Sherlock Holmes by Barbara Hambly

 
     
     
    Sherlock Holmes
    The Dollmaker of Marigold Walk
    by
    Barbara Hambly
     
     
    “ I have seen too much not to know that the
impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of
an analytical reasoner.”
     
    “ Folk who were in grief came to my wife
like birds to a light-house.”
     
    -- “The Man with the Twisted Lip.”
     
    My husband, Dr. John Watson, has written
often that his friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes loves the solving of
crimes, and the trapping of evildoers, as a huntsman loves the
chase, or an artist his brush and oils.
    Yet as much as the solving of crimes – and
sometimes I think more so – I have observed that Mr. Holmes loves
the puzzles of human behavior for their own sakes, even when they
have no bearing on the breaking or keeping of the law. Cold-blooded
and logical himself, the eccentricities of human conduct delight
him: he takes more pleasure, I believe, in discussing with the
local cats-meat-man the mathematical system by which that gentleman
picks racehorses to bet on, than by bringing to justice a bank
director who embezzled thousands out of mere unimaginative
greed.
    Thus when poor old Mrs. Wolff came into the
soup kitchen at Wordsworth Settlement House in Whitechapel, weeping
that she had been drugged and robbed – and left unhurt – by a
well-off gentleman, I am ashamed to say that almost my first
thought was to wonder what Mr. Holmes would make of such
astonishing behavior.
    This particular Monday night was foggy and
chill, for it had rained on and off all day. I very nearly cried
off from the little class I teach there, for my health has always
been uncertain. But I knew the little shop girls I taught to read
looked forward to it. A number of my friends come down to the
Settlement House in daylight hours, to help with the washing and
folding of clothing donated for the poor, or to teach the girls and
boys of those horrible dockside slums – to teach also the
innumerable Russians, Roumanians, Hindus, and Chinese who huddle
ten and twelve to a tenement room enough English to seek employment
– but I am one of the very few who will work there at night. At
least one night a week, and sometimes two, John spends with his
friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, either adventuring on whatever criminal
case Mr. Holmes is pursuing, or dining with him and going somewhere
to listen to music. On such nights I will frequently come down to
the Settlement to teach, or help the regular workers there in any
way that I can.
    Thus I was there at ten o’clock – just
finishing up that evening’s chapter of A Tale of Two Cities ,
in fact – when Mrs. Wolff stumbled in from the brick-paved yard,
clutching with one hand the basket of oddments she carries to sell,
and with the other the dirty remains of a woolen shawl about her,
sobbing like a beaten child.
    “Vhy vould any do so to a poor voman, Mrs.
Vatson?” she asked, when I’d brought her to the big room’s tiny
fire and sent one of the girls to get her soup. “Such nice
gentleman he look, too, mit his beard all combed so nice, and his
spectacles all rim mit gold. He buy me drink, he tell me I look
like his sister – and him a goyische gentleman all in varm coat on
such cold night! Look how I found my t’ings, vhen I vake up in
alley behind Vish und Ring, eh?”
    Certainly the contents of her big wicker
basket – beautifully embroidered handkerchiefs, penwipers wrought
in curious shapes, dolls of woven wicker with bright ribbons around
their necks and cats wrought of folded tin with glass buttons for
eyes – had been rudely treated, being now all soaked and muddy from
having been dumped from the basket into the gutter and trodden
on.
    “I make box out of tin,” she went on, as one
of the girls – Rebecca was her name, and a very sweet bright child
– brought her a cup of soup. “Beautiful box, all mit buttons on it;
two shilling I askin’ vhor dat box. And now it gone, an’ he stole
it from a poor voman, an’ him mit nice hat