The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Page 9

  “Really, Pick? Still defending the venal and corrupt? Were it not for the captain and Mr. Ismay, not a single life would have been lost.”

  “Were it not for the captain, every life would have been lost,” said Pickering, indignant.

  “Hear, hear!” I said. I should not have.

  Higgins rounded on me. “Hear, hear? And what are you doing listening at people’s doors anyway?”

  “It was unavoidable. They were quite loud.”

  “Can you help standing there wafting all the dust of London upon Mrs. Pearce’s carpet? Get you gone, fellow. My mother will be upon us at any moment.”

  I skulked away, humiliated as the meanest servant. Behind me I heard Higgins and Pickering resume their argument. “Thank Providence for the courage of captain and crew!” Pickering’s voice rang through.

  I hurried into my dinner clothes with Robert at my elbow. The boy told me that Professor Higgins’s mother had returned from the wilds of Cornwall and wanted to see Eliza. “Watches her like the poor cat in the attic, she does.”

  I asked why the old woman took such an interest in her son’s amanuensis.

  “Dunno. Bette says she’s worrited Liza will try to trick the guvnor into marrying her. Moll says she’s worrited she won’t.”

  I met Mrs. Pearce on the landing. She stopped to give me a sour look.

  “If you’ll excuse my saying it, sir, your tie is a fright. If you’ll allow me the liberty?”

  Having no glass in my room, I had depended on Robert’s sartorial eye to complete my dress. He had nearly strangled me before pronouncing my appearance as “top ’ole, old ’un.”

  Her touch was cool, her fingers quick and sure. It was a moment’s work untying and reknotting my tie and setting my collar to rights. I couldn’t see the results, but had that inexpressible sense that the world had been set right. She leaned in and spoke confidentially.

  “Watch yourself, sir. She’s a shrewd woman. She doesn’t ordinarily notice staff, but if you earn her attention, she’ll winkle all your secrets out of you in no time.”

  She patted my shirtfront as if to test my solidity, and then continued up the stairs, leaving me to wonder if she suspected me of having secrets, or had already winkled them out herself.

  I flew down the stairs as the gong sounded. Higgins was leading his mother into the dining room as I came into the hall. He and Pickering were still trading barbs on the subject of Titanic.

  “Witness heroic Captain Smith, who blew his brains out rather than go down with the ship,” Higgins sang, drawing out his mother’s chair.

  “That is simply not true!” Pickering sputtered.

  “Of course they hushed it up afterward.”

  “If the two of you would hush, we might have our soup hot for a change,” said Mrs. Higgins smartly, commandeering for herself the head of the table. The kitchen-maid was indeed standing by the door with the tureen, ready to serve. “No, Eliza, come sit next to me. Mr. Morello—you are Mr. Morello, I presume?”—she cast a baleful eye on Holmes—”you will sit on my other hand. Henry, you there.” Pickering and I were left to find our own seats.

  “Now let us have as little discussion of ideas and events of consequence as possible, please,” Mrs. Higgins said as the soup was served. “Eliza, have you taken up drawing, as I suggested?”

  Eliza nodded brightly. “I’ve found the most wonderful teacher. Monsieur Vernet.”

  “A Frenchman? Henry must loathe him. Good for you.”

  “I do not loathe the French, Mother. I simply pity them,” said Higgins. “Should I ask Cook to whip us up a platter of gastropods?”

  Mrs. Higgins was in her sixties, a small woman who cast a long shadow. A soft, heart-shaped face was set off by a cleft chin and fierce blue eyes. She wore a pearl-grey velvet gown with a peacock turban and shawl. It was evident that she was even more domineering than her son, without his continual need to fling his personality about the room. As I watched her direct the flow of conversation and the timing of the service, I had the uncanny feeling that I had met her before.

  Higgins and Pickering kept returning to the subject of the Titanic tragedy throughout dinner, unable to let it be. Higgins thrived on stirring up hornets’ nests. Pickering argued for the heroism of captain and crew, and those who faced their deaths with the stoicism of old Romans. Higgins was quick to point out the venality and ineptitude of certain of the ship’s officers, including the captain and Mr. Ismay. He took the owners and investors of the White Star line to task for their lack of preparation in the matter of the lifeboats. Pickering became quite red in the face as he tried to defend them.

