Pecunia non olet – Part 9
Harriet:
"But I do not know any such men." Miranda Hannigan spoke softly and looked, though composed, as insecure as a little child.
"You are in luck there, Miss Hannigan, I do. And you are in even better luck, as the very best of them is currently upstairs, smoking his pipe." I assured her and called for Martha to ask Sherlock to come down and join us.
"Your husband is a detective? How interesting!" Miss Hannigan exclaimed and being back to her old self, almost knocked over her teacup. "I was sure he was a doctor, too. He seemed so very intelligent."
"Well, my husband will be happy to hear it, I dare say," I replied wryly.
Having waited expectantly anyway, it was not difficult to secure my husband's assistance in the matter, rather the contrary. And so Sherlock Holmes listened in silence as I repeated to him, what had been said, while Miss Hannigan, who had first tried to tell the story herself, but had failed to utter any two words of sense regarding the matter to a complete stranger, sat by shyly. Once in a while she nodded and I had the feeling she wanted to add something, but let me finish without interrupting. When I had ended Sherlock stared into space for a moment, then glanced at his new client and enquired: "Your manservant, how long has he been with you?"
"My parents died two and half years ago in a boating accident. My mother could not swim and father wanted to rescue her and both drowned. I hired Robert about a year and a half ago so I would have a man in the house. It is not good for a woman to live on her own – or only with other women and I only had three maids and a cook."
"Do you keep a carriage?"
"No, I don't need one. I am not going out very often and if I do, I can just as well take a cab or take the omnibus."
Sherlock Holmes only nodded, taking to inspecting the letter.
"Cheap paper, low-quality ink in black, written in print – odd. There are some spelling mistakes indicating an uneducated person – unless of course, we have a person, who only wants to appear illiterate. But no, the mistakes are consistent and common with the lower classes and a merely basic education. Whether it is written by a man or a woman I cannot say. It could be either." he muttered under his breath, while Miranda Hannigan stared at him in awe. Bringing the paper up to his nose he added thoughtfully: "No hint of perfume, but I detect some kind of spirit – gin I would say - and beer. I dare say, this was written in a pub, a not overly clean pub, to be more precise."
Now we both looked at him and he smiled in amusement at our astonishment.
"I am afraid without a sample I cannot determine the author of this epistle." Sherlock at last announced. "It does not look familiar?"
Miss Hannigan shook her head decidedly and at last her hat slipped off of her head and landed on the floor with a soft rustle. I bend down to pick it up for her, lest any more accidents would happen.
Again the detective fell silent, deep in thought and it was only till Martha announced dinner was ready, that he moved again. Miss Hannigan declined my invitation to join us and with a small and hopeful smile left for home, forgetting her gloves on my sideboard.
"You have not overstated, my dear, when you told me she is a rather – how did you put it – exceptional," Sherlock said, when she had left in the direction of the station. "Dear me, she is the most awkward and clumsy person I have come across in a good while. But I have to agree with you, when you say, she is also a very kind-hearted creature. She most certainly is. And unfortunately very naive."
"So, are you looking into the matter?" I asked while Martha served our meal.
"Yes, of course. - But for tonight I think I will have another try on having a peaceful snuggle on the sofa with my wife in my arms."
"Do you really think it will work? Each time we try, somebody comes knocking on our door. I get the feeling the sofa is cursed." I joked and he started laughing.
Only when the maid had left us to our meal did he reply to this with a smirk on his face: "Yes, I think you might be right. Better let's go to bed straight away after dinner. By the way, I do have a couple of questions, I would like to have answered."
"What about?" I wondered, squashing some peas onto the back of my fork.
"It seems I am in need of some anatomy lessons," he confessed. "For obvious reasons, I am quite familiar with the workings of the male body, but I did not pay much attention when my professor told us about the peculiarities of the female one. - I was more focused on the criminal aspect of medicine than on the normal bodily functions. I fear I am somewhat lacking there, having never been aware there are so many differences between a man and a woman apart from what meets the eye."
I stared at him confused before the penny finally dropped: "You mean the bleeding?"
My husband nodded and I could detect a hint of embarrassment that suited him quite well.
xxx
Sherlock:
And so, the next morning Harriet and I went to visit George Walters in his prison cell. Now that he was behind bars he seemed surprisingly open and talkative, and still, there was some cunning about him, that made me deeply distrustful.
"So, you have found me out." he smiled lopsidedly when he saw us approach. "And who is this lovely lady?"
"Mrs Holmes," I replied smugly, pulling Harriet a little closer, who eyed Walters with equal scepticism.
Walters first seemed surprised, then laughed. An astonishingly hearty and honest laugh, free of all spite and malice, showing that after all, he was just another soul driven to desperate measures by circumstance. - Not that this was an excuse. With his capacities, he could have taken another road, for sure. Many men had done it before him. If I looked at young Wiggins, who once had been nothing but a street urchin, with his wit he had by now made it into the police force and, as far as I knew, was rising fast.
