seems no larger than a dog, a living Tiny Tim. And he crouches over his meal, not touching it, pulling himself into a tight ball in the cold, as if he were trying to get back into his mother’s womb.
“Paul,” says Thomas Barnardo. “I’ve brought a friend of Miss Doyle’s to see you.”
Sherlock thinks the boy moves a little at the sound of Irene’s name, but he doesn’t look up. His dirty, reddish-blond hair is so thin that he seems to be balding. He has no shoes and his torn workhouse uniform is the color of dirt.
“Oi!” shouts a rough from across the table: he’s a few years younger than Sherlock. “‘ere’s a bloke to look at you.” Paul doesn’t respond. “Look up! Dimly!”
As other nearby boys laugh, Paul stares up.
It nearly makes Sherlock Holmes cry. The little one’s enormous eyes are a beautiful deep brown like Irene’s and seem to fill up half his face, but they look right through his visitors and can’t focus. The lids are swollen and turned inward, the iris and pupil, even the whites, are covered with dirty clouds like those that dominate London’s winter skies. The mists that still float across Lady Rathbone’s similar brown eyes are nothing compared to this. The child seems as though he is already blind.
“He can barely see your face,” whispers Barnardo, “I would guess he has little more than a week … then he won’t see anything at all.”
Sherlock wants to leave the hall. He
But there is another concern inside him. And it worries him. He is just as excited about gaining Irene’s admiration, the adoration of London, and the envy of Inspector Lestrade, as he is about helping this forlorn child.
He feels he should say something to Paul Dimly before he goes. As he regards him again, he notices that more than his eyes are like Irene. He has her high cheekbones, a face that somehow looks fine and well bred. He is remarkably like Lady Rathbone too, now that Sherlock considers it.
“Is that your hat?”
Worried that the bullies would enter his room and steal it, little Paul has brought his precious hat with him again.
“It … is his father’s,” says Mr. Barnardo, smiling at the child.
Dimly’s eyes are resisting tears so the young doctor steers Sherlock away, but not before Holmes examines the boy’s treasure as best he can, half-hidden as it is in two small hands.
Mr. Barnardo walks down the creaking staircase with Sherlock, his hand on his shoulder.
“There are many children like him in London, you know. We cannot help each and every one. He may be lost. But we can, all of us, attempt to reform the society in which we live. That will change everything in the long run. There are several ways to do that, even the poorest can help. The first and most important is to turn to our Lord Jesus Christ for guidance and admonish all others to do the same. The second is to petition our government to care for our poor, to enact …”
“Sir,” says Sherlock.
“Yes, young man?” There’s an air of expectation on Barnardo’s face.
“Who was his father?”
“Paul’s? I have no idea. And neither does he, I should think. He was adopted by a man and wife who died of the cholera about a year ago. He was brought here by the parish beadle.”
“How old is he?”
“Just five, God bless him.”
Sherlock’s questions have a purpose. And the answers are putting a shocking possibility into his mind.
“There he is now.”
Sherlock looks up to see the fat, uniformed beadle on the staircase landing, speaking to one of the workhouse nurses, twirling the mustache on his red, fleshy face, trying to impress her with a long-winded story filled with the biggest words he can muster.
“Beadle?”
The man turns to Mr. Barnardo, annoyed to be interrupted.
“Can you tell us about the little one with the eye infection?”
“Who wants to know?” He glances down his nose at Sherlock Holmes.
“I do,” says Barnardo.
“Yes … well … Paul Dimly … I got word of ‘im about a year ago, I did. ‘is folks passed from the cholera and ‘e was left alone in that flat they was living in.”
“Where?” asks Sherlock.
“Believe it was on White ‘orse Lane,” says the beadle reluctantly.
“You have such a sharp memory, you does,” says the nurse, smiling up at him. He clears his throat.
“North of ‘ere just south of Mile End and the Jews’ ‘ospital, two buildings up from where White ‘orse Lane meets Friendly Place, beside O’Neil’s green grocer shop.”
“Thank –”
“And they weren’t ‘is own folks. They was old. Others around said they was distant relations to a captain in the navy who ‘ad fathered the lad … gave ‘im to ‘em. ‘e was from the ‘igh end of the family, such as it was. Doubt the truth of that, though. Poor folks talk.”
When Barnardo turns back to the boy, he is gone.
White Horse Lane is a thoroughfare to the north of St. Dunstan’s Church. It runs straight up to Mile End, which is the eastern part of Whitechapel Road. It isn’t the best neighborhood, but not the most frightening, either. Sherlock even spots an unkempt little park nearby.
It seems impossible that this desperate child in that dark workhouse could have anything to do with Lady Rathbone. He tells himself it is ridiculous one more time. But the more he thinks of the lad’s face … and then hers … the more the two look alike.
It doesn’t take him long to get to the intersection of the streets he seeks. He sees the Jews’ hospital up near Mile End and spots the Irishman’s green grocery. He counts two buildings to the north. The residence he is looking for is obviously tenanted by more than a single family, one to each of the three floors. It is a non-descript lodging, neither poverty-stricken nor comfortable. There are two boys playing skittles on the street nearby, both about ten years old, dressed in threadbare trousers and shirts, but at least fully clothed and not barefoot.
“Do you lot know of the family that used to live here?” asks Sherlock pointing at the house in question. “The old folks who had a boy?”
“The Wallers?” says one lad immediately.
It sends a chill down Sherlock’s spine. “The Wallers,” he repeats in a monotone.
“That’s what I said, you prat. Are you deaf?”
“And he weren’t their son.”
“No?”
“Me mum says he was a bastard.”
“Heard that too. A navy man, his real daddy was. Wallers had no folks left around here when they died. They croaked awful sudden like. The beadle came and took the boy away. It was winter time and he was freezin’.”
But Sherlock is barely listening. He is thinking of Lady Rathbone, fear on her face, admitting to the name of her secret lover.
Within an hour he is on Montague Street, tingling with excitement, anxious to tell Irene, barely able to wait and see the look on her face. They may never be friends again, but at least he can have her admiration.
