(Was there, I occasionally wondered, just the hint of competitive envy between those two unprecedented intellects?)
I had just called at 221B Baker Street on a fog-laden November afternoon in 188–, after taking part in some research at St. Thomas’s Hospital into suppurative tonsilitis (I had earlier acquainted Holmes with the particulars). Mycroft was staying with Holmes for a few days, and as I entered that well-known sitting room I caught the tail-end of the brothers’ conversation.
“Possibly, Sherlock — possibly. But it is the detail, is it not? Give me all the evidence and it is just possible that I could match your own analyses from my corner armchair. But to be required to rush hither and thither, to find and examine witnesses, to lie along the carpet with a lens held firmly to my failing sight... No! It is not my métier.”
During this time Holmes himself had been standing before the window, gazing down into the neutral-tinted London street. And looking over his shoulder I could see that on the pavement opposite there stood an attractive young woman draped in a heavy fur coat. She had clearly just arrived, and every few seconds was looking up to Holmes’s window in hesitant fashion, her fingers fidgeting with the buttons of her gloves. On a sudden she crossed the street, and Mrs. Hudson was soon ushering in our latest client.
After handing her coat to Holmes, the young lady sat nervously on the edge of the nearest armchair, and announced herself as Miss Charlotte van Allen. Mycroft nodded briefly at the newcomer, before reverting to a monograph on polyphonic plainchant; whilst Holmes himself made observation of the lady in that abstracted yet intense manner which was wholly peculiar to him.
“Do you not find,” began Holmes, “that with your short sight it is a little difficult to engage in so much type-writing?”
Surprise, apprehension, appreciation, showed by turns upon her face, succeeded in all by a winsome smile as she appeared to acknowledge Holmes’s quite extraordinary powers.
“Perhaps you will also tell me,” continued he, “why it is that you came from home in such a great hurry?”
For a few seconds, Miss van Allen sat shaking her head with incredulity; then, as Holmes sat staring towards the ceiling, she began her remarkable narrative.
“Yes, I did bang out of the house, because it made me very angry to see the way my father, Mr. Wyndham, took the whole business — refusing even to countenance the idea of going to the police, and quite certainly ruling out any recourse to yourself, Mr. Holmes! He just kept repeating — and I do see his point — that no real harm has been done... although he can have no idea of the misery I have had to endure.”
“Your father?” queried Holmes quietly. “Perhaps you refer to your step-father, since the names are different?”
“Yes,” she confessed, “my step-father. I don’t know why I keep referring to him as ‘father’ — especially since he is but five years older than myself.”
“Your mother — she is still living?”
“Oh, yes! Though I will not pretend I was over-pleased when she remarried so soon after my father’s death — and then to a man almost seventeen years younger than herself. Father — my real father, that is — had a plumbing business in the Tottenham Court Road, and Mother carried on the company after he died, until she married Mr. Wyndham. I think he considered such things a little beneath his new wife, especially with his being in a rather superior position as a traveller in French wines. Whatever the case, though, he made Mother sell out.”
“Did you yourself derive any income from the sale of your father’s business?”
“No. But I do have £100 annual income in my own right; as well as the extra I make from my typing. If I may say so, Mr. Holmes, you might be surprised how many of the local businesses — including Cook and Marchant — ask me to work for them a few hours each week. You see” (she looked at us with a shy, endearing diffidence) “I’m quite good at that in life, if nothing else.”
“You must then have some profitable government stock—?” began Holmes.
She smiled again. “New Zealand, at four and a half per cent.”
“Please forgive me, Miss van Allen, but could not a single lady get by very nicely these days on — let us say, fifty pounds per annum?”
“Oh, certainly! And I myself live comfortably on but ten shillings per week, which is only half of that amount. You see, I never touch a single penny of my inheritance. Since I live at home, I cannot bear the thought of being a burden to my parents, and we have reached an arrangement whereby Mr. Wyndham himself is empowered to draw my interest each quarter for as long as I remain in that household.”
Holmes nodded. “Why have you come to see me?” he asked bluntly.
A flush stole over Miss van Allen’s face and she plucked nervously at a small handkerchief drawn from her bag as she stated her errand with earnest simplicity. “I would give everything I have to know what has become of Mr. Horatio Darvill. There! Now you have it.”
“Please, could you perhaps begin at the beginning?” encouraged Holmes gently.
“Whilst my father was alive, sir, we always received tickets for the gas-fitters’ ball. And after he died, the tickets were sent to my mother. But neither Mother nor I ever thought of going, because it was made plain to us that Mr. Wyndham did not approve. He believed that the class of folk invited to such gatherings was inferior; and furthermore he asserted that neither of us — without considerable extra expenditure — had anything fit to wear. But believe me, Mr. Holmes, I myself had the purple plush that I had never so much as taken from the drawer!”
It was after a decent interval that Holmes observed quietly: “But you did go to the ball?”
“Yes. In the finish, we both went — Mother and I — when my step-father had been called away to France.”
“And it was there that you met Mr. Horatio Darvill?”
“Yes! And — do you know? — he called the very next morning. And several times after that, whilst my stepfather was in France, we walked out together.”
“Mr. Wyndham must have been annoyed once he learned what had occurred?”
Miss van Allen hung her pretty head. “Most annoyed, I’m afraid, for it became immediately clear that he did not approve of Mr. Darvill.”
“Why do you think that was so?”
“I am fairly sure he thought Mr. Darvill was interested only in my inheritance.”
“Did Mr. Darvill not attempt to keep seeing you — in spite of these difficulties?”