Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares (8 page)

The Abbess herself was a flaxen-haired woman no longer in the bloom of youth but still presentable, her beauty mellowing into handsomeness. She was fleshy, one might even say voluptuous, the hourglass curvaceousness of her figure in no way disguised by the cut of her nightdress, especially its plunging décolletage. We had indeed, as Lestrade predicted, caught her just as she was beginning her “day”.

The presence of the two harlots seemed superfluous, yet the Abbess had insisted they accompany her during the meeting. They spent the whole time pouting provocatively at Holmes and me and offering us sly, come-hither looks. Neither of them was unattractive, nor was either of them fully dressed, wearing nothing but corsetry, stockings and bloomers. I found their undergarments and their coquettish behaviour deeply distracting, which was no doubt the point – an attempt to put us off our stroke. I felt as though the collar of my shirt had been over-starched and was constricting my throat. Holmes, by contrast, seemed able to ignore them and direct his focus solely on the Abbess. His powers of self-control bordered at times on the superhuman.

“My dear lady...” he said.

The Abbess let loose a laugh that was ingenuous yet seasoned, some way between a giggle and a cackle. “Ooh, hark at him. ‘My dear lady’! Proper gent you must be, Mr Holmes. Easy on the eye, too, if you like your lovers on the lean side, which I happen to. Please tell me you’re unattached. I’ve been looking to settle down and make an honest woman of myself, and you might be just the husband material for me.”

Her two companions found this highly amusing, and one of them directed a flirtatious smile at me and said, “His friend has a kind of rugged charm about him and all.”

I held up my left hand, proudly displaying my wedding band. “I am most happily married.”

“That doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you, dearie,” said the lass, and she and her friend dissolved into fits of sniggering.

“How would you rather I addressed you, then?” Holmes asked the Abbess, not in the least bit sidetracked by this saucy banter. “I certainly shan’t call you ‘mother superior’. Perhaps Marie Robertson would be better? Or how about Margaret Rowbotham? Madeleine Ramsey? Maggie Reilly? Millie Ryker? Matilda Robb?”

“Been checking up on me, eh, Mr Holmes?” The Abbess’s accent affected a wispy refinement but underneath lay a husk of pure, ineradicable Cockney.

“I’ve done my homework.” In fact it was Lestrade who had supplied the litany of aliases, declaring that the Abbess had had more of them in her time than hot dinners.

“I should be flattered that you’re so inquisitive,” she said. “Your list barely scrapes the surface, though. Even I am not sure any more which name’s the one I was christened with, so just ‘the Abbess’ would be simplest. It suits me fine. It’s a common nickname for someone in my position, but I also like to think I look out for the welfare of the girls in my care, much as a real abbess tends to the needs of her nuns.”

“The comparison is hardly apt,” I spluttered. “A place like this could never be confused with a convent.”

“Don’t be so sure, Dr Watson. I’ve known many a client who likes a girl to be dressed up in habit and wimple before he ravishes her. Some of them have even been clergymen.”

“I shall pretend I never heard that.”

“The only difference, as I see it, is that a convent trades solely in the spiritual whereas my establishment trades solely in the physical,” the Abbess said. “Mind you, even that is open to debate, given some of the tales I’ve heard about what goes on in convents after lights out.”

“We are straying somewhat from the purpose of our visit,” said a pained Holmes.

“A man who likes to get quickly to the point. I hope you are not so quick in other respects. That would be very disappointing.”

Again, the harlots found this hugely amusing.

“Abbess,” said Holmes, “you and I both know that you were supposed to be in receipt of an influx of new recruits last night.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the woman said airily.

“We have eyewitness testimony that would link you clearly to the smuggling-in of a number of girls from China.”

“You can’t prove anything.”

“Do you deny it?”

“Most strenuously.” The Abbess’s façade of joviality slipped somewhat, revealing a glimpse of a steely nature beneath, like a stiletto dagger being part-way withdrawn from a velvet sheath. “There is nothing to connect me to any such girls.”

“Nothing directly,” Holmes admitted, “but the circumstantial evidence is strong. Strong enough that the police would take little persuading to pay a call and turn this place upside down.”