  Mrs. Higgins scolded Higgins repeatedly, but he took it like a saucy schoolboy. At one point he turned to Miss Doolittle and asked, “What did Dr. Guest have to say about the shipwreck?”

  A sudden flood of panic came into her eyes. “What do you mean?” she stammered.

  “What’s the doctor’s opinion of the Titanic’s captain and crew?”

  She seemed to recover herself. “I have no idea. He has never mentioned it to me.”

  “Did you not discuss it with him this very evening?”

  “Of course not. I haven’t spoken to the doctor in a week.”

  “I had no idea I had surprised a secret tryst,” Higgins said bantering. “Come, girl, what did you and our friend Guest talk about this evening?”

  “Tryst? Have you taken leave of your senses, Professor?” Her face was hot with anger.

  Mrs. Higgins rallied to her. “Come now, Henry, there’s no need to browbeat the girl.”

  But Higgins had taken the matter too far to drop it now. The parlor-maid was clearing dishes from the table. He caught her by the wrist. “Was Dr. Guest here this evening?” Higgins asked her.

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.” The girl blushed and tried to pull away.

  “I’m sure you could say, but your loyalties are obviously with Miss Doolittle rather than your master.” He tightened his grip on her wrist.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Henry, leave it!” Eliza snapped. Higgins released the maid and she ran from the room, almost in tears. “Dr. Guest stopped in, yes, but only for a moment. He brought me a tincture for my headaches. He wasn’t here two minutes. He certainly did not bend my ear talking about Titanic.”

  It was that use of Higgins’s Christian name that suddenly brought it home to me. Mrs. Higgins had seemed familiar because all her speech and manners were mirrored in Eliza. Higgins had called the girl a mynah bird. Here one could see the original stamped upon the copy.

  The force of Mrs. Higgins’s personality was underlined at the end of dinner. It was the normal custom for the gentlemen to remain at table after the ladies removed themselves, fortifying themselves with port and cigars. But as soon as Mrs. Higgins had gone with Eliza to the parlor (Mrs. Higgins always held court in the parlor, apparently: she considered the laboratory to be the proper domain of hirsute savages only), Higgins rose and said, “Gentlemen, please make yourself comfortable. As for myself, I shall join the ladies.” He departed with happy alacrity.

  “A most formidable woman,” said Holmes after he had gone.

  “Quite fond of Eliza,” Pickering chimed in. “Like a daughter,” I said.

  “More indulgent. More like a granddaughter,” said Holmes. I caught the edge of speculation in his voice.

  “Good God, Mr. Holmes,” cried Pickering, “you’re not suggesting that Eliza is Higgins’s daughter?”

  “I merely postulate, Colonel. At this point we cannot dismiss any avenue of inquiry.”

  “You still haven’t formed a theory, then?” I asked.

  “Bricks without clay,” Holmes muttered irritably. “Bricks without clay.” It had always been Holmes’s favorite aphorism when faced with too few data points to form a proper theory.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After a decent interval, we too repaired to the parlor. But Mrs. Higgins was already saying her goodbyes, and Eliza her goodnights. We retreated theref
ore to the laboratory to close out the evening. There was still a bit of strain between Higgins and Pickering after their tiff, so each was inclined to choose a new companion. Pickering sat down with me at the piano, and we were soon busy plinking out some of the old regimental songs. Holmes entertained Higgins with some card tricks he claimed to have learned in New Orleans. His skills at legerdemain soon had the professor clapping like a nine-year-old. It seemed at first marvelous that the two could forget their acrimony in such innocent amusement. I had to remind myself that, despite Holmes’s disguise, they were both—indeed, we were all four— English gentlemen who had come of age in the lap of Victoria Regina, an empire the like of which the world had never seen, and a city of wonders such as only old Rome could match. It was a world perhaps fading away, but it had seemed eternal to us. The house on Wimpole Street was a well-heeled vessel carrying us against the storm.