"Well, if you have managed to find such a beautiful lady to share your table and bed with, I might as yet be lucky." the young man at last chuckled, offering us a seat on his narrow prison bench, while he himself sat down on the stool at the rickety table which still held half of his meagre breakfast.
"I doubt you suffer any shortage of unsuspecting women in your bed, Mr Walters. Like Miss Hannigan, for example." I replied, a hint of sarcasm in my voice.
"Not unsuspecting, Mr Holmes. I have never tricked a woman into sharing my bed, they all have come voluntarily, believe it or not. Though I have to admit that I did take advantage of their belief I was a rich man. And why not? It is not as if they behaved decently or had honourable intentions. - But I doubt this is a topic I should pursue with a lady present."
"I am a doctor and work mainly with prostitutes, there is little I have not heard already," Harriet replied suavely, catching the man off guard.
"You do?! Oh..." he stammered looking at her more closely. "Well, then. I have never made any advances on Miss Hannigan if that is what you are on about. She is a lady and I would never risk the wrath of society."
"But you do not deny, that you got engaged to her for the money?" I enquired, leaving it out for the moment, that the woman he knew was not Miranda Hannigan, but an impostor.
"Actually I did not. We were caught in a situation that left me no other way out than to ask for her hand in marriage. You should have seen her brother! And after that, I simply could not get rid of her again."
"What kind of situation?"
"We met at a soiree and she stumbled on a set of stone steps which led from one room to the other and literally landed on top of me, knocking me to the ground. In her quest to get up she rubbed against me in a way that… - made it clear I did not find her unattractive or disliked what she did in this instant." Walters finished his sentence with his eyes averted.
"And I take it this was how her brother came to you?" Harriet wondered, her eyebrows raised in amusement.
"Yes. By then we were both back on our feet, but she seemed to have injured her foot and I steadied her – her dress was still not straightened and I, too, was in no condition to return into society just yet. Clemence, that is the brother, insisted upon me, to take full responsibility for my behaviour. What was I supposed to do? I mean admittedly I was not who I claimed to be and I did not want to make a fuss."
There was a decided irony about this whole situation which was almost priceless – were it not for a young lady who had indeed been most shamefully used. - Though apparently not by this man.
"I would have married her if it was not to be avoided. And so I tried, over the few weeks of our engagement to be as inattentive and impolite as I possibly could in the hopes of her leaving out of her own free will. But she just did not go away. She clung to me like a limpet!" the prisoner cried out clearly exasperated.
What he said though, made sense. He indeed did not appear to honour the false Miss Hannigan with much attention, let alone respect. It should have made me suspicious. A marriage swindler by rule was overly attentive towards the woman he wanted to ensnare, not dismissing her when she was visiting him with the rather lame excuse that he was busy.
"Where does Miss Hannigan live?" I, at last, enquired, taking out my notebook to write down the address.
He gave an address in Notting Hill and I heard Harriet gasp.
"One more thing, could you describe Clemence Hannigan to me?"
"If you gave me pencil and paper I could draw him." Walters offered and sceptically I handed him my notebook.
With a few swift lines, the image of a man appeared. Round-faced, a little on the chubby side with a whimsy moustache and slight jug ears. His eyes seemed rather beady and his mouth appeared to be pouting. But it was clearly a decent portrait. Who would have thought this man to be so artistic?
"This is Clemence Hannigan, Mr Holmes."
"And his sister?"
He drew her as well. It was clearly not the Miss Hannigan we had met. This woman was neither pretty nor actually ugly, but her face was so ordinarily plain, that describing her only with words was proving difficult. The original was decidedly more pretty than her, even though she did not have a fashionably tiny waist.
"She is not coincidentally left handed? Harriet enquired curiously, glancing at the two drawings.
"How do you know? Yes, she is."
My wife nodded, taking in the information with a side glance at me.
"I dare say you have helped us a lot, Mr Walters." I, at last, told him, while waiting for the guard to unlock the cell and leading us out.
"I am glad. I would be even more glad, if you could help me, also. I might have tricked the one or other rich man and posed as the heir of Gilad Trenton, but I have never been a marriage swindler. That accusation is simply not true and I would be glad if you could make it known to the police."
"Not even the first time around?"
"Not even then. It was her, who broke the engagement and then said I was only after her money. - Admittedly it was one of the reasons I got engaged to Josephine Jameson, but it was not the only reason. Can a man not fall in love with a woman who is above him and not be seen as mercenary? - Probably not." he sighed.
"Do you think he is telling the truth?" Harriet asked as we stepped into the cold drizzle outside.
"I think he might. At least not everything he has said is a lie." I mused, lighting a cigarette with some difficulty. "You seemed to know the address, my dear."
