The Final Page of Baker Street Read online

  “Bannister,” Holmes nodded, “yes, indeed. It was eight years ago - the very case I alluded to earlier in reference to the black clay and sawdust. Watson and I were staying in Dulwich at the time so I could complete my investigation of a property dispute. I had been researching the Early English charter granted to Edward Alleyn by King James in 1619 that established Dulwich College when we were distracted by an academic scandal. You will recall, Watson, that ugly episode related to charges of cheating in pursuit of the Fortescue Scholarship. The results of a Greek exam were in question.”

  “Thucydides,” I confirmed. “Reported in the narrative I entitled ‘The Adventure of the Three Students.’ By implying that the story took place at a university like Oxford or Cambridge, I believe I successfully shielded the reputation of Dulwich College. It may not be as celebrated a public school as Eton, but whatever I could do to preserve its good name, I felt obliged to do.”

  “For which,” Holmes said, “I am quite convinced, its headmaster, Mr. Gilkes, remains fully appreciative.”

  “To be certain, sir,” our visitor agreed. “Mr. Bannister told me how pleased his superiors felt when you were able to save him and them from public humiliation. To this very day, everyone who’d been involved in that embarrassing incident remains in your debt. ‘Sherlock Holmes is somebody to be counted on,’ is how Mr. Bannister puts it.”

  One could well understand Bannister’s appreciation although he had obviously not confessed to Mrs. Chandler his own compromising role in the story.

  Holmes smiled briefly and reached for his old briar in the pipe rack on a nearby table. Filling the bowl with the black shag he stored in the Persian slipper, he asked Mrs. Chandler the nature of her current distress.

  “As I have already said, Mr. Holmes, it is my son, Raymond, who has caused me to come here today.” Once she mentioned the boy’s name, her eyes began to moisten. Almost immediately, however, she composed herself. “Although I was born in Ireland, Ray was born in America - Chicago, to be precise. Not long after, Maurice, his miserable father, walked out on us, and Ray and I moved to Nebraska to spend time with my sister Grace and her family. Grace had come to America before I did. Though we shared a number of summers with them in Plattsmouth, it just wasn’t a good situation for the boy - too much drinking by his uncles and all-around crookedness - so we went back to Ireland and my family in Waterford, the very people I’d hoped to escape when I left for America.”

  “Returning to your childhood home must have been a difficult decision,” I suggested.

  Mrs. Chandler allowed herself a smile. “A difficult decision indeed, Doctor! My mother can be quite the dictator. ‘Tyrant’ might be a better word.”

  “From the proverbial frying pan into the fire,” I offered.

  Mrs. Chandler nodded. “My mother was the main reason I followed my sister to America. I had to get out of that house with all the bullying and snobbery and prejudice.”

  “But now you’re here in England,” I observed.

  Mrs. Chandler laughed. “Yes. After leaving Waterford, Ray and I moved to Dulwich. We lived in a large, detached house called Whitefield Lodge in Alleyn Park just next to the school’s playing field. In fact, it’s owned by my brother Ernest - a business investment, I should imagine. He’s a solicitor. My mother and sister Ethel were also living there when we arrived.”

  “So, still with your mother,” Holmes said, exhaling as he spoke.

  “At least we were free of Waterford,” she explained. “And who knows? Maybe Ernest was happy to be rid of us as well. He too felt the hand of the tyrant. Becoming a solicitor to maintain the family law firm was not his choice; it was our mother’s. Maybe he was even sympathetic. I must say that he’s been most generous in agreeing to pay for Ray’s entire education at the College.”

  “Very generous indeed,” I said.

  “And where are you living now?” Holmes asked.

  “Since February of 1901, the family have been staying in Auckland Road in Upper Norwood. In a tall, red-brick house called Mt. Cyra.”

  “Most genteel,” I noted as blue smoke from Holmes’ pipe began to cloud the room.

  “I do still visit friends in Dulwich,” she continued. “Like Mr. Bannister. I suppose the black clay comes from the shortcuts I take across the playing fields.”

  “And the lad?” I asked. “How old is he now? How is he progressing?”

