The Memoirs of Irene Adler: The Irene Adler Trilogy (10 page)

‘Stead tells me that than you few people know more of the byways of vice in London and if you allow me to quote him, “the only entirely incorruptible man I have ever encountered”, ’ Algernon told him.

‘That’s for others to say.’

‘Can you make a good living as a private investigator?’ I asked.

‘Not easy, ma’am’ he said wearily, ‘but we don’t starve.’

‘He will only accept to work if his enquiries are likely to be of benefit to the society we live in,’ said Barbara, who was next door doing her chores, popping her head through the door but not coming in. ‘He will never use his situation to help villains.’

Algernon, having established for himself the sterling qualities of our host, then told him about the abduction of baby Alice.

‘But you said she was only a few weeks old?’ asked Minahan, and we nodded.

‘You don’t think—’ began Algernon, but Minahan interrupted.

‘You see your lordship, I would be surprised, but I don’t rule it out, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve given much thought to this matter. I mean the causes for the proliferation of sexual perversions among the degenerate upper classes,’ Minahan went on, as if talking to himself. In London everything permissible or otherwise, is available to those who are willing to to pay. For the sons of the nobility, the rich landowners, the merchants. They would have tasted of most forbidden fruits at an early age. Did we catch his drift? We nodded.

‘Now, having tasted everything under the sun, they call for new experiences, new adventures, new sensations. Wines and spirits no longer satisfy their cravings, so they need laudanum, opium, heroin. Watching boxers smack each other with gloves aren’t enough, they now want bare-knuckled fights, they want realistic combats with knives and sticks for their delectation. They want to see blood. They have had their fill of carnal pleasures. What can they do? They want young minors among
their conquests. There is a well-known history of one lord of the realm who would approach the ladies plying their trade, offer them one pound if they could recommend... I beg your pardon again your ladyship...recommend “a young thing with no hair on her cunt...” which explains why people like Mrs Jeffries and Mr Hammond cannot count their takings fast enough. So girls as young as ten or eleven disappear without a trace. When they tire of them they’ll want toddlers, babies even. They’ll dream of new ways we cannot imagine now of satisfying their abominable lust.’ He paused for a bit, appearing deep in thought, wiped his brow and shook his head wearily. ‘Sadly, this is the first time I’ve heard of a baby being abducted.’

I was watching Clarihoe as he sat there squirming, sweat streaking down his face. Suddenly he stood up. ‘Stop it, Minahan, stop it, for Christ’s sake. What you are suggesting is monstrous!’

‘My lord, I have been a witness to all manners of obscenities, believe me.’ Algernon took a deep breath which seemed to calm him down a bit. ‘Sorry Minahan, I didn’t mean to shout. What do you suggest we do?’

‘Rescue the child and send her abductor to the gallows? Is that what you are thinking my lord?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘But these people have too much power. Labalmondière will do everything in his power to stop an enquiry if it begins to point in the direction of people in his circle.’

‘I will personally go to see Sir William at the Home Office and ask him to put some pressure on Labalmondière to choose his best men for the job.’

‘Ah, Sir William. I won’t say anything to discourage you, but as you know he owes his position not to merit but to a lot of horse trading. He is beholden to too many people. Whenever he is called upon to take action, he doesn’t begin by asking himself questions such as: is it the right thing to do? Will it help further the cause of justice? No sir, he asks: who is this likely to hurt? If it’s anybody in his circle he vetoes it forthright. In the end nothing gets done. Anyone at whom a finger can be pointed at, usually has a close friend or cousin to whom Sir William owes a favour.’

‘Oh come off it, Minahan, you are a cynic and a pessimist,’ Algernon said dismissively and Minahan appeared to weigh this and nodded.

‘I am sorry your lordship, you may well be right. He may indeed be well disposed to the case of baby Alice as he has himself become a father in the last week.’

‘Oh yes, I read about it in
The Times
,’ I said, ‘something about a baby daughter. Lady Pamela, born to Sir William and Lady Elizabeth, a little stepsister to his first born Loulou.’

