Page 4 of The Missing Maid
Harry considered what she knew of Sherlock Holmes’ character, having read and enjoyed the stories written about him, and then recalled the distressed tone in some of the letters. ‘I’m not sure that’s going to work,’ she objected. ‘Holmes is always declaring he isn’t taking new cases and then something juicy comes along and he’s off on the trail. They’ll just write again, more desperately.’
‘Then be firm,’ Mr Babbage said, starting to sound exasperated. ‘Tell them he’s retired and living in the countryside and doesn’t care about crime any more. Say he’s got a new hobby now like – like bell ringing or gardening or something.’
Once again, Harry pictured the familiar image of Sherlock Holmes, deerstalker hat on his head, and tried to imagine him cheerfully indulging in bucolic bell ringing. ‘I don’t think?—’
‘You’ll come up with something, Miss White,’ Mr Babbage cut in jovially. ‘The sooner you get started, the better we’ll all feel, eh? Goodbye for now.’
Harry stared at the silent receiver, then replaced it on the cradle and moved the telephone back to its home on top of the filing cabinet. She sat still for a moment, wondering for what felt like the hundredth time how she had come to this, and then gave herself a brisk mental shake. Simeon Pemberton had sent her here, doubtless hoping she would refuse to lower herself to such ridiculousness, and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of being proved right. Besides, there was a job to be done – not glamorous or flashy, but a job, nonetheless. These letters needed a response, a kind and soothing reply that let the writer down gently, and that was something Harry could provide with her customary calm efficiency.
Reaching a decision, she took the topmost letter to Sherlock Holmes from the pile she had opened and smoothed it out on the desk, skimming over the words to refresh her memory. A slight frown creased her forehead as she decided how to word the perfect response, then from the desk drawer she extracted a sheet of inky blue carbon paper and laid it between two sheets of plain letter paper. Rolling all three pages carefully into the typewriter, she lined up the carriage and, with a final decisive glance at the return address on the letter, she began to type.
2
Over the weeks that followed, it quickly became clear to Harry that she had vastly underestimated the mind-numbing monotony of her new role. At the end of the first day, she had risen from her desk at four o’clock sharp to don her hat and coat, pausing in the doorway to survey the neat stack of answered letters on the desk and choosing to block out the still-bulging mail sack in the corner. The number on the door as she closed it brought her up sharp – someone had a sense of humour, it seemed – but she had turned the key in the lock with fastidious care and made her way to the ground floor, where she’d smiled at Patrick the doorman, and taken the Underground from Baker Street to Piccadilly.
She’d had no doubt that the excellent London Library in St James’s Square would house the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle among their labyrinth of shelves and stacks and she was not disappointed; the librarian offered her original copies ofThe Strandmagazine in which many of the Sherlock Holmes stories had first appeared, as well as leather-bound copies of the five short story collections that had followed to feed the growing public appetite for the detective’s adventures.Arms aching a little with the weight of the compilations, Harry had returned to her small apartment in Mayfair, eaten a hurried supper of steak and kidney pudding, and spent the rest of the evening immersed in fiendish crime.
In the morning, she had returned to the office and retyped the letters she had produced the day before, because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself had given her the perfect cover story – inHis Last Bow, he had referred to Holmes having retired to the South Downs to keep bees. Clearly, Mr Babbage hadn’t been as far off the mark as Harry had supposed.
But once she settled into the task, the monotony began to tug at her spirits. The letters themselves were often diverting, if wild and sometimes laughable. Having renewed her acquaintance with Holmes through the books she’d borrowed from the library, she couldn’t help imagining his reaction to these demands for his services. Every now and then, she came across one that caught her eye and caused her to wonder whether it might have made a good Sherlock Holmes adventure or contemplate how the detective might have solved it. She never varied her response, however:
Thank you for your enquiry. Unfortunately, Mr Holmes is no longer available for consultation. He is retired from detective work and has for some years been living in Sussex, where he is a much-respected beekeeper.
I am sorry not to be able to help further but wish you every success with this distressing matter.
Yours faithfully,
R. K. Moss
Secretary to Sherlock Holmes
Initially, she had considered using her own name to sign the letters but she suspected the bank – or at least Mr Pemberton, ifhe ever came looking – might view that as a grave impertinence. Her next idea was to use one of Conan Doyle’s minor female characters as anom de plumebut that felt somehow both disrespectful and foolhardy – those who wrote to Sherlock Holmes were very likely ardent fans of the world the famous detective inhabited. They would register a name stolen from a story and probably write again to demand an explanation.
After some deliberation, Harry had settled upon the tried and trusted stalwart of many mystery novels – the anagram. The letters of Sherlock Holmes’ name had given her a number of possibilities that would not look out of place in one of his own stories: Heckler Shloom sounded like a wealthy American businessman being blackmailed by his mistress, Horses Hemlock put her in mind of a shady bookmaker with links to a nefarious gambling ring. The only name she could make with an ounce of believability was Rochelle K. Moss, which she abbreviated to R.K.Moss in order to muddy the waters further. But once that initial burst of creativity was over, the reality of typing the same words over and over, day in, day out came to weigh heavily on her spirits. It wasn’t as though she had colleagues to relieve the boredom – her daily visits from Bobby and his post trolley provided some brief respite from the solitude but for the most part, it was just Harry and the never-ending stream of letters.
As the weeks rolled by, she began to wonder whether her determination to stick things out was misplaced. And then, one Tuesday morning, she opened the envelope that changed everything.