  “Ray’s fifteen,” she answered, “and just switched to studying the classics. He’s a diligent worker, but it’s all new for him, and he’s struggling to catch up.” She paused for a moment as if she herself was shouldering her son’s burdens. When she resumed, she had changed the topic. “I must say that Ray’s doing well on the pitches. At this time of year it’s cricket. He’s a bowler. And in the autumn it’s rugby. He actually broke his nose in a match.”

  “Good show,” I exclaimed, having played some rugby for Blackheath myself.

  “Obviously, Dr. Watson, it’s not his athletics I’m concerned with. I don’t reckon he’ll ever be on the school’s team or win his blues. No, I’m worried about whatever it is that’s distracting him from his studies.”

  “A mother’s constant worry,” I said, noting how the melancholy had returned to her eyes.

  “To be sure,” she agreed. “And yet it’s more than just his studies. There’s an unhappiness that accompanies the boy. Perhaps it’s due to having no permanent home - or father, for that matter, though how much good that no-account would have done is anyone’s guess. Ray has strong opinions and few friends. Not only is he shy, but he’s a day-boy, you see. Because we live so close to the College. Coming home to his family every night cuts him off from his mates. And then there’s his American background. He doesn’t know yet whether he’s a Brit or a Yank.”

  “Neither fish nor fowl,” I lamented.

  “Exactly, Dr. Watson,” said Mrs. Chandler. “But what concerns me even more is that during this last fortnight, Ray’s been failing to return home after his rugger practices. He disappears each evening and then comes tiptoeing back into the house close to midnight. When I ask him what he’s been up to or where he’s gone, he just shrugs and goes off to bed. I have come to you, Mr. Holmes, to enlist your help in finding out where he takes himself every night.”

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “he’s reading in the library.”

  “The library,” she scoffed. “If he was gone studying, why could he not tell me, I’d like to know?”

  Sherlock Holmes, who had been quietly smoking during this exchange, now spoke up. “More likely, spending time with some young lady, I should judge.” Arching his eyebrows, he added, “Your son is, after all, a young man of appropriate age.”

  Mrs. Chandler sat up even straighter. “Oh, no, gentlemen. We may be lapsed Quakers, but my Ray is a good boy. He wouldn’t wander off with some strange girl from the village.”

  Holmes expelled a cloud of pent up smoke. It seemed almost as murky indoors as out.

  “Mrs. Chandler,” he said definitively, “my line of work takes me into the criminal world, not to some Never-Never Land full of missing boys. I’m sure the police aren’t interested either; it’s not as if he’s disappeared. You yourself might try following him or hiring someone on your own to look into the matter.”

  “‘Hiring someone’?” she repeated shrilly, her nostrils flaring. “‘Hiring someone’? That’s why I’ve come to see you, Mr. Holmes, isn’t it?” She enunciated this last interrogative as if it were a statement. “I’ve crossed my husband and my mother to raise that boy, and I’m not about to be nay-sayed by you.”

  The set of Holmes’ jaw revealed just how hard he was biting on the stem of the briar.

  “As for following him myself,” Mrs. Chandler went on, “I’ve tried - and been unable to keep up. Ray is, after all, a healthy fifteen-year-old boy.”

  “�
��Healthy,’” Holmes repeated disdainfully, yet obviously pleased that Mrs. Chandler’s word had so clearly confirmed his previous point. His was an off-putting tone, as if he couldn’t be bothered by so trifling a mystery despite the great concern it was causing the woman before us.

  With his arms folded like a great brooding bird encased in long, feathered wings, Holmes sat motionless. A moment later he resumed puffing billows of blue smoke into the air. For her part, Mrs. Chandler once more took up massaging the clasp of her bag.

  “Holmes,” I found myself urging, “for the sake of old Bannister’s high regard, you must help this lady.”

  Unmoved, Holmes continued to smoke.

  “Holmes,” I tried once more. “For the sake of a desperate woman - oh, bother, Holmes - for the sake of a desperate mother, you must bend to Mrs. Chandler’s entreaties.”