Algernon and I hadn’t got a clue on how to approach the problem and we were delighted when Minahan spoke. ‘Right, I’ll get in touch with some of my informers and if you give me two days I will be in a position to provide you with useful information. I’ll begin by visiting your cousin in Putney.’ He explained that he had always had a good rapport with some of the hawkers, beggars, cardsharps, pickpockets who in the past had fed him valuable information against small payments. Knowing that he was near destitute himself, they gladly do it for free now, for old times’ sake. He explained how informers worked: more often than not they were miles away from the crime scene themselves, but the speed with which word of mouth is spread is amazing. Obviously the intelligence gets distorted and contaminated, but he prided himself on his ability to filter away the crude product accrued to him, to get rid of the exaggeration and lies and end up with the pure unalloyed truth. We felt that this was indeed a man we could trust.

For two days nothing happened, then on the third day Minahan appeared at Water Lane. There were four of us sharing a cup of mocha and discussing the rain and fair weather as Armande would say, and we got Jeremiah to join us. He had contacted his usual sources and it turned out that the tall brute who walked with a limp was Barnaby, a war veteran who had been with Colonel Moran in the Sudan, and the short fellow with the lisp was Noah a former circus knife thrower.

‘Right, let’s plan our strategy,’ said Lord Clarihoe suddenly coming back to life, rubbing his hands.

‘I was thinking,’ Bartola began, but nobody paid any attention to her. I have often felt that she was wrongly thought to be a lightweight.

‘Yes, Bartola,’ I said loudly.

‘Mr Holmes was...
come si dice... tiepido
—’

‘Lukewarm,’ I said.

‘Yes, he was lukewarm about the case, but now that we know the identity of the kidnappers he might be more... more keener to do something... no so?’

I was pleased when everybody agreed with her. She was proved right when Sherlock Holmes pounced on the intelligence Algie had passed on to him, and promised that he would act upon it.

In the end there were three distinct groups pursuing the matter: Minahan working by himself, Holmes and Dr Watson, and finally Algernon and I, with the
Club
as our backup.

Minahan had told us that the two perpetrators drank at the
Owl and the Pussycat
tavern on the Euston Road outside St Pancras Station. We were going to pass for railway workers, Algernon and I. Everybody at Water Lane helped disguise us. We discovered that it was more difficult to change the aristocrat Clarihoe into a stoker than me into a man. However, after the thespian Probert gave him a few lessons we thought he would pass muster. Although I have often worn men’s clothing in the past, my shape poses a problem, but this is compensated by my above average height. A cloth cap strategically arranged on one’s head at a downward angle can hide one’s features quite tolerably. Artémise suggested that vestments one size too big would hide my feminine curves. Thus transformed the two of us set forth to Euston Road by cab.

I might point out here, that Ebenezer was devoted to Armande (and her pastry), and we trusted him implicitly. He himself said, rather colour-fully that discretion blooms beautifully in the manure generated by driving cheating husbands (or wives) round on their illicit love trysts with mistresses and whores (or Lotharios).

As we entered
The Owl and the Pussycat
, train drivers and railway workers were having a pint of ale and a sandwich. We had trouble placing our orders at the bar and finding a seat. I was sure that nobody looked twice at us. We looked around in an attempt to locate Noah and Barnaby but found no trace of either until we heard noise coming from a room at the back. When we had a peek, we saw our two men playing darts with a tall well-built railwayman in a dirty cloth cap. As the third man’s back
was turned to us, we were unable to catch a glimpse of him. The trio left shortly afterwards and we followed them out discreetly. Their companion walked with a stoop and had an aquiline nose. We tailed them until we saw them climb in a cab and drive away.

‘That chap with them is none other than Sherlock Holmes,’ Algernon whispered to me. I wished he had said so earlier. There was not much point in following them since we would be able to get all the information we might need from the Baker Street man. We were on the same side this time.

Algernon went to Baker Street next day and Holmes told him that even after he had wined and dined the two men all day long they had been tight-lipped. Noah pointedly stuck to stories about circus life and Barnaby described at great length his time in Sudan. In truth they had given away next to nothing, and demonstrated extraordinary discipline for chaps who claimed they made a living as rag and bone men.