“For all the good it would do them. All I’d do is pay a few fines, wink at the right people, and be back in business in next to no time.”

“Yet I would imagine you’d prefer to avoid the related upheaval and the temporary loss of earnings.”

“So that’s how it is, is it?” said the Abbess. “And here was I thinking you a gentleman. What’s your price? I could offer you the night of your life, if that’s what you’re after. On the house. Your friend too. Together? One of you watching? We cater for all tastes here.”

“
All
tastes,” said one of the two harlots, and to my horror she turned and caressed her friend’s cheek, then planted a kiss full on her lips. The other girl responded as if this were the most pleasurable thing in the world, uttering a soft guttural moan.

Holmes merely looked wry. “Information is all I require. Names. A list of the names of some of your regulars.”

“Which ones? I have hundreds. You’ll have to narrow it down.”

“Foreign ones. Ones with titles. Frenchmen specifically.”

“And supposing I had such a list, what would you do with it?”

“Simply run an eye over it. I’m searching for one name in particular. Once I have that, I can discard and forget the rest.”

“Hmmm.” The Abbess looked pensive. “And you give me your word that that’s all? You get a name, and I get no hassle from the bluebottles?”

“None that will come as a result of anything I have done. I give you my solemn promise on that.”

She studied my friend. “Over the years I have come to be a good judge of character, Mr Holmes, especially of men’s characters. I’ve seen them all, at their best and their worst. I know the ins and outs of them, in more ways than one. You strike me as honourable. I’m inclined to take you at your word. Pearl?”

One of the courtesans stood, like a soldier called to attention.

“Fetch me the book.”

“Which book, Abbess?”

“You know the one. The one we keep hidden.”

The girl disappeared, returning a minute later with a small journal wrapped in oilcloth.

“I would suggest that behind a loose brick inside a chimney breast in the kitchen is not the securest place for such an item,” Holmes said. “You might want to consider putting it somewhere else where there is less danger of it being so strongly heated that it catches alight.”

The Abbess was startled. “How did you –?”

“I observed the faint soot marks now adorning Pearl’s hand and forearm, which were not there before and which are of a particularly greasy kind such as are left by a cooking fire. They extend almost to her elbow, indicating that she has had to reach inside an aperture to some depth. That and the brick dust adhering to the book’s oilcloth covering led me to my conclusion.”

The Abbess regarded my friend with newfound appreciation. “We do not actually use the kitchen for cooking. The soot is old, dating from the previous owners. This used to be a family house. But I can see that I shall have to be unusually wily around you, sir.” She brandished the journal. “Here it is, my full client list. Actual names, or if those aren’t known, the false names they choose to give. I keep it in case... Well, a lady has to have something up her sleeve, should she find herself in real trouble. A contingency plan.”

She handed the journal, with a show of considerable reluctance, to Holmes.

“They’re arranged according to type. Age. Financial circumstances. Marital status. The foreigners section is about halfway through. I don’t really distinguish between nationalities. I lump them all together. You could say they’re all Greek to me!”

Holmes flicked through the pages until he arrived at the section she spoke of. I peered over his shoulder, and immediately my eyebrows rose and my jaw fell. There were noted diplomats named there, a couple of ambassadors, a royal courtier, not to mention several prominent aristocrats, and even a prince from one of those forested and castled little countries that sit in the hinterland between Germany and Russia. On any given page there was enough material to keep the Fleet Street scandal sheets busy for a year.

“These symbols,” Holmes said. He pointed to the sets of peculiar little hieroglyphs which attended each name: crosses, spirals, strange algebraic squiggles. “They are... predilections?”

“That is correct,” said the Abbess. “Every man who comes here has his quirks and peccadilloes, his likes and fancies. I make a note of them. That way I can keep track of which girl to match to which client, and also, if the circumstances ever became so dire, threaten to reveal the full sordid truth to a wife, an employer, even a newspaper. It’s my weapon, my last line of defence if friendly persuasion fails.”

Holmes ran a finger down the list until it stopped at one. “Here,” he said. “This could be he, the man we’re after.”