"Yes, it is Miranda Hannigan's, I am pretty sure," she answered worriedly.
"I thought as much. I suggest we go and pay your friend a visit and see if perhaps the portrait fits anyone she knows. - But first, we should take some lunch. After last nights exertions, I cannot have you go hungry, my love."
Blushing she turned towards me, raising an eyebrow.
"What?" I asked her innocently, taking her hand to kiss it.
"You are impossible!" my wife laughed and then linked arms with me and walked down the street where a sign indicated an inn.
xxx
Miss Miranda Hannigan was as clumsy as ever, when she greeted us, but also as warm-hearted and I wondered how she would react to the drawings Walters had made. I was slightly disappointed at not seeing the only male servant as we were told he had his afternoon off but had I suspected one of the maids to have posed as her mistress, I soon found, that none of them resembled the woman I had seen from the upstairs window of the Trenton villa and none resembled the drawing Walters had provided by her countenance. And for that matter, not a single one of them was left-handed.
At last, I showed Miss Hannigan the drawings. She looked at them intently, biting her lip.
"They do look familiar, but I could not say. I don't go out in society much since my parents have died, but I might have passed them. And this woman is really posing as me?"
There was a hint of annoyance in her features as she stared at the other woman's picture for several minutes as if she could stare her other self down.
"We look nothing alike!" she, at last, said, handing me back my notebook.
As I had determined before, they really looked nothing alike. The real Miss Hannigan was not only more handsome I also doubted that even if the other woman was a lot less clumsy, I would think her superior to this sweet hapless creature before me.
"And this is really who this man is engaged to?" Miss Hannigan asked for the umpteenth time and I began wondering if she had gotten into her head to save him, till the moment she said the first unkind thing I had ever heard escape her mouth: "It does not speak for him or his taste."
Harriet smiled broadly at this proclamation and patted the ladies back.
"Well, I now need to leave, I am afraid. There is a committee which I would like to join and it will meet in ten minutes down at Westminster." she chattered on, slipping into her overcoat and putting on her hat, having me – and as it seemed my wife as well – worried for her safety, when she jammed in her hatpin without paying much attention to where it went.
"We might have a happy ending after all. It's not the footman, obviously." Hattie laughed on our way back home. "Now she just needs to convince her sweetheart to marry her and all will be well."
"But we first need to save her from being ruined." I reminded both of us, at which my wife sighed.
Still, this was far from being over. We just had eliminated one possibility and now it was for the next to be checked out. The question was just, what was to be next?
In this case, it would be a leisurely afternoon with Harriet and my pipe and thus mull over the problem. The weather was abysmal at any rate and I felt alarmingly tired.
xxx
At having reached a conclusion the previous night, I had decided to first observe Miss Hannigan's surroundings more thoroughly in the hopes of finding a connection between her and the impostor. Why had this woman chosen Miranda Hannigan to pose as? The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced, that she must be someone who knew the lady and also somebody who must be aware of the retired life she lived. How else could she be sure that the man she came to know as Everett Trenton would not come across the real Miss Hannigan?
Leaving Chiswick before dawn the next morning I went to Baker Street, made myself up as a loafer and left for Miranda Hannigan's address, lingering around in the street. At last, I saw her footman. A tall man with a friendly countenance and dark hair, his face clean shaven and indeed clearly not the man Walters had drawn.
Yesterday morning I had been almost sure that Miranda Hannigan's lover was behind it all, but apparently, I was wrong. What was it I was missing? Sitting down on one of the low garden walls I lit my old and sufficiently shabby looking clay pipe and pondered on the case again. Luckily enough it was not raining for a change, but the wind was still bitterly cold. At least my wife had it warm and snug and took another day of well-earned rest. The thought of Harriet brought a content smile to my face.
Wandering around the street for another hour and a half in the hopes of finding a clue, I was about to leave when my efforts paid off. A familiar looking carriage turned into the street and stopped at one of the houses a little further down. Hurrying closer I saw first a man emerge and then a woman, seemingly arguing about one thing or another as both gesticulated wildly and their voices were raised. It took me some self-restraint not to stare too conspicuously at them, but there was little doubt. It was the couple Walters had drawn. He a bit on the chubby side, round-faced, jug-eared and pouting and she as plain as they come but in a rich and stylish dress, an elaborate hat, and with a ridiculous looking sixteen-inch waist, making her appear as if she would snap in half at any moment.
Attaching myself to the back of their carriage I ended up duly at the stables to the back of the houses and in making myself useful, attempted to gather some information.
So far, so good. By the time I had groomed the two horses and finished mucking out their boxes I was sufficiently informed about the pair. What I now needed, was a bath, a shave, dry clothes, my pipe and two ounces of tobacco. - Oh, and most importantly, a kiss from my wife.
It was then, that I remembered, that today was Saturday and that the Watson's would arrive in three hours time. My wife would have my guts if I did not hurry now!