  Then the peace was broken: a call from the street, and a rock smashed through the window, raining glass across the floor. I don’t recall who was first out the door. I only remember that we all spilled into the street. There was Freddy standing in the middle of the street, like David against Goliath, shying bricks and shouting up at the windows of the house. There was Pickering, grabbing the housemaid, ordering her to fetch a bobby. There was Higgins, berating Freddy for throwing rocks at his windows. And there on the narrow balustrade outside Eliza’s dormer window was the shadow of a man. He stepped this way and that in seeming indecision, seeking safe footing maybe, or a way down that did not involve joining the growing crowd in the street. There were footmen and housemaids with lanterns, and by this time one or two constables with whistles shrilly admonishing the intruder to descend, and Higgins taking down their language and sniggering at their accents, and me turning to ask Holmes if I should fetch my revolver and finding no Holmes there. Then suddenly Freddy launched himself at the side of the building and proceeded to scrabble his way up the brickwork toward the third floor, and people were shouting at him to get down before he’d break his bloody neck, and then Eliza was at her window staring down in blank amazement at the carnival in the street below, and the intruder disappearing like a puff of smoke, and Freddy all the way to the second floor before he indeed fell and had to be carried inside. Colonel Pickering on the hall phone berating Scotland Yard for not already having a flying squad on site. Mrs. Pearce scolding the housemaids for their shamelessness. Higgins swearing like a sailor. Eliza clattering down the stairs to come to Freddy’s rescue. Then Holmes was at my side, drawing me away to whisper in my ear.

  “All this excitement is unwarranted, Watson. They won’t find the intruder.”

  “Did you see? He vanished like a ghost! Is he a man or a devil?”

  “He had assistance, be sure of that.” Holmes led me away from the confusion to the quiet of his own room. He opened the door and ushered me inside.

  “This is your devil, Watson.” He produced a purloined bottle of brandy from his coat pocket and tossed it to the fellow sitting on the bed. “He may have a few cuts and bruises that require your attention.”

  The devil on the bed saluted me and took a swig of brandy. “Got those shots you wanted, Dr. Watson,” he said. “Didn’t think I’d raise the household.”

  The devil on the bed was not the depraved, debauched, double-damned homunculus whose shadow loomed over Eliza Doolittle. It was Wiggins, examining his trusty Brownie to make certain it had suffered no damage.

  “Fortunate for you that my window is adjacent to Miss Doolittle’s, my lad,” said Holmes cheerfully.

  “Might have warned a bloke you had a watchdog posted, Doctor,” said Wiggins.

  “My apologies. It’s not you he’s on the watch for,” I said. I touched a purple cut on his cheek. He flinched.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have my bag, as I’m traveling incognito. We’ll have to make do with some of that brandy and one of Mr. Holmes’ pocket handkerchiefs.”

  Wiggins laughed. “It’s as we used to say back in the old days. ‘No worries, Mr. Holmes has your back.’ Doctor, I can have these pictures ready for you in two, three days. But why not let me manage the rest? I’ll pass them round in the proper circles and let you know what hares we start, eh?”

  I was doubly grateful to Wiggins now. I had little appetite for continuing my tour of London’s wretched underbelly.

  None of Wiggins’s hurts turned out to be serious. I bandaged another cut on his hand and asked if I could bring him anything.

  “We’ll have to keep you here till the household has gone to bed, Wiggins. No more rooftop promenades for you this evening,” said Holmes.

  “I am a bit peckish,” said Wiggins. “Would there be any kidney pie lyin’ about? And a pint of bitter?”

  When we came downstairs, Eliza was preparing Freddy for mummification, or so it appeared from the wealth of bandages she was applying. Freddy bore up under her tender ministrations with a look of dreamy delight. One of the maids was sweeping up the broken glass from the window, while Pickering tried to fit a bit of tile over the empty square. Higgins marched up and down the room, looking on fretfully.

  “Stop coddling him, Eliza. He’ll think he’s done something heroic,” he said with asperity.

  “So he has done,” she answered. “And very foolish it was, too,” she said to Freddy sternly.

  “Ah, the American contingent,” said Higgins as we entered. “Where did you disappear to? I would have thought you’d be in the middle of all the excitement.”

