A Study in Sable (16 page)

Nan shrugged. At least she was
doing
something, even if it was just to serve as Sarah's hands and feet. “Sarah will be sleeping, and I can trust Suki to at least do those lessons that involve reading. Tomorrow morning it is.”

“We'll meet at Paddington Station,” John said. “Under the clock, at seven. I'll get the tickets, that will mean one less thing for you to do.”

Sarah reached for her purse and extracted more than enough money for two tickets, placing it firmly in John's hand before he could object. “We are paying,” she said firmly. “With the obscene amount of money Magdalena is paying me, it is the least we can do.”

• • •

Nan met John Watson promptly at seven in the morning; she had waited for Sarah to come home then taken over her cab to go to Paddington. The day was overcast, damp, and threatened rain. Beneath its arched roof of iron and glass, the station was noisy, crowded, and no one seemed particularly happy to be there as they hurried, bent over, to and from railway carriages. Nan
was,
but then, she enjoyed train rides. Before she'd been taken in by the Hartons, depending on where she and her mother were living, if there were tracks near, she would find a perch overlooking the train tracks and daydream about where those trains might be taking people, daydream herself into one of those coaches. Suki was the same; the child had sighed with disappointment at not being allowed to come along, and Nan decided she'd buy a penny chocolate bar for her from one of the machines at the station. Somehow, railroad station chocolate had always meant something special to her, and it did to Suki, too.

It's not as if I'm going to find something labeled “Souvenir of Slough” . . .although you never know.
Suki had a little collection of such things; thimbles, teacups, embroidered pillows, seashells, paperweights. Nan was looking forward to the day when the child would be old enough to help, if only to relive
her
own excitement at travel through Suki's eyes.

The next train to Slough and beyond left at 7:15, which left plenty of time for the two of them to stroll to their platform and their carriage. John had thoughtfully bought newspapers, so they sat together in the carriage and passed the time tolerably enough, with Nan spending more time looking out the window than John did. She was rewarded with a fine view of Windsor Castle as they approached
Slough. When they arrived at Slough Station, which was rather fine, Nan waited while John consulted with a local porter about the address of Mrs. Hopkins.

“It's farther than I care to walk,” he said, on returning to her side. “You would probably think nothing of it—”

“On the contrary, it's looking like rain, and
I
don't fancy a soaking,” Nan corrected. “If there is anything more miserable than soaking wet skirt hems, I don't know what it is.”

“Cab it is then,” John agreed, and went to hail one.

The cab let them out on a street of pleasant, genteel houses, mostly brick and stone, with neat little front gardens and some young trees, exactly the sort of suburban houses prosperous businessmen might buy. The rain had not yet begun, so after asking the cabbie to wait, they approached the door of a three-story brick home that looked very well cared for and John used the door knocker.

Given the size of the house, they expected the door to be opened by a servant, but instead, it was answered by a slight, gray-haired woman in deep mourning; her hair was parted in the middle under an old-fashioned flat cap. She peered up at them, a little shortsightedly. “May I help you?” she asked, uncertainly.

John immediately removed his hat. “Have I the honor of addressing Mrs. Nigel Hopkins?” he asked diffidently.

Now she looked a little startled. “Well, I would not say it is much of an honor, young man, but yes, that is I,” she replied. Her hands, clasped together, rose to the level of her chest, and Nan saw she was wringing them a little, as if expecting bad news. “Might I ask why it is you wish to see me?”

“Mother?” came a male voice from inside the house. “Is it a—”

“Mrs. Hopkins, may we please come in?” John asked, putting on his most charming smile. “I promise you, we have come to bring you good news, rather than the opposite.”

At that point, a ginger-haired man in, perhaps, his midtwenties appeared behind the woman. “Listen, my man,” he said, putting on a brave front. “If you are here to collect for someone, I assure you that there is nothing
to
collect, but we intend to—”

“Not at all!” John cried, holding up his hand. “We are not here to collect, but to give. Please, may we come in and explain?”