  His silence continued for another minute. He appeared to be deep in thought. Investigating the activities of children was not his usual line of work. On the other hand, the woman before him seemed desperate enough to warrant his help. At last, following a sharp glance in my direction and a defiant final exhalation of smoke, he stood.

  “Oh, very well, Mrs. Chandler,” he said without an apparent ounce of sympathy. “As I have no significant criminal cases pending at the moment, even so trivial a matter as a disappearing boy should provide me with some cerebral activity. I shall meet you in Dulwich tomorrow evening at 6:00.”

  The lady grasped Holmes’ hands. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Holmes, thank you. I am ever so grateful.”

  Sherlock Holmes displayed one of his more sceptical smiles. “That is your opinion today, Madam, but if I am any judge of the behaviour of adolescent boys, I fear your son may be up to the kind of activities you would prefer not knowing anything about.”

  Holmes arranged a place for their meeting the next day and then handed Mrs. Chandler off to me to escort to the door.

  Once the lady had left, I offered my opinion. “A good decision, Holmes.”

  “I hope so, Watson. But to judge from the boy’s secretive nature, as well as from Mrs. Chandler’s exaggerated concerns, I fear that there might be more thorny issues brewing between mother and son than a simple accounting of his nocturnal whereabouts will settle.”

  * * *

  It was not until the weekend that I could return to Baker Street to find out the results of Holmes’ investigation. When I did see my friend again, it was Sunday afternoon, and I was just in time for tea. The fire was blazing, and Mrs. Hudson had already set our table. Except for an unfamiliar little bell made of cut-crystal that stood next to the white teapot, the nostalgic scene might have taken place some ten years before.

  Holmes filled our respective cups with tea; and while I dined on watercress sandwiches, he gave me a full account of his adventure in Dulwich.

  “The train was punctual,” he began, “and with the fog diminishing, Mrs. Chandler and I met in the early evening - just as we had agreed - beneath the Italianate clock tower at the College. I’m sure you’ll remember that palazzo, Watson. There’s also a new library just built. It is a tribute to the Old Alleynians who died in the Boer War.”

  “Much of the school was designed by Sir Charles Barry,” I seemed to remember, “the architect of the Houses of Parliament.”

  It was easy to recall the picturesque grounds of the college - the graceful structures of red-and-white brick, the large swaths of lush, green lawn, the armies of stately chestnut trees. I have always found that such pastoral beauty aids the acquisition of knowledge. Even with my own schooling in London - ”

  Reality interrupted my reverie.

  “His son, old fellow,” Sherlock Holmes was informing me. “Charles Barry, Junior, was the architect of Dulwich College.”

  “It’s still a beautiful place,” I responded weakly. No one likes being corrected, even by a man with Holmes’ reputation for accuracy.

  Oblivious to my embarrassment, Holmes simply cleared his throat and resumed his narration: “Mrs. Chandler escorted me to the athletic field where we concealed ourselves behind a hedgerow. From this hide, she pointed out her son, a middle-sized, athletic-looking lad with dark hair and brooding eyes. As I watched him racing his mates across the pitch, she placed her arm on mine and, giving it a supportive squeeze, silently waved good-bye and, as we had earlier planned, retreated to her home. I was left standing there to see where the boy might be off to.

  “Fortunately, I had not long to wait. It soon grew dark and some wisps of fog hovered above the grass, but I could still distinguish the black suits and white collars of the young boys exiting the changing rooms. Almost immediately one parted from the group, shouting something about seeing them on the morrow. It was Raymond, of course. When the others had gone, he broke into a kind of canter, and I followed him at a distance even as he loped across the lawn. He continued up a hillock and finally down among a grove of leafy oaks, arriving at a small, square, wooden outbuilding not far from the gymnasium. He’d given me quite a run actually. With his galloping gait, it’s easy to see why his mother couldn’t keep up with him. If truth be told, old fellow, it wasn’t so simple for me either.”

  I chuckled in sympathy. “Didn’t Oscar Wilde have something to say about the shame of wasting youth on the young?”