It was the sender’s address that first caught Harry’s eye. The village of Foxley was around five miles from her family’s estate in Surrey and while its houses and shops didn’t lie within the Abinger lands, she knew several members of the household staff and groundskeepers came from there. It also boasted a veryfine public house that Harry’s brothers spoke well of, and an excellent cricket team, all of which flashed through Harry’s mind when she saw the address. Who on earth in Foxley would be writing to Sherlock Holmes? And, more importantly, why?
Frowning, she scanned the neat handwriting and observed the letter was from a Miss E.Longstaff, of No. 5, The Cottages. Miss Longstaff was writing on behalf of her family on the delicate matter of her eighteen-year-old sister, Mildred, who had moved to London to work as a maid but had vanished in mysterious circumstances.
The police have been no help. A newspaper advertisement offering a modest reward only attracted the worst kind of swindlers and liars, none of whom could prove they had seen Mildred. I beg you in the strongest terms, Mr Holmes, to use your formidable skills to find her. She is a gentle country girl, hardworking and diligent and most proper in her conduct. With each passing day my fears grow that something dreadful has happened. Please help us, sir. I do not know where else to turn.
Harry’s frown deepened as she studied the letter. It was well written in a looping cursive script, with flawless spelling and an excellent grasp of language and grammar: whoever Miss E. Longstaff was, she appeared to have enjoyed an education that went above and beyond that offered by the average village school. What was more, if everything she claimed was true, she was in pressing need of help. Why, then, had she chosen to consult a man who did not exist? It made no sense to Harry, who enjoyed a crime novel as much as the next person but had never been fooled into thinking the detectives she admired were real. And yet Miss Longstaff was not alone. The letters Harry spent her days answering were testament to that.
The paper and envelope offered few additional clues about the sender, being inexpensive but perfectly adequate. The date beneath the address was over a month old and when Harry examined the envelope, she saw the postmark was the same day, which suggested urgency on Miss Longstaff’s part. No big surprise after her revelation that the family was afraid for the missing girl. And yet quite some time had passed – perhaps this Mildred had turned up safe and well in the meantime. Almost certainly she had, Harry told herself as she rolled fresh paper into her typewriter – wasn’t her aunt constantly bemoaning the flightiness of housemaids?
Her fingers flexed as she prepared to type the standard reply. She laid them on the keys, poised to let them fly, and stopped to gaze pensively down at the looping handwriting. There was really no way of knowing whether Miss Longstaff’s sister had been found, short of asking and that was impossible. But it was a possibility that Miss Longstaff had written again, in greater desperation, and that subsequent letter might be waiting in the pile of envelopes Harry had long since sorted into date order, ready to work methodically through. Pushing her chair back, Harry got to her feet and selected the two oldest, elastic-bound bundles and carried them to the desk. She flicked slowly through, comparing the handwriting and postmark on each envelope with that of Miss Longstaff’s letter, but none matched either in penmanship or the postal district neatly stamped above the Baker Street address.
Undeterred, Harry moved on to the next bundle, and the next. By the time she reached the final cluster, all of which bore a postmark dated in the last week, she grew more and more assured that her original supposition must be correct – Miss Longstaff and her sister had been reunited. Until she recognised a familiar hand on a fresh, unopened envelope. It didn’t have to be a further entreaty, Harry told herself as she reached for theletter opener. It could be that Mildred had been found and the conscientious Miss Longstaff was simply informing Mr Holmes that his services were no longer needed.
But deep down, Harry thought it unlikely; if the girl had turned up Miss Longstaff would most likely have forgotten she had ever written to Sherlock Holmes. And her suspicions were instantly borne out. The letter begged for help – the family’s concern ate away at them all. They were not wealthy but they would endeavour to pay anything Mr Holmes asked to have word of Mildred. Desperation poured from the page, tugging at Harry’s heartstrings even as she understood there was nothing she could do to help. Sherlock Holmes could not and would not be moved to investigate, because he did not exist. With an uncharacteristic groan of frustration, Harry settled once more with her hands on the typewriter keys and began to type.
She got little rest that night. Her dreams were punctuated by glimpses of a phantom girl, who led her on a chase through London’s landmarks, always tantalisingly close but somehow also just out of reach. When Harry jerked awake sometime around dawn, she gave up trying to sleep again and lay staring at the ceiling as pale tendrils of yellow crawled across the alabaster. In her dreams, it had not been Sherlock Holmes who had been searching for Mildred Longstaff, it had been Harry herself, an idea so preposterous that Harry might have laughed if she hadn’t been so unsettled. Yet that was what her fevered brain seemed to be demanding, regardless of the ridiculousness of the undertaking, and the after-effects of the dreams were hard to shake off.
Eventually, Harry got up and made her way across the still-slumbering city to Baker Street, arriving early to immerse herself in the dullness of her work. But that only seemed to make things worse – she could not stop thinking of Miss Longstaff and her parents, silently watching the door each day for news fromtheir last great hope. At length, Harry found the standard letter she had typed to Miss Longstaff the day before and sat looking at it for a long time. Perhaps she might call – but no, it was madness to even think of it. The family wanted the brilliance of the world’s greatest detective, not meaningless platitudes from a member of the local aristocracy. What good could she do? Unless…
The idea was so audacious, so utterly against the trust placed in her by the bank, that Harry felt light-headed even thinking it. Yet it persisted in her head, growing in noise until she had to give it proper space. It was an incontrovertible truth that Sherlock Holmes could not uncover the whereabouts of Mildred Longstaff but that did not mean there was nothing to be done. What if Harry sought information about the missing girl and reported back to the Longstaffs under the guise of Holmes?