“Let's have them in, Neddy,” the woman implored. “What harm can it do?”

Neddy seemed uncertain, but he bowed to his mother's will. She conducted them into a very pretty parlor decorated in gold and brown. Or it would have been pretty, if everything had not been draped in black. Prominent was the black-draped picture over the mantelpiece of a middle-aged man and what looked like the middle-aged version of their hostess. She offered them seats on a horsehair sofa, which they took; she settled herself in a chair across from them, while Neddy stood protectively behind the chair. Nan had already decided, as they had planned, to let John do most of the talking, at least at first; they'd listen to him, and they might not to her.

“First of all, I beg you will allow me to introduce myself,” John said. “I am Doctor John Watson.”

“We don't need a—” Neddy began, but his mother interrupted him, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed, one hand upraised.

“Not
the
Doctor John Watson!” she exclaimed. “The one in the stories! The—” She stopped, overcome.

“Yes, madam. The associate of Sherlock Holmes.” He smiled as her eyes went even wider. “And it is in that capacity that I am here. You bring us to the end of a somewhat more pedestrian tale than Mister Doyle generally writes up for me. Miss Nan Killian was the secretary to the Honorable Henry Smith, a solicitor of London. And she has a story to tell you.”

Now that she had their attention, Nan quickly and efficiently told out her false tale. “I was empowered to contract the services of Sherlock Holmes to locate the lady—you—named in these documents,” she finished. “Needless to say, Mister Holmes made short work of the task, and arranged for the good Doctor to accompany me so that you would hear me out. Here are the instructions intended for you, as they were dictated to my employer in the Langham Hotel and transcribed by me.”

She handed over the notes to the widow and her son, who
examined them with a great deal of bewilderment. “None of these are dear Nigel's bank—” she said, faltering. “Nor his usual solicitor—”

“We apprehend that he may have had a mistrust of banks, and did not wish to leave too much of his savings in any one place,” Watson replied. “I understand he had business over much of this part of England; another explanation is that perhaps he felt uncomfortable carrying about cheques that were too large, or large amounts of cash money, and so he used banks local to the places he was doing business with.”

“Well—what should I
do
?” she replied, now clearly overwhelmed.

“We have laid out a simple plan,” Watson assured her. “We would like to accompany you—and your son as well, if he cares to come—to the nearest bank on the list. If you see here”—he pointed at a listing halfway down the first page—“we will first need to visit this solicitor and obtain a safety deposit box key. Then we will visit the bank itself. I am uncertain what will be in that box, or if Mister Hopkins also had an account there, but it is not that far, and I have the cab waiting. You will see from the notes, you will need to bring your marriage lines and the—other document. Shall we?”

It took a little more persuasion, and then some hunting for the documents, but eventually they were on their way, stopping at a small solicitor's office in the business center of Slough. There, John simply took over, forcefully getting past the clerk to the solicitor himself.

“This is most irregular,” the gentleman said with some irritation. “You should have made an appointment—” But he let them into his private office and shut the door, going to sit behind the desk, waiting for an explanation.

“I believe you had—briefly—a very unusual client,” John said to the stone-faced gentleman, once they were all safely in his office. “His name was Nigel Hopkins, and he left you in charge of a key. This is his wife, now his heir. Here are her marriage lines, here is the certificate of his death. And the password for the key is
muttonchop
.”

As soon as the password left John's lips, the solicitor's demeanor changed. Suddenly he was all sympathy, solicitously patting Mrs.
Hopkins' hand, making sure she had a comfortable chair, and then retrieving an envelope from a file cabinet. “I have been wondering if someone would come for that key every day for the last twenty years,” he said, putting it into her hand. “It's preyed on my mind, it has, the fear that he forgot it, and someone who deserved it would never know of it.”

“That came nearer to the truth than we care to think,” John said, as the good man showed them out. “Thank you for your faithful service.”

