Many of the adventures I have experienced with my friend Holmes I have chosen not to report in the Strand Magazine. With some, we judged the world was not ready for the revelation: among these I number the nightmarish incident of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, and the odd case of the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant.
        With others, I chose not to publish as they showed the darker side of human nature, my own included, that I deemed unsuitable for public scrutiny. But at last, honesty compels me to recount the most shameful case of my career.

April 18__ saw my friend in the grip of the blackest depression. I recognised the symptoms: Holmes spent hours motionless in his chair amid clouds of tobacco smoke, interspersed with intervals of pacing.
        I handed him my copy of the Times, hoping he would find something of interest in the agony columns; but after casting himself full-length on the sofa to read for several minutes, he threw the paper on the crumpled heap of dailies in the corner.
        "Pah!" he said, springing to his feet. "Nothing but society news and minor financial scandals. I feel the tendrils of stagnation in my mind."
        I feared that he would soon seek the artificial stimulation of the cocaine bottle, but something caught his eye in the street below.
        "I believe we have a client," he said in a more cheerful tone.

The bell rang, and Mrs Hudson showed in a woman dressed in a veiled hat and a green velvet dress, expensively embroidered with dark glittering beads. A scent of gardenia accompanied her.
        Holmes, unusually courteous, showed her to a seat.
        She raised her veil.
        "Why!" I said. "Lady..."
        "No names," Holmes said, raising a hand.
        But I would have recognised Lady Malham-Beck anywhere by her Roman nose and long grey-streaked raven hair; even in middle age, she was a fine handsome woman. Years before, she had enjoyed a distinguished career in Shakespearean theatre, before retiring after the death of her husband.
        "What can I do for you, your Ladyship?" Holmes asked.
        She glanced at me briefly.
        "You can be assured of absolute discretion from my colleague Dr Watson," he said, anticipating her question.
        She folded her gloves neatly on her knee. "I have come to you over a delicate matter," she said.
        "Concerning a wedding, perhaps?" Holmes said.
        "Mr Holmes!" she said, startled. "Yes indeed. How did you know?"
        Holmes lit his pipe. "I have read of your ward's engagement in the society columns, but it was merely a guess."
        Lady Malham-Beck nodded gravely. "An excellent guess."
        She opened a silver locket, showing us a miniature portrait of a round-faced young woman with brown-gold hair the colour of a ripe wheatfield. "This is she: Ellen Blakedon, the daughter of a dear friend who died twenty years ago. She is engaged to marry a young bank clerk called Henry Lawford."
        "Do you approve?" I asked.
        "No," she said.
        Holmes blew out smoke haughtily. "Why, your Ladyship? Even the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England started his career as a humble clerk."
        She stiffened in her chair. "I am not as steeped as you think in the prejudices of my class, Mr Holmes," she said. "His professional prospects are not my reason."
        "Forgive me," Holmes said. "Pray continue."
        "No," Lady Malham-Beck said. "I disapprove of Mr Lawford because he is a degenerate."
        "Interesting," Holmes said. "What form does this degeneracy take?"
        "He has been observed in Holywell Street, leaving the lowest of shops with books whose nature I cannot begin to imagine. He also has a friendship with a man named Montmorency Flitch." She clutched her gloves. "An unnatural friendship, if you understand my drift."
        "That is outrageous," I said. "How do you know? Did you hire another detective?"
        "I instructed my servants to follow Lawford. He has been seen with Flitch; he is easily identified, as he has a twisted leg and walks with a crutch. My servants followed the two to an address in Whitechapel. I understand that Flitch is a criminal in other ways too; a thief and blackmailer." She handed Holmes a piece of paper.
        "And what do you seek from me?" Holmes asked.
        "Help me dissuade my ward from the marriage," Lady Malham-Beck said. "I have warned her myself, but she takes no heed. In a year, she will come into an inheritance over which I have financial control. I could threaten to withhold that, but I would not wish to take that step. With confirmation, perhaps letters, or evidence from an outsider, she may come to believe me. Of course, the Offences Against The Person Act could be invoked, but settling the matter without involving the police would avoid scandal."
        "This is dirty business," Holmes said. "Not at all the kind of case I normally involve myself with. But I will see what I can do."

