of me. Wiggins nodded, and I took a drink.

  “Wiggy, you should get a picture of us with the doctor, eh?” said the coalheaver, and the others joined in the chorus.

  “A picture? You’re a photographer?” I asked.