From Domina Temporis: Tidying up
At the tender age of 21, my poor husband Wilfred was taken from me in a tragic accident. He worked on the docks you see, and it happened late one night when he was helping bring a ship into port. Needless to say I was devastated, but found myself in a more fortunate position than other women might, because my dear Wilfred had squirrelled some savings away and left it all to me, along with our comfortable flat in Yorkshire.
So, once I had recovered from my grief a little, I began to consider how best to forge a life for myself. I spoke to my mother and she was the one who recommended Martha Hudson to me. Martha Hudson isn't a true relative, just a friend of our family, but I had thought of her as "Aunt Martha" my whole life. I hadn't met her since I was small, but when my mother told me about her business as a landlady, I thought it might be something that I could turn my hand to.
We met at 221B Baker Street, a charming flat, and she had the whole lower apartment to herself!
"It's two gentlemen living upstairs," she told me, over tea and crumpets. "Mr Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson. They are a little peculiar, but I think we're getting used to each other."
This was long before the stories of Mr Holmes and Doctor Watson started to circulate. "Peculiar, how?"
"Oh, well," Martha waved her hand airily, "they keep odd hours, and Mr Holmes has his experiments-"
"Experiments?"
"An amateur chemist, it comes in handy in his line of work."
This was getting more and more intriguing. "What is his line of work?"
"A private detective of some sort," she said, so dismissive that I might have laughed if I didn't still harbour that residual anxiety which sometimes comes from meeting with a distant, older relative. "But my point is, dear Angie, that you must be firm in your negotiations with your tenants."
"Angie" was an old term of endearment I hadn't heard for many years, and I smiled indulgently. "Might you give me an example?"
Martha thought for a moment. "Well, say with Mr Holmes and Doctor Watson... when they first started to live here, the agreement was that I would cook their meals, change their sheets, do their laundry, and tidy the living room once a week. But of course, then I realised just how hazardous tidying up can be!"
"Hazardous?" The more I heard of these strange tenants, the more fretful I became. And Martha spoke as though this were all commonplace!
"It's Mr Holmes's chemicals you see," she explained, and I supposed that was fine enough, but then she went on to say, "And then there was a finger once."
"A finger!"
"It was wrapped up!" She spoke as though that were a reassurance, which did nothing to ease my worry. "But that was the final straw. I said, "No Mr Holmes, you will have to do the tidying yourself from now on" and that was that. But if I had been younger or more shy, who knows what tidying I would have done before I'd have renegotiated our terms!"
"I see." I sipped my tea slowly, considering this. "I don't know if I'm really cut out to be a landlady, what with all you've said. It seems you've got quite a lot to deal with."
Her expression softened then, eyes fond. "You don't have children, do you Angie?"
I swallowed, for this had been one of the biggest sources of my grief when Wilfred had passed. Had I a child, there might be some comfort from the loneliness. "I do not."
"Neither do I." Martha patted my hand. "But there are other ways to be a mother, you know? Oh it's not the same, I'd never say that. But those boys need looking after, and I look after them. And there is something quite wonderful in that."
We chatted back and forth, and she offered me some practical advice - what rates I should charge, services I should include, how and when best to place advertisements - before I headed home on the train that evening.
It was many, many, years later that I heard of Martha's death. Old age, apparently. I had been a landlady for a long while by then, although I was fortunate enough not to deal with wrapped up fingers or chemical experiments! I had remarried, and had two children, and of course it was a well touted family story that our Martha Hudson was none other than the great Sherlock Holmes's landlady.
I never did go to her funeral - it was too far to get down to London, and little Charlie was ill with a terrible fever - but I did make sure to read that little passage in The Adventure of the Dying Detective where she is mentioned by name to both my children, and I told them sternly how if there had been no Mrs Martha Hudson, there would have been no Mr Sherlock Holmes or Doctor John Watson.
"She was like a mother to them," I said. "They would have been lost without her."