The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Read online

  “I’m a detective is what I am,” said Wiggins proudly. “But the kind of detectin’ I do, Mrs. Brown is as valuable to me as Mr. Holmes’ magnifying glass were to him.” He opened up his bag and produced a small leather case, which held a Brownie camera. It was the first time I’d seen a camera so small, barely bigger than a cottage loaf. The photographer merely need turn the spool, focus the lens, and press the shutter to capture an image. My new friends crowded round me, all eager to be memorialized in the picture.

  “Here, Doctor, you don’t mind me saying, what you need is a snapshot of this girl. Flash it around and people can tell right off do they know her.”

  “I agree, Wiggins. Unfortunately, no such photo exists. And we can hardly ask her to sit for a portrait without arousing her suspicions.”

  “I could take one, easy as pissing the bed.”

  “But could you take it without the girl knowing?”

  Wiggins grinned. “That’s my specialty, mate.”

  Chapter Eleven

  It was a grey evening when I returned to Wimpole Street. I was about to enter the laboratory when Mrs. Pearce came bustling into the hall to waylay me. “He’s with someone, I’m afraid. Not to be disturbed on any account were his directions. I’m sure you understand, Mr. Barton.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Pearce. Is my employer with them?”

  “Mr. Morello is out.” She hesitated for a moment. “You look all in, Mr. Barton. Why don’t you take some tea in the parlor?”

  I nodded gratefully. Soon I was comfortably seated before a cheerful fire, with a cup of tea to my lips and the evening papers on my lap. Mrs. Pearce had brought it to me herself, rather than sending it in with one of the girls. Once I was settled, she made to go, but then turned back to face me.

  “Your Mr. Morello seems a bit of a slave driver, if you don’t mind my saying so. Have you been with him long?”

  “Less than a month,” I replied.

  “Oh! Are you a Londoner?”

  I was a bit taken aback to find Mrs. Pearce ladling her personal attentions upon me. I had thought her rather obvious disdain for Mr. Morello extended to me as well. Was she pumping me for information on behalf of her master? She hardly seemed the type for idle gossip.

  “I was with Baron Hastings in Northumberland until he passed away.” Holmes and I had rehearsed the answers for just such an occasion. My reply naturally led to a conversation about our past years “in service.” I dodged specifics with astounding awkwardness, but she seemed not to doubt me. She herself had joined the Higgins household when Professor Higgins was a mere boy, rising from the position of second housemaid to her present lofty estate. She had married the butler, Pearce, when she was young and he was old. He was struck down by apoplexy in the same week the queen died: proof of his loyalty to the Crown.

  Then she hesitated, and sought my eyes, as if wanting to draw me into her confidence. “You seem a nice man, Mr. Barton. Do you know the stories about your Mr. Morello?” She paused as if expecting a protest, and then hurried on. “He is not at all a nice man.” Her tone was that of a reproving aunt. I would have passed it off, but that look in her eyes forced me to honesty.

  “I might say the same thing about Professor Higgins.”

  She did not flinch, but gave my words due consideration. “He was a willful child, and his mother encouraged his willfulness. Mr. Pearce promised his father on his deathbed that he’d look after him. I promised Mr. Pearce the same thing.” She meant that as an ironclad excuse, and so it was.

  We heard the laboratory doors open, and men talking. Higgins saying, “I shall wait upon your results.” And the other man, “Good day, then, Professor.”

  They paused for a moment in the hall where I could see them. The stranger was tall and lanky, almost skeletal, with a face pale as custard. He wore a tweed ulster, which seemed a bit close for so fair a day, with a fore-and-aft cap as though he had just come from a country hunting party. A meerschaum pipe was clenched between his lips. I only had a moment’s glimpse, but I was aware of a penetrating gaze, and I could not shake the feeling that I had seen him before.

  “Mrs. Pearce, will you see the gentleman to the door?” said Higgins. She gave a little curtsey and followed the stranger out. Higgins returned to the laboratory without ever noticing me.