  “I’m too old to climb walls, Perfesser,” Holmes answered. “I was looking for this.” So saying, he drew from his jacket a large, long-barreled revolver “You want to pick crows off a wire, a hogleg like this is what you need.” I was as shocked as the rest of the company. In the old days Holmes had rarely carried anything more lethal than a sword-stick. He had left the firearms to me.

  “I say, that’s the ticket!” said Freddie, admiring the gun. “Where can a chap get hold of one of those?”

  “When Freddie blows his brains out, it’ll be your fault, Mr. Morello,” Higgins chided.

  “What I don’t understand is what the fellow was doing skulking about the rooftops to begin with. Don’t burglars these days have the patience to wait till everyone’s abed?” said Pickering.

  “Another admirer of Eliza’s, no doubt,” said Higgins. “Soon we’ll have them crawling the walls like black beetles.”

  “None o’ your mouth, ’Enry ’Iggins,” said Eliza in a music-hall cockney accent, but her cheeks went red with pleasure.

  “Perhaps we should call Dr. Guest to come look at you, Freddie,” said Higgins.

  Pickering vetoed that idea. “You bring that death’s-head here tonight, Higgins, and I’ll be forced to ask Mr. Morello for the loan of his firearm.”

  For his part Freddy seemed blissfully deaf to all voices but Eliza’s. She alternated soft words of praise for his courage with scorn for his foolishness. It seemed a good night for those who’d put their stake on Freddy, and a bad night for Dr. Guest’s stock. The young man might have taken more advantage of it, but first he yawned, and then he snored. He was laid out on the settee and covered with a blanket. The electric lights were extinguished shortly after, and everyone went quietly to bed.

  When the house was well asleep, I led Wiggins down the back stairs to the tradesman’s door, I in my stocking feet and he in rubber-soled plimsols that made no sound. The door boasted more locks than a bank vault, but Wiggins produced an electric torch from his pocket, which helped make short work of them. The door creaked open and the night air spilled inside. Wiggins and I exchanged a comradely handshake and he slipped away.

  Just like that, he slipped back in, his mouth against my ear. “Crusher!” he hissed. I peered out beyond him into the darkness of the mews. There was someone there, the shadow of a man walking up and down the alley, a familiar silhouette. It was not a constable’s helmet on his head, however, but a battered top hat. Freddy! Did the fellow never sleep? I communicated as much t
o Wiggins. He gave a wry smile. He picked out a lump of coal from the coal scuttle and hefted it. Then he flung it down the alley, as hard and as far as he might. The coal hit a dustbin with a clang. A cat screamed. Freddy jumped, and ran toward the sound. Wiggins shot off in the opposite direction.

  I locked the door, yawned mightily, and headed upstairs to my attic kip.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I had planned to sleep in the next morning, but woke restless in the early grey light, my body already habituated to my morning odysseys. I staggered down to the dining room only to find Holmes already astir, eating breakfast from the sideboard.

  “A house full of sluggards. You and I are the first up.” Holmes had been a famous sluggard himself in our Baker Street days, but life in the country seemed to have changed him.

  I looked over the sideboard, trying to summon an appetite.

  “The kippers are excellent,” said Holmes. “Avoid the eggs at all cost.”

  “Oversalted again?”

  “I believe they were cooked in castor oil.”

  I made my selections carefully and joined Holmes at the table.

  “Wiggins get off all right?” he asked.

  “Once he got past Argus-eyed Freddy.”

  Holmes seemed puzzled. “Freddy in the mews? You’re sure?”

  “I don’t know when he sleeps. I wish I had half his energy.”

  “You do look haggard, Watson. Have I kept your nose to the grindstone too long?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t sleep well last night. My roommate had an awful bout of indigestion and kept me up with his moaning and groaning. If I could have laid my hands on some of that castor oil, I’d have made short work of him.”

  “Nothing too serious, then.”

  “He took advantage of the excitement last night to liberate a plate of strawberry tarts from the pantry.”

  “Indeed? He didn’t join the mob in the street?”

  The kitchen maid entered with a pot of coffee. Holmes held out his cup and she refilled it. “Would you like tea, Mr. Barton?” she asked.