‘So it was a waste of your time,’ Algernon mused sadly, whereupon Holmes exploded in laughter. The famous detective rarely smiles and apparently has only laughed six times all his life (from an unpublished story by Dr Watson), so he can be excused if his outburst sounded more sinister than hilarious.

‘On the contrary, I found all I wanted to know,’ he managed to say after his short-lived lapse. He explained that the conclusion he had drawn was that Professor Moriarty was indubitably behind the kidnapping.

‘But Holmes, what basis do you have for this extraordinary deduction?’ The detective sneered at Clarihoe’s lack of comprehension and assumed a pained expression as he elaborated. ‘As I said, I spent the best part of the day with the two men. I told them that I had come into some unexpected money from a deceased aunt and invited them to celebrate the windfall with me. This afforded me the opportunity of getting them drunk, do you follow me?’ Algernon had nodded.

‘As the beer loosened their tongues, you would expect them to speak unguardedly, but drunk though they were, they played very close to their chests. They maintained that they made an honest living working as rag and bone men. Every lie they told was backed by another very plausible one. Now Moriarty’s crimes are faultlessly planned as you can guess.
I happen to know that he operates with a devoted band of hand-picked henchmen and personally trains them with military rigidity to carry out his nefarious activities so that nothing can ever be laid at his door. These men... eh... and women too, must have demonstrated above average intelligence. When he has finished moulding them, they would have learnt to perfection how to avoid being trapped by the police or anyone else, even after submitting them to a grilling, however intense. And I daresay that I learnt a lot from my first-hand encounter with our friends Noah and Barnaby. I have no doubt that they are Moriarty’s men.’ Algernon stared at him, still unconvinced.

‘Oh, I forgot. I did find a chink and used it to reinforce a hypothesis I had formed early on. You see, I happened to learn a little bit about the rag and bone trade when I was working on the case of the murder of the antique dealer... eh... Dick Cleverley. I was able to trap them by placing two seemingly innocuous questions which they could not answer.’ At this point Clarihoe saw Holmes’ reasoning and nodded happily.

‘And I’ll tell you another thing,’ Holmes had told him. ‘From tomorrow our pair will give up drinking at the
Owl and the Pussycat
.’

‘But you will find them of course?’ Algie asked. Holmes pursed his lips, and after a whole minute he shook his head. ‘At the moment I have no idea where to start, but that’s not to say that I am giving up. You see, so far that’s the nearest I’ve got to nabbing Moriarty.’

‘I was very angry with him although I couldn’t put my finger on the reason,’ Clarihoe said to me later.

‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘it seemed to you that he was more preoccupied by his vendetta against Moriarty than with finding Alice.’ When I saw the effect my thoughtless remark had produced on my friend, I realised too late that I ought to have kept my discomforting counsel to myself.

If Holmes had indeed given up on us, we, for our part, were more determined than ever to pursue our own endeavours. We got in touch with Minahan and entrusted him with the task of tracking down the two kidnappers gone astray. He explained that in view of the new development, the men now seemed to be on their guard. He might therefore
need time, but he had no doubt that he will find them. He then disappeared completely. And of course Alice stayed lost.

In the meantime we explored other avenues. When Algernon mentioned that the
Alberta
had moored at Battersea, we knew that a weekend of excess was in the offing for King Leopold and his dissolute aristocratic English friends. We were deeply affected by Minahan’s pessimistic view of what hedonism could lead to, but tried not to think of toddlers and babies figuring in their orgies. However, once an invidious idea sprouts in one’s fevered brains, like knotweed it is difficult to eradicate it. We could not resist the temptation to go see for ourselves, and rescue Alice if she was there. We spent Friday afternoon seated on the Embankment watching delivery men lugging cases of champagne and all manners of delicacies on board. Passers-by whom we casually engaged in conversation assured us that this was a common occurrence whenever the royal yacht came in, which it did every two weeks on average.

Our plan was to return to Battersea after sunset. When we did, we found a handy bench at some distance from the
Alberta
but affording a perfect view of the action when we looked through the high-powered George Adams lorgnette and the Ignacio Porro prismatic pair of binoculars which Algernon had borrowed from his father’s cabinet. To judge by the bearing of the guests, the men were from the aristocratic classes and the women from the stables of establishments like Mrs Jeffries’.