  Mrs. Pearce, I had begun to realize, was an exceptional woman of great strength and poise, with an unusually rigorous mind for one of her sex. She had the fine, noble features of a Roman matron. Her fealty to the Higgins family could not be counted against her. When she passed by the door again, I stopped her. “Mrs. Pearce, I think I’ve met that gentleman before. What’s his name?”

  “I never caught his name, sir. He’s one of those private detectives.”

  “Ah. Is the professor worried about housebreakers?”

  “Oh, no, sir. I think the gentleman has been hired to investigate your Mr. Morello,” she answered pointedly. With that, she went in to see to her master.

  I was utterly thrown over. Our investigation was ended before it had properly begun! Even the meanest detective would have no difficulty in unmasking G.B. Morello and Hill Barton as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and that in short order. I laid the papers aside, despondent.

  That was how they found me when they returned, all three together, Pickering, Holmes, and Eliza. Pickering seemed in fine fettle, and the girl was glowing. They had taken Mr. Morello sightseeing. Now he could boast of seeing more than the lions at Trafalgar and the changing of the guard, said Eliza. “He insisted on seeing Covent Garden, till I convinced him there were no gardens there. We went to Kensington Garden instead.”

  “You won’t see folks in Brooklyn going gaga over a statue of a boy,” Holmes grumbled.

  “The boys in Brooklyn cannot fly,” Eliza shot back.

  They were talking about the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Garden. Mr. Barrie had erected it there in secret in the middle of the night some months ago. There were those who called it a wonder and those who called it a disgrace. For myself, I have never approved of writers promoting their own wares as if they were selling buns two a penny. But I will confess a certain affection for the Lost Boys, particularly Tootles.

  “You wanna fly away to Neverland, Miss Doolittle?” asked Holmes.

  “Mr. Morello—” she unpinned her hat and let her hair fall down around her shoulders—”where do you think we are now?”

  As soon as Pickering and the girl had retreated to their rooms to prepare for dinner, the mask fell from Holmes’s face. “I had hoped to get her to Covent Garden, where someone might recognize her, but she was too clever for me. Your blockhead friend Pickering was no help, either. It was he who had the blasted impudence to suggest Kensington Gardens.”

  “And what did you think of the Peter Pan statue?” I asked, chuckling.

  “As a grave marker, it’s in singularly bad taste.”

  “Grave marker? What on earth can you mean?”

  “Why would a man erect a statute in the dead of night unless he’s buried someone beneath?”

  This was one of the pitfalls of being the world’s foremost detective. The most innocent circumstance was always grounds for suspicion, and murder ever on his mind.

  “You suspect Mr. Barrie of doing away with someone? Any hint as to who the victim might be?”

  “They still haven’t found Loraine Allison, have they?” he asked peevishly.

  Loraine Allison was a two-year old girl who had been among the passengers on the Titanic. Her body had never been found. “Surely you’re not serious,” I chided.

  “Of course not. The statue alone is crime enough for the hangman’s noose.”

  He was obviously out of sorts. News of my fortuitous run-in with young Wiggins helped lift his mood enormously. “Our investigation progresses, Watson,” he said, clapping his hands. “Good to have young Wiggins in our stable. Of course one mourns the death of young Breck-inridge, however well deserved. But Wiggins was always the brightest of the lot.” Eve
n my last bit of news, that of Higgins having hired a detective, could not sour his mood, though I did my best to impress the gravity of the situation upon him.

  He chose to view Mrs. Pearce’s revelation in a different light.

  “Old Watson the romantic! As soon as my back is turned, he is tête-à-tête with my lady housekeeper,” he said, teasing. “A handsome woman, Doctor, but guard yourself. Her first loyalty is to Higgins. Anything you let slip to her by moonlight will be communicated to him before daybreak.”

  I waved his insinuation aside, though not without a blush, I fear. “Guard yourself!” I rejoined. “It’s not me that Higgins has set the hounds upon.”

  “Cheer up, Watson,” he said lightly. “Not every detective is Sherlock Holmes.” In vain I pointed out that not every detective need be.

  “Don’t think of it,” he said, brushing it aside. “Anything good in the papers? What scandal is the good old Gazette selling these days?” I went to hand him the paper, but he refused it. “No, I swore off the scandal sheets long ago. But here, what’s this?” A headline had caught his eye. It was an article I had glanced at earlier.

