When I’d finished treating the boy, I hailed a hansom cab to go to Michael’s home. He generally worked the night shift these days, so I hoped I would find him at home with the baby. They lived not far from a home Charles Dickens had once shared with his wife at Tavistock Square, near Tottenham Court Road, where Mycroft had purchased the Stradivarius for Sherlock. I needed to tell him about Uncle, and I longed to hold my little nephew Alexander in my arms. He was just eighteen months old and already resembled his mother Effie so much that it nearly broke my heart each time I saw him, yet I somehow felt close to her whenever I was with him.
When I arrived, Michael’s housekeeper told me that Michael had taken Alexander with him to have lunch at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a pub on Fleet Street.
“He took the baby to a tavern?”
“The boy likes the parrot, Miss.”
“The African grey? Yes, Michael told me about her.”
“I think her name is Polly. The bird lightens up the place. She chatters away, but rude she is, so I’m told,” she added with a wink.
I hailed another cab and set out for the pub, a dim place with dark wood panels and vaulted cellars that some said were part of a Carmelite monastery many centuries ago. I paid the cabbie, navigated the narrow alleyway and went inside.
I spotted Michael with the baby on his lap right away. I felt my lips turn downwards. Since Effie’s death, I feared that Michael drowned his sorrows far too often. He was in the company of two men. One was Michael’s friend, Dr. Jonathan Younger, who had been his best man. The other man had his back to me.
I waved to Michael as I removed my cape, and he said a few words to his friends, picked up his pint and Alexander and came over to me.
“Poppy, what on earth are you doing here? And coming into a pub unaccompanied? Mum and Papa would be mortified.”
“And when did that ever stop me?”
“I don’t think you should-”
“Michael. Stop.”
“Can I not be protective of you? Big brother’s prerogative.”
We sat down at another table, and I held my arms out to take Alexander. As he settled on my lap, he curled his pudgy little fingers around one of my curls. I was about to tell Michael about Uncle when he explained, “I’m just here to say goodbye to a colleague. You remember the chap who shares your birthday, John Watson?”
“Yes, you’ve mentioned him.”
“Well, he’s done at Bart’s and off to Spike Island.”
The name did not register.
“Netley?” he prodded.
“Oh, yes,” I answered. “Royal Victoria Hospital. And he’s the one who has been wanting to join the Army, yes?”
Michael nodded. “He was just telling us about it. It’s a vast place, almost a town in and of itself. It has its own gasworks and there are stables, a bakery, and a swimming pool. Two hundred acres, I think John said.”
I’d never been there, but I certainly knew that Florence Nightingale, a woman I greatly admired, had lobbied fiercely for a place to address the issues of the soldiers and their care. The Lady with the Lamp had served nobly during the Crimean War at the military hospital in Turkey and advocated for better sanitation, healthy food, and good health care, provided by well-trained doctors and nurses, for the wounded and sick. Thousands of British soldiers had died during the war and many fell to the ravages of cholera rather than the spray of bullets.
Uncle had attended the opening of the Sixth Session of the Army Medical at Netley when it replaced the school at Fort Pitt, which had always been regarded as a temporary measure. Later he joined the health reform movement to provide a better facility for the disabled soldiers. He had said that it was essential for England to have a medical school that flourished from the abundant wealth and professional knowledge that streamed so constantly to civil hospitals, so that the doctors who tended to sick and wounded soldiers understood their specific needs, much as railway physicians specialized in locomotive injuries.
“John says Netley even provides married quarters and a ballroom.”
“A ballroom?” I asked, remembering my brief dance with Sherlock in the ballroom of Victor’s home... the ballroom where they had come to blows over me.
He nodded.
“Is he married?” I asked.
“John?” Michael laughed. “No. But he’s quite the ladies’ man. He thinks... he seems to have a feeling that the treaty with the Afghans may not hold and there is some concern for the envoy in Kabul. So, like our friend Victor, he may be off to India - to join the British-Indian Army just across the border. They-”
“Michael, stop. Stop talking as if the Army is some sort of glamourous life. War is not glamourous.”
“Exciting, though,” he replied. “And I am single now, so.”
“Stop it. You have a son,” I reminded him, stroking Alexander’s pale hair. “Now listen to me, I’ve come with some urgent news.”
Finally, he seemed to see the worried look I knew I wore and asked, “Poppy, what is it?”
“Have you been told of what’s happening to Uncle Ormond?”
He looked puzzled and shook his head.
I recounted the events of the previous evening and his face flushed with anger.
“How dare he? Uncle Ormond a murderer. It’s outrageous,” he spat. “How dare Mycroft Holmes do such a thing? I’ll contact Mr. Havershal at once.”
“Aunt Susan already has, Michael,” I said, bouncing the baby whose eyes were fixed on the parrot who kept exclaiming, “Rats!” as a new customer came through the door.
Michael gulped down his drink and said, “I shall go to the Yard at once.”
I waited at the door while he bid goodbye to Younger and Watson. Then we left and
