“They will continue to try to find the bodies. Many are still missing. The London Steamboat Company has already put in a bid to purchase the remains of SS Princess Alice. It will likely salvage the engines and sell off the rest. There will be some unpleasantness in all of that. And, naturally, there must be an inquest. As always, some legal bother, though I am sure long before it has even commenced, I shall have the answers to their questions.”
“Does anyone have the least idea how this could have happened? Why the boats were in a position to collide?”
“While it is unusual for a captain with Grinstead’s experience to make such a fatal error, I suspect that is what the facts will bear out. I am still balancing the matter in my mind. I find the conflicting stories a very serious impediment to the investigation. I fear it will be quite the menace to the inquest.” He sipped his port, then sighed. “Mycroft was at the wharf, of course.”
I squinted over my glass. “But why?”
“Because he would seek to spare Her Majesty all fear of future annoyance or-”
“But surely, Sherlock, a paddleboat colliding with a cargo ship is no reflection upon Her Majesty.”
“The ship was named for her daughter. This catastrophe occurred on her river in her city. In Mycroft’s mind, any calamity that befalls or occurs in Her Majesty’s realm requires his inquiry and resolution.”
“Perhaps he can help. His resources abound.”
“There certainly is that,” he said, and finished his port.
22
For the first time since I opened my practice, I was actually glad not to have many patients; I felt no compunction about hanging a ‘closed’ sign on my door. It enabled me to go to the wharf each day to assist the people from the community and the women from the workhouse who were tending to the dead. I also did what I could to console the grieving. Hope was lost for any more survivors.
I did not see Sherlock again until Wednesday when he was at the steamboat office, pursuing his investigation and assisting the police. We had tea that afternoon.
He asked how I was doing, and it was hard to reply. I could not stop seeing the faces of the children on the balcony or the many others in the make-shift mortuaries. Part of me shrank from the tasks; with my whole being I lamented those people who had boarded a ferry for an afternoon of amusement but had instead perished horribly, all their dreams and expectations swiftly and brutally dashed. The world could be a wretched place, and I wondered if the tragedy was caused by some failure on the part of the steamboat company... perhaps a faulty component that should have been replaced. So often, it seemed, people in high places had too much money and too little heart and cared nothing for the safety of others, even those customers who made them rich in the first place.
When I met Sherlock, I asked, “So, Sherlock, you are investigating the cause of the ship’s demise. It would seem that you have decided to make a living by working for the police after all. Or the Yard?”
“No, I ask for no compensation for my contribution to the investigation of the Princess Alice incident. Though it is an interesting case.”
An interesting case? I thought. Once again, Sherlock’s ability to compartmentalize and suppress empathy baffled me. I hated to think of him as cold-hearted, but few of the seven hundred on the SS Princess Alice survived and he seemed interested only in the inquiry, the analysis.
“My reputation is growing, though,” he said, “and occasionally I am remunerated. Most recently, by Reginald Musgrave.”
“Reginald! I have not seen him in ages.”
Not since the night he joined Sherlock, Victor, Effie and me for dinner, I thought, remembering the photo in Uncle’s desk. It had been over four years.
“You do remember him?” he asked.
“Certainly. He was Victor’s roommate at Oxford for a short time.”
“Indeed. Shortly after Victor left for India, Reginald transferred to my college, and I ran into him now and then. Then his father died, and he returned to Hurlstone to manage the estate. I had not seen him since, but he called upon me early Monday morning to assist him with a small matter.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“As you may recall, Hurlstone is quite large and he employs many servants. One night, he couldn’t sleep and wandered through the house in search of a book he had been reading. He happened upon his butler, a man named Brunton, who was in the library, staring down at a map. Reginald was about to speak to him when Brunton walked over to the desk and, with a key, opened it. He took out another document and proceeded to study it closely. Reginald then confronted him.
“Brunton had been in his family’s employ for many years, so his behaviour shocked Reginald. He told Brunton to leave at once, but Brunton bargained for a week’s time. A few days later, Brunton disappeared. Reginald and the servants searched everywhere for him; they even dragged the pond. Three nights later, Rachel, a maid who Reginald later discovered was in love with Brunton, had some sort of breakdown. Then she also disappeared.
“After hearing Reginald’s story, I went with him to Sussex and examined the papers in which Brunton had shown so much interest. It turns out one of them was a map and the other was a riddle of sorts, a document that had been handed down for generations in the Musgrave family. They call it The Musgrave Ritual. It was a series of questions and answers, none of which seemed to make sense.”
“But you made sense of them, I take it?”
Sherlock smiled and said, “After a time, yes. I determined that the riddle was a series of clues and measurements... for example, a distance from an oak tree to something else. I found a peg hole in the lawn made by Brunton as he measured
