Page 3 of The Missing Maid
The sack was filled with a jumble of envelopes, all shapes and sizes, in assorted shades and decidedly mixed in quality. The handwriting was neat on some, an untidy scrawl on others, but the name and address on every letter was a variation on the same theme:
Mr Sherlock Holmes
221b Baker Street
London
Harry could only stare in open-mouthed astonishment. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t a bag full of letters to – well, to someone who didn’t exist. And yet they weren’t incorrectly addressed, nor had they been misdelivered: the Abbey Road Building Society headquarters did occupy numbers 219–229 Baker Street, undeniably encompassing the fictional address of Sherlock Holmes. But surely people didn’t write to him there. Surely they understood their letters would go unread… Still blinking, Harry gathered up a handful of letters from the top of the slithering pile and took them back to her desk. She slit the first envelope open and began to read.
Mr Sherlock Holmes
221b Baker Street
London
NW1 6XE
43 Myddelton Road
Sandy
Bedfordshire
13th April 1932
Dear Mr Holmes,
I am writing to you for help with a most terrible crime. The police have been worse than useless and I am at my wits’ end. I believe my neighbour cruelly murdered his wife in the dead of night last month but no one will listen. I am certain that a man of your brilliance will see the truth of things immediately. Please grant me an appointment so that a killer may be apprehended and justice served.
I await your reply by return.
Yours faithfully,
Mr Benjamin Grantly
Harry blew out her cheeks, wondering whether Mr Grantly had abandoned hope of receiving a response, given it was six months since he’d written, or whether his neighbour was still under suspicion. Putting the letter to one side, she opened the next. This was from a Miss P Bellows, the distressed owner of a missing cat, who claimed she had been the victim of international pet thieves. Another writer accused a local vicar of embezzling church funds. Several claimed sightings of Holmes’ nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, in locations from Dover to Aberdeen. As Harry’s incredulous gaze skimmed each entreaty, she was sure of one thing: few of these purported crimes would have snared the interest of the great Sherlock Holmes.
Puffing out another breath, Harry stacked the sheets of paper neatly on top of each other. Now she understood why Mr Babbage had said the correspondence wasn’t really anything to do with the bank. The letters had evidently been allowed topile up, a minor problem it was easier to ignore until the sheer volume meant the problem was no longer minor. Something had to be done to address it.Someonehad to address it and, however improbably, it appeared that someone was Harry. It was certainly a long way from what she had expected to do when she’d arrived at work that morning.
Lifting the heavy black telephone onto the desk, she consulted the internal telephone directory she found in a drawer and located the post room extension. Mr Babbage answered on the fifth ring and grunted when Harry introduced herself. ‘I suppose you’ve got a better idea of the job now.’
‘I have,’ Harry said. ‘Although I must say, the correspondence is a little… unusual.’
There was a hollow laugh. ‘Downright foolish, if you ask me. It started arriving as soon as we opened the doors. We had a look at a few, thinking they were meant for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but we soon realised – well, to be blunt, that it was our problem, not his. A duty that comes with the Baker Street territory, so to speak.’
Harry eyed the spidery handwriting on the paper before her, and then gazed at the sack leaning against the office wall. These letters hadn’t been written in admiration of the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories but in appreciation of Mr Holmes himself. Every correspondent ardently believed not only that the great detective was a real, flesh-and-blood person, but also that he could and would solve their mysteries. They had each set pen to paper, some in frustration, others in desperation, all in hope and anticipation that Sherlock Holmes would heed their cry for help. Mr Babbage was right, a response was most definitely needed – one that was sympathetic but firm – and that was something Harry could hardly imagine would be forthcoming from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, given that the great man had sadly been dead for several years.
‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ she said, as her future suddenly stretched away in front of her. ‘There are so many letters.’
Mr Babbage seemed to hesitate, then rallied. ‘You’ll soon get on top of things. Like I said earlier, all you need to do is whip up a short reply and pop it in the post, then file the copies and move on to the next one.’
‘What am I supposed to say?’ she asked, lifting the first letter from the pile and scanning the hopeful words. ‘And who should the reply be from – the bank?’
Again, Mr Babbage paused. ‘No, not the bank. From Sherlock Holmes – thesecretaryof Sherlock Holmes.’ He gave an uncertain chuckle. ‘That’s you.’
Not for the first time that morning, Harry wondered if she was still asleep and dreaming. ‘And what should the reply say? Given we’re going along with the pretence that he actually exists.’
There was a huff from the other end of the phone. ‘I don’t know. Tell them he’s dead – no, don’t tell them that, we could get into a lot of hot water, legally speaking.’ He stopped, as though thinking. ‘Say he’s not taking any new cases at the moment. Yes, that works.’