Mrs. Hopkins was practically speechless at this point, and her son was clearly dazed. Not a word passed from either of them during the short cab ride to the bank, where once again, John moved them smoothly past clerks and tellers and secretaries to the bank manager's office, where once again the documents were presented, and Mrs. Hopkins handed over the key with a hand that trembled.

“My dear lady!” the manager exclaimed, “Please, sit down. Yes, I remember Nigel very well. He made regular deposits here, and I am saddened to hear of his sudden demise! Franklin—get the lady's box. I'll get the accounts—” He hurried off himself, leaving an astonished Mrs. Hopkins sitting in the chair across from his desk, her son, just as dumbstruck, at her side.

It was not more than a few moments before Franklin and the manager returned—the clerk with a safety deposit box, the manager with a ledger. Rather than actually say anything, the manager simply opened the ledger to the relevant page, and pointed to a total on the bottom. “There is the total of his account in the bank to—” he began, when Mrs. Hopkins went white, then pink, and uttered a cry, as her son clutched the back of her chair, clearly stunned.

“Neddy! Neddy!” she cried out, and broke into tears. “Neddy, we are saved!”

The bank manager managed to hold on to his dignity, although it was clear that a weeping woman in his office caused him some distress. He sent Franklin for water, fetched his own handkerchief, and did his best to comfort her, as her son was too thunderstruck to undertake the job himself.

It was Nan who came to the rescue of all those poor bewildered men, going to the old woman, embracing her, and patting her back. “There, you see, your Nigel always meant for you to be taken care of,” she murmured. “I'm only sorry it took so long.”

After a few more moments, the lady murmured her thanks into Nan's ear; Nan took the hint and stood up, returning to her chair. Mrs. Hopkins dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose and regained some of her composure. After a sip of the water, and another dab at her eyes, she looked up at them all. “Things have been . . . difficult,” she managed, clearly embarrassed to have to admit that her husband's death had left her in what must have been, by her reaction, very straitened circumstances. “All I had was what was in the household account. There were so many bills to pay . . . we had to dismiss the servants . . . we were trying to find lodgers, but no one answered the advertisements . . . I thought we would have to sell the house. . . .”

She broke down again, but this time it was to bury her face in the handkerchief. The bank manager took the key from Neddy's nerveless fingers and opened the safety deposit box.

It was full of papers.

Since Neddy didn't seem capable of reaching for them himself, the bank manager took them out and began opening unsealed envelopes to see what was inside. “I do not think you will need to worry, Mrs. Hopkins,” he said slowly. “These are shares of stock in some very prosperous companies.”

Now Mrs. Hopkins looked up, bewildered. “Shares? What does that mean?”

The bank manager slowly, and carefully, explained to her what shares of stock were, and how she could expect regular payments from them quarterly. “I can see what Nigel had been doing,” he continued. “He put his stock dividends back in his account in this bank as deposits.”

At that moment, John nudged Nan with his elbow, and raised his eyebrows at the manager. Taking the hint, Nan closed her eyes and opened her mind.

Neddy's surface thoughts were still . . . mostly blank. He was
completely gobsmacked and hadn't recovered from the sudden reversal of the family fortunes. Beneath that was a vast well of love and concern for his mother, and still-raw grief over his father. Nan shied away from Mrs. Hopkins—Agatha. The open wound of her loss was enough to have brought tears to the eyes of a statue, and even finding herself possessed of enough money to live comfortably again was not enough to take even the edge off that grief. Nigel had truly been the love of her life and the center of her universe.

No wonder Hopkins was so insistent on dictating all this to Sarah.

Nan quickly turned her attention to the man John wanted her to examine: the bank manager, Trevor Howard. What she found there made her open her eyes quickly and nod to John Watson with a tiny smile. This was a fundamentally kind and painfully honest man. He might be next to helpless when it came to emotional situations, and more than a bit stodgy, but he could be absolutely trusted.

Which made her accede to his request when he asked to see the notes. He looked through them, carefully, then said to Franklin, “Send in my son, would you? And bring another glass of water for Mrs. Hopkins.”