He showed the name to the Abbess. Her face soured a little.

“His name has these two symbols appended to it,” Holmes said, pointing to a V and a shape like a black teardrop. “What do they stand for?”

“That,” said the Abbess, indicating the teardrop, “is a drop of blood. It means he tends to get a bit rough sometimes. The girls don’t mind that so much, as long as they know in advance and they’re sufficiently well compensated for it.”

“And the V?” I said. “Does it stand for ‘virgin’?”

“Not necessarily. I derived the symbol from... Well, imagine it represents a part of the anatomy where on a mature lady there would be hair but on a young girl there would be none.”

All at once I felt queasy.

Holmes pursed his lips grimly. “That confirms it,” he said. “We have our man.” He returned the book to the Abbess and stood to leave. “I thank you for your assistance, Abbess.”

“You’re welcome, Mr Holmes. You didn’t get his name from me, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And my offer still stands. If ever you and your friend want a night you’ll never forget, here’s the place to come. My treat.”

“I doubt we shall avail ourselves of your hospitality again,” said Holmes briskly, and he swept out of the parlour, as did I.

Outside I inhaled a few deep breaths of acrid London air, which was somehow sweeter than the cloyingly over-perfumed interior of the brothel.

“By Jove,” I said. “I feel quite unclean. If my wife were ever to find out...”

“I shan’t tell her if you won’t,” said Holmes.

“That list, though. It beggars belief.”

I am not a naive man. In my way I am quite worldly, and my experiences with Holmes have brought me into contact with some of the worst individuals this world has to offer, the most corrupt, the most venal. Still, I found it hard to believe that personages of rank and renown would frequent an establishment like the Abbess’s. Did they not fear for their prestige and status, were their private indulgences ever to be made public? How could they represent the interests of overseas powers and yet risk bringing so much shame not only on themselves but their fellow-countrymen? What about the sensibilities and reputation of their wives, their families? Who would be willing to jeopardise all they had purely to slake their lusts? It baffled me.

Holmes was his usual inscrutable self, his face betraying little of the sentiments which I am sure he was feeling and which were doubtless akin to mine.

“The list, shocking though it is,” he said, “was, of course, the reason we put ourselves through that. I was looking for the French nobleman whom you overheard Torrance mention in such an oblique and casual fashion.”

“Ah yes, the ‘Froggy toff.’”

“There were a number of Frenchmen named. However, the Abbess’s code identified this particular one as being fond of barely pubescent girls, and did you not tell me that Torrance said something about the nobleman liking girls who were ‘fresh, with the dew still on them’? Putting the two things together yielded only one possible candidate.”

“And the Frenchman and Baron Cauchemar are connected somehow?”

“What makes you say that, old chap?”

“You seem mad-keen on pursuing Cauchemar, almost to the point where nothing else matters, not even the bombings. I can only assume this is another manifestation of that monomania.”

“Monomania? I would not put it so strongly myself.”

“That is how it might appear to a dispassionate observer.”

Holmes chuckled wryly. “What would I do without you, Watson? You remind me constantly that the workings of a mind like mine must seem incomprehensible to a mind like yours. It is like a tortoise trying to fathom the speed of a cheetah.”

“Oh,” I said, not flattered.

“But you’re right all the same. About this being about Cauchemar. It is, to some extent. There is the Torrance link, of course. Hearsay but no less valuable for that. There is also the superficial-seeming fact that
cauchemar
is a French word.”

“Meaning...?”

“‘Nightmare’. Apt,
n’est-ce pas?
We must bear in mind, too, that the Abbess’s French client has a title, and our ironclad vigilante has bestowed the rank of baron upon himself. Each, individually, a slender association, but together, cumulatively, I find them persuasive. At the very least, they are enough to make me think that you and I should pay a house call on a certain French peer who currently resides in London: the Vicomte de Villegrand.”

We journeyed by cab from Moorgate to a grand Gothic villa up in Hampstead, a stone’s throw from the Heath. The house was well-kept, the front garden tidy and orderly, the wisteria that overhung the porch trimmed.