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By Root 628 0

and turned instead to her husband. ‘My investigation into your affairs took an unexpected turn on the night that Ross was murdered, Mr Carstairs, and that is not a word I use often, for it is my habit to expect everything. Every crime that I have ever investigated has had what you might call a narrative flow – it is this invisible thread that my friend, Dr Watson, has always unerringly identified. It is what has made him such an excellent chronicler of my work. But I have been aware that this time I have been diverted. I was following one line of investigation and it took me, suddenly and quite accidentally, onto another. From the moment I arrived at Mrs Oldmore’s Private Hotel, I had left Boston and the Flat Cap Gang behind me. Instead, I was moving in a new direction and one that would eventually take me to the unveiling of a crime more unpleasant than any I had ever encountered.’

Carstairs flinched when he heard this. His wife was regarding him curiously.

‘Let us go back to that night, for you, of course, were with me. I knew very little about Ross, except that he was one of the band of street urchins that I have affectionately named the Baker Street Irregulars and who have helped me from time to time. They have been of use to me and I have recompensed them. It seemed a harmless arrangement, at least until now. Ross was left to watch the hotel while his companion, Wiggins, came for me. We drove, the four of us – you, me, Watson and Wiggins – over to Blackfriars. Ross saw us. And at once I perceived that the boy was terrified. He asked who we were, who you were. Watson attempted to reassure him and, in doing so, both named you and gave the boy your address. That, I rather fear, was to be the death of him – though do not blame yourself, Watson, for the mistake was equally mine.

‘I had assumed that Ross was frightened because of what he had seen at the hotel. It was a natural assumption to make for, as things turned out, a murder had taken place. I was convinced that he must have seen the killer and, for reasons of his own, had decided to keep silent. But I was wrong. What had frightened and amazed the boy was nothing to do with it at all. It was the sight of you, Mr Carstairs. Ross was determined to know who you were and where he could find you because he recognised you. God knows what you had done to that child, and even now I refuse even to consider it. But the two of you had met at the House of Silk.’

Another dreadful silence.

‘What is the House of Silk?’ Catherine Carstairs asked.

‘I will not answer your question, Mrs Carstairs. Nor do I need to address myself to you again except to say this: your entire scheme, this marriage of yours, would only have worked with a certain sort of man – one who wanted a wife to spite his family, to give him a certain standing in society, not for reasons of love or affection. As you put it so delicately yourself, you knew him for what he was. I myself wondered exactly what sort of creature I was dealing with on the very first day that we met for it always fascinates me to meet a man who tells me he is late for a Wagner opera on an evening when no Wagner is being played in town.

‘Ross recognised you, Mr Carstairs. It was the very worst thing that could have happened, for I can imagine that anonymity was the watchword at the House of Silk. You came in the night, you did what you had to do, and you left. Ross was, in all this, the victim. But he was also old beyond his years and poverty and desperation had driven him inexorably to crime. He had already stolen a gold pocket watch from one of the men who had preyed on him. As soon as he got over the shock of encountering you, he must have seen the possibilities of considerably more. Certainly, that is what he told his friend, Wiggins. Did he visit you the next day? Did he threaten to expose you if you did not pay him a fortune? Or had you already scuttled off to Charles Fitzsimmons and his gang of thugs and demanded that they take care of the situation?’

‘I never asked them to do anything,’ Carstairs muttered in a voice that seemed