  “I believe you’ll find that most people attribute the sentiment to Bernard Shaw,” Holmes said. How much my friend knew about literature never failed to amaze me, especially in light of how often he claimed to be ignorant of the subject. His knowledge of literature, I had once described as “nil”.

  “But they’re both Irish,” he added. “You got that part correct.”

  Unable to discern whether I’d just been complimented or ridiculed, I silently watched Holmes sip his tea. He took a moment to enjoy the brew, then replaced his cup and continued his account: “I followed the boy to the outbuilding. Had I not been trailing behind him, I might well have missed it in the darkness. The building, a small square structure with darkened windows on each wall, is shielded from pedestrian traffic by the oak trees. Taking cover behind a broad trunk within the grove, I could just make out young Chandler creeping towards one of the windows.

  “It had grown quite dark by then, but the fog was thin enough to allow me to distinguish what was happening. On closer inspection, I could see that broken lines of light framed the glass of each casement. It seemed obvious to me that someone on the inside had done his best to cover the windows with dark paper to conceal what was going on within. But his best was not good enough, Watson. The tell-tale light emitted at the edges of each large pane revealed the amateurish skill of whoever had attached the paper to the glass. Quietly, I stole up to a window on the side opposite Raymond to witness for myself what had been attracting the young man to this spot.”

  “And,” I asked Holmes between bites of a chocolate biscuit, “what did you see?”

  “It was a make-do photography studio, Watson, complete with lights, camera, photographer and model.”

  “Only a photography studio? One wouldn’t need paper to cover the windows at night. Why would someone go to these extravagant lengths to conceal such a place?”

  “Use your imagination, man!” he scolded. “What kind of photographic activity do you expect would draw a male adolescent to its windows every night?”

  “I cannot imagine, Holmes - especially not at a public school like Dulwich.”

  Holmes smiled. “In fact, old fellow, it was actually a Dulwich student responsible for the scene: a young artist seeking to earn extra money had found himself a voluptuous young maid from town willing to pose for him. ‘Carmen’ is her name, a recent arrival from Spain, who needed money to send home to her family.”

  I dabbed at my lips with a linen handkerchief. “Proceed,” I said drily. “I fail to see the entire picture.”

  “Ah, Watson,” Holmes sighed as
he leaned back, “it was exactly that ‘entire picture’ that Raymond himself was trying to see. But clearly, you need everything spelled out. Imagine.” He held up his hands as if to frame a photograph for me. “The compliant young woman in question is sitting in a high-backed chair made of teakwood. For some artistic reason, she is posed on an orange-coloured shawl fringed in white. Although she is positioned rigidly with her hands on the arms of the chair, her back straight, and her knees decorously pressed together, she manages - with her white teeth quite apparent between her parted red lips - to present a smile that I’m sure some men might call provocative.”

  “But what was she wearing?” I asked. “Surely, it is quite unlike you, Holmes, to leave out the most obvious part of the description. Must I always have to rely on my own imagination?”

  Holmes dropped his arms in exasperation. “Oh, Watson,” he chuckled, “you do fail to understand. She was quite naked - well-endowed, and quite naked indeed.”

  I gasped in disbelief. When I could finally catch my breath, I said, “Surely, Holmes, you exaggerate.”

  “Pray, forgive me,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I did neglect one detail. She was, in fact, wearing long, green earrings, possibly jade or faux Fei Tsui.”

  “Holmes, really!” I moved my plate away, no longer able to enjoy my repast.

  “What’s more,” he continued, “to judge from the jerking movement of the boy’s right hand - his back was to me, remember - what had attracted a healthy young male to the windows of this studio every night should be quite obvious. Especially a young male suppressed by Mr. Gilkes’ stringent code of morality at school and by his mother’s strict rules of propriety at home.”

  “Quite the expert in psychology now, eh, Holmes?”

  “Certainly not in psychology, Watson; but I will say that, even though I am also no expert in matters related to the female form, the young woman in question had quite beautiful features. Small in stature, to be sure, but bare breasts shimmering like pearl in the bright lights surrounding her.”