  “Another prostitute murdered, I think,” I answered. “Tragic.” Truth be told, this kind of penny-dreadful tragedy barely touched me these days. As the world had grown colder, so had my heart.

  Holmes took the paper from me. “More than merely tragic,” he commented while reading. “Quite sensational. But you’ve got the story backward, Watson. It was a prostitute that committed the murders. The two victims were, it says here, ‘family men the best our age has to offer.’ A solicitor and a broker. Almost certainly the girl’s clients, though the Gazette is too discrete to mention. Stabbed them both to death with a kitchen knife.”

  My sympathy remained at low ebb. I do not approve of prostitution, and especially of its patrons. I said so plainly.

  “Yes, yes,” said Holmes. “But that is not the crux of the matter. Look at the girl’s name!”

  I read the name. It meant nothing to me. My frown told him so.

  “I forgot, you have not read about the Betsy Chubb trial. The girl’s name is Nancy Kelly. I remember it well. She was a witness in the trial against Miss Chubb. Murky waters ahead, I fear, Watson!”

  What this new circumstance might portend, he refrained from saying. He went away, leaving me as always to stagger about in the fog of my own suppositions until such time as he would be ready to reveal the entire chain of events as a fait accompli. The dinner hour fast approaching, I made my weary way up to my garret room to change. I came upon Miss Doolittle, standing in her own doorway, as if expecting someone. She beckoned to me, laying a finger to her lips for silence. When I joined her, she drew me inside her room and shut the door. I didn’t know what to expect from this clandestine meeting.

  For a lady’s boudoir, Miss Doolittle’s room held a rather Spartan aspect, with scant trace of the feminine touch. There were some framed prints in the pre-Raphaelite style, which I suspect had hung there long before she took up abode. The dressing table boasted only a few tubes of cosmetics and a small atomizer. There was an ancient concertina lying on the bed, and a lory sulking in a battered cage in the corner. Miss Doolittle stood with her back to me, attempting to stroke the bird’s head through the bars, but the lory kept shifting its stance minutely in that maddening way birds have.

  “Your Mr. Morelli is the first American I’ve met, Barton. I don’t know quite what to make of him,” she said carelessly.

  Was this what she had summoned me for in such secrecy? “I’m not sure Mr. Morelli is a typical American,” I answered cautiously. “He spent his early years in Italy, I believe.”

  She turned on me and burst forth with it: “Who is he, Mr. Barton? Who is he really?” Her expression was so earnest and so vexed that I nearly felt moved to tell her all.

  “One might ask that of anyone, I suppose. Who are you, really, Miss Doolittle?”

  She smiled. “Haven’t you guessed? I’m Princess Flavia of Ruritania! Is your employer Count Rupert? Are you Krafstein?” Eliza was evidently a fan of Mr. Hope’s novel.

  “Miss Doolittle, I don’t know what I might tell you. I’m only a secretary, barely a month in service with the gentleman. I’m certainly not in his confidence.”

  “You’re not a secretary.”

  I believe I harrumphed—it could not have been very convincing.

  “I’ve read the correspondence Mr. Morelli dictates to you. No, don’t look so scandalized. Professor Higgins has every one of those letters steamed open. He makes me copy them out, then sends my copy on to your friend in New York. Who, he says, is forwarding them to whoever Mr. Morello really works for. The professor says they’re written in code, but he hasn’t the least idea what it might be. All that talk about tons of tomatoes and gallons of olive oil, I’m inclined to agree with him. But your handwriting is atrocious. Not a secretary’s hand. Nearly as bad as a doctor’s.”

  “It’s legible enough to satisfy my employer.”

  “And he’s not your employer, he’s your friend. He treats you as an equal. Like an old comrade, I judge.”

  “Americans have unorthodox notions of how to treat servants. All that brotherhood and democracy, no doubt,” I ventured.

  “The professor’s wrong,” she continued. “He’s no spy. I’ve known copper’s narks before. They’re always obsequious little toads with ink-stained fingers and ragged coughs from standing in the weather peering in windows while their marks are inside, warming their toes at the fender and drinking negus. I don’t suppose international spies are very much different. Mr. Morelli is different. Mr. Morelli’s known danger. I fancy you have, too. Are you part of his ring?”

