A Study in Sherlock

“It’s that lodger of mine. Well, lodger as was. Not any more. No rent equals no board or lodging in this establishment. I lay down my rules when they come, and if the rent’s not paid, then they get chucked out. Bloke hadn’t been here long, but I had to give him his marching orders because I hardly saw the color of his money. He left sharpish enough, and without paying me a farthing of his arrears. You can’t be too careful though; you never know if they’re going to come back and give you a fourpenny-one and leave you with a black eye.”

“Was he not a good man?”

“Oh, he was all right, I suppose. But he kept late hours, on top of the arrears, and he brought back women.”

The boy blushed. “Did he?”

The woman looked up the street again without answering, then announced that this would never do, and she couldn’t stand there talking all day. The boy consulted his watch and realized that he couldn’t stand there either—for his mother and aunt would return to the house before him if he didn’t cut along.

Florence and Ethel checked his homework after tea, and then read together—passing Sherlock Holmes from one to the other as they made their way through The Sign of the Four. The boy was fast coming to the conclusion that Holmes was not as interesting as he considered himself to be; then he remembered that the man was a fiction and probably didn’t think of himself at all. But the detective’s adventures inspired him, and he planned another excursion on the morrow, when he would go to the house on Margaret Street again. It occurred to him that, in the meantime, he must discover the name of the nearest detective inspector. He may not have a Lestrade waiting in the wings, but he was beginning to believe he was on to something—a murder, perhaps—and he would need a trusted policeman to apprehend the perpetrator of the crime. Alone in his room, the boy recalled details of the overheard argument and gunshot, and feared that the lodger at the house in Margaret Street was a criminal to be reckoned with.

“Back at four, dear!”

The front door closed behind the two women, and the grandmother could be heard padding along to her chair in the drawing room, the one by the window where a warming shaft of sunlight soothed her bones as if she were an old dog. The boy rose from his bed fully clothed, shoved the pillow under the covers, and set off on his quest for truth. It was day two of his investigation, and he had much to accomplish. He stopped at the bakery and bought four jam tarts, then went on his way again.

“Madam!” He smiled as the woman opened the door and peered at him over the chain. “You were so very kind yesterday, I thought I should repay you with a small treat. Do you like jam tarts?”

Her eyes lit up. “I most certainly do.”

He held out the bag, and she wavered as she reached to take it from the boy. “I thought you looked like a nice sort of boy yesterday. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?”

Indeed he would.

Mrs. Richmond—she had revealed her name as he followed her along the passageway—busied herself in the kitchen. It was a kitchen not unlike the one at the house in Auckland Road where he lived with his mother, aunt, and grandmother, though the kitchen at home was more spacious and better appointed. In Mrs. Richmond’s kitchen a kettle boiled on a black cast-iron range, above which various towels and cloths were hung over a wooden clothes airer. A vase of paper flowers, now faded and brown, had been set in the center of a wooden table that was bowed in the middle from, he thought, many decades of use. Mrs. Richmond laid out two chipped cups and a plate with the jam tarts, and poured tea from a brown pot. She put milk and sugar in his cup without first asking.

“Do you live alone, apart from lodgers, Mrs. Richmond?”

The woman nodded. “Since I lost my Jim in the first Transvaal war. He was out there at the beginning. Regular army.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What’re you sorry for?” She reached for a jam tart. “Weren’t your fault. And I get a bit of a pension, just a few pennies, but it helps. We never had any children, and Jim was a good one for putting something away, so I’m not for the workhouse yet.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then the boy spoke again. “I was wondering, after we spoke yesterday, if the room was still available. A friend of my mother is at this very moment looking for accommodation, and I thought it might be serendipitous that I was so taken with thirst yesterday, and in knocking at your door discovered you had a room to let.”

“What with all the trouble that last lodger caused me, I only take gentlewomen of good standing now—no men.” She looked at him as if weighing up his social station.

“I would imagine your mother’s a fine woman, and any friend of hers would be cut from the same cloth.”

“Might I see the room, so that I can best describe it to my mother’s friend?”

The woman sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm.”