“Poppy!” Sherlock cried. “You... what on earth are you... ?”
“Be quiet,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“Poppy, I am sorry, truly but-”
“Still your tongue, will you? I have need of a glass of wine and you must listen to me.”
We went to the Four Swans and Sherlock ordered beverages, some cold meats and cheese. I proceeded to tell Sherlock about Kate Dew. I related what she had said about her father and his demotion to cleaning urinals at St. James, about being unable to follow his footsteps in his unnamed profession, about her relationship with a married man which resulted in the illicit birth of her daughter, and her preoccupation with swans and her disdain for the queen. He sat, wide-eyed, taking it all in, his mind like a Babbage calculating machine tying all the loose ends together. Then he leaned forward. “Dew? You said her surname was Dew?”
I nodded.
“Poppy, you remember I told you that I could not speak to the Keeper of the Swans as he was ill? He finally recovered from his bronchial infection and he was able to speak to me.”
“And?”
“And he told me more about swans than I have an interest in but also gave me some useful information. A man named Charles Dew was a Deputy Keeper of the Swans for many, many years. He had a son who would be in his twenties now. At least it was thought it was a son.”
I felt my eyebrows rise. “Thought?”
“The assistant keeper was injured and could not complete his daily duties. He was demoted to maintaining urinals at St. James. Just as your patient described about her father. The Keeper went into great detail about those as well. How glazed stoneware basins and marble divisions replaced the iron and slate and that now metal perforated with geometric patterns-”
“Sherlock,” I interrupted, impatient to hear the real story.
“The son stayed on for awhile, helping with the swans, but apparently rumours started to fly about some unusual relationship with a member of the Privy Council. At first, so the Keeper thought, the gentleman of high birth had simply taken an interest in the boy who apparently was quite bright. But then people started to talk about it being something more. And the Keeper has come to believe that those rumours were wrong, too.
“He went to great length to explain how many young women in America’s Civil War dressed as men to join the war effort. He said that he and Mr. Dew had discussed this on many occasions.”
“The Civil War ended over a decade ago.”
“Indeed, round about the time the man started to work with the swans and started bringing his son with him. The Keeper has come to the conclusion that the man’s son was not a boy at all but a female and that the Privy Council member eventually became involved with the girl. That is why she left.”
“And the Privy Council member... who was it?”
“Our dismembered corpse, Dr. Stamford. Cecil Gray.”
“So now,” I said, leaning toward him, “if we pull all of this together... Kate’s account of her life, what she told me about her father, her illegitimate child, the fact that Cecil Gray was involved with Mr. Dew’s alleged son...”I sat back, took a sip of wine, left that string of facts hanging for a moment and then looked straight at Wiggins.
“Wha’?” he asked.
“Do you think prior your commission came from Mr. Gray?”
He shook his head. “I don’ know. No idea.”
I told him the address to Kate’s lodgings and asked, “Can you show us the way?”
He nodded.
“Take us there, Wiggins.”
He shrugged and stood. “Awright, Miss.”
Chapter 20
“Sherlock,” I said, “You told me that you had a lead on Sir Gray’s case.”
“Hopkins told me that Hopgood, the professor at Oxford, disappeared around the same time as Cecil Gray. I went to Oxford. No one knows where he went.”
“I see,” I whispered.
When we arrived at the lodgings of Kate Dew, another young woman greeted us at the door with a toddler in her arms. We asked for Kate and the woman directed us to a lodging house around the corner. She said Kate was an excellent cook and that she was fixing a meal for a sick friend.
We hurried there; in fact, Sherlock’s long stride was so quick that Wiggins and I could barely keep up. When we found the windowless cellar house, we knocked on the door and the woman who answered looked gaunt and sickly. We asked for Kate and received a half-hearted response and a wave toward the stove. It was not like some lodgings I’d heard about. No rats swarmed the floor, no meagre rations of water were passed around. There was a stove for heat and cooking, the floor was covered with a colorful rug, the dinner table had a cloth and cutlery and, for the most part, the family seemed full-faced and jovial.
I called to Kate and she turned abruptly. Her face flushed and she dropped the wooden spoon she had been using to stir a pot. She wiped her hands off on her apron and rushed toward us. She motioned us to go outside.
“What are you doing here? How did you find me?” she demanded.
Rarely one for small talk, Sherlock said curtly, “You are Kate Dew, daughter of the former Deputy Swan Keeper who died a few years ago.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what