"I do not like this, Holmes," I said after she had left.
        "Nor I, Watson," he said. "My judgement tells me to avoid this affair. But there are aspects of the situation that intrigue me."
        He took one of this alphabetically arranged scrapbooks from the shelf and flipped through it. "I keep entries on the majority of London criminals, major and minor. See. Foster, the whistling strangler; Florey, whippet-thief extraordinaire; Fletcher, blind cracksman. But no Flitch. It seems remarkable that I have never encountered such a singular fellow. Why don't you go and see him, Watson?"
        "I?"
        "Yes, I have my own investigations to make."

I took a hansom to Whitechapel, and soon found the address Lady Malham-Beck had given Holmes: a dirty close, little more than an alley, called Skinner's Yard.
        I climbed the musty staircase, found the top room where Flitch lived, and knocked.
        There was a shuffling and thumping, and the door opened a crack. "Yes?" piped an old man's reedy voice.
        "Mr Flitch?"
        "I am he," he said, and opened the door. The room was lit by a single high window that left it in permanent shade, but I could see he was old and balding, and dressed in a shabby purple smoking-jacket. His left foot hung limp, and he supported himself with the help of a crutch. Behind him, the room was squalid, the plaster damp and peeling, the stuffing hanging from the chairs.
        "I understand you know a man called Henry Lawford," I said.
        He rubbed a wisp of hair above his ear. "Then it's all over," he said.
        "Pardon?" I said.
        He looked at me askance, like a parrot. "You are not from the police?"
        "No."
        He beamed, showing discoloured teeth, and clutched my wrist with fingers clustered with rings. "Then perhaps you bring news from my darling Harry?"
        "That neither," I said. "I come on behalf of Sherlock Holmes."
        "Ah, the consulting detective," he said, dragging himself across the room. He sat on the dirty bare mattress of the bed, where he began coughing painfully. He poured drops from a tiny blue bottle into a glass of wine, which he swigged.
        As he moved into what little light there was, I recoiled in disgust. He was wearing powder, rouge and lipsalve on a ravaged face. His eyes were staring, the bridge of his nose collapsed, his teeth were peg-like and discoloured (I supposed from mercury treatment), and the skin was stretched tight over the bones of his face. The caked overlay of cosmetics could not conceal that he had not long to live.
        My concern as a doctor over-rode my revulsion. "You're seriously ill, man," I said.
        "Yes," he said. "Tertiary syphilis. What do you want of me?"
        "I had come to say ... but no, I think the situation will resolve itself soon," I said.
        "Quite," he said, evidently grasping my meaning.
        I nodded, grudgingly impressed by his stoicism. "Then I will bid you good day, sir."
        "One thing," he said as I moved to go. "Please find my dear Harry and ask him to visit me in my last days. He has not answered my letters."
        I turned on my heel and left.

When I returned to our Baker Street rooms, I found Holmes pacing anxiously and Lestrade sitting in the armchair. "Oh, hello, Inspector," I said. "What brings you here?"
        He looked up. "Lady Malham-Beck informed me you are working on a case for her. Perhaps you can be of help. Her ward, Ellen Blakedon, has disappeared. We're certain that her fiancee and a man called Flitch were involved. We've seen neither hide nor hair of Flitch, but we've arrested Lawford on suspicion."
        "Why, I've just been..." I began.
        "Watson," Holmes interrupted. "We must see Lawford's rooms at once."
        "We've been over them thoroughly," Lestrade said, putting on his bowler hat.
        "Nevertheless," Holmes said.

Lawford lived in Camberwell in a set of sparse and tidy rooms, just as you'd expect of a clean-living