  “What ring is that, Miss?”

  “Smuggling ring. Murder ring. I don’t know. Have you done any garroting of your own?”

  “I don’t think Mr. Morelli means you any harm, Miss.”

  Eliza laughed. “And what if he did? Dangerous men don’t frighten me, Mr. Barton. I’ve lived among them all my life. I find a certain fascination in them.”

  Was she speaking the truth, or putting on a show for me? We were both groping in the dark, tugging at each other’s masks. I remembered the mysterious Ned. Did she find him fascinating, too?

  She gazed at me with liquid eyes, but I kept my guard up. She must have sensed that she would get nothing from me. She brushed my cheek with her lips and put a hand to my back. Before the spell was lifted I found myself steered into the hall, standing alone, staring at her door. It occurred to me that Eliza Doolittle, whoever she was, might be considered dangerous herself.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sherlock Holmes had engaged a neighbor to look after his beloved bees while he was away from home. I could not shirk my own practice indefinitely. Having handed over the detective duties to Wiggins, I felt it incumbent upon myself to put in a day at the surgery. My patients at that time ranged from infants with the croup to expectant mothers to rheumatic old pensioners. They all seemed to share a secret knowledge of my comings and goings. Somehow the news got out that Dr. Watson was in, and I was kept busy from early morning to late afternoon. But I could not banish the Doolittle case from my mind for more than two minutes together. With all the distractions it posed, it was a wonder I didn’t kill half my patients that day. We were no closer to discovering whether Eliza Doolittle was a flower girl or an adventuress or Marie of Roumania. We could not divine the link between her and the mysterious troglodytic Ned, who seemed in turn connected to not one but two murderous prostitutes. And now there was a detective on our tracks. Had I been followed to work that day? Might I be followed back to Higgins’s? Our every step was shadowed. Our case seemed hopeless.

  I must here interpose an incident that at the time seemed of no consequence to our investigation but in time rippled outward to some significance. I had just returned to Wimpole Street after seeing my last patient. Dusk was gathering in the street. As I hung my hat on the peg, I heard voices coming from the front parlor.


  “There’s no recovering the wreck?” I heard Miss Doolittle say.

  “Lost! Did I not say so? The fools! Utterly lost.” Her interlocutor was Dr. Guest, at his most growlsome.

  “I mourn for the departed. And the terrible loss to their families,” Miss Doolittle said gently.

  “Their loss? What about my loss? Did I not tell you what they carried?” His voice was choked with bitterness.

  I should mention that it had been a scant few months since one of the greatest maritime disasters of modern times had occurred, when the fabulous ocean liner Titanic sank, along with fifteen hundred souls. It had been the talk of all London for weeks, and would continue so for months. Now here was Guest plunging his hand in the wound: the incompetence of the crew, the cowardice of the captain, the hubris of those who attempt to face the perils of the sea without proper precautions. From his talk I gathered he had lost friends or relatives in the accident, and I felt an upwelling of sympathy on hearing him bemoan his loss. I wanted to extend my sympathies to him, but I was certain that neither he nor the girl would take kindly to my eavesdropping. I moved on quietly past their door and into the laboratory.

  I entered to find Holmes, Higgins, and Pickering, all dressed in evening wear. They had abandoned the tedium of lessons and were leaning hard on the sherry decanter.

  “Barton!” cried Holmes. “Hurry upstairs and put on the monkey suit. We’re dressing for dinner tonight. Chop-chop!”

  “We’re entertaining,” Pickering added mildly. “White tie, old fellow.”

  I was tired and irritable. “Another dinner with Dr. Guest?” I asked plaintively.

  “Guest isn’t coming. Where would you get such an idea?” asked Higgins.

  “I just heard him in the parlor with Miss Doolittle. Rehashing the Titanic tragedy.” I hadn’t meant to mention it, but it came tumbling out.

  “Tragedy? You mean debacle,” rejoined Higgins.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Higgins, let’s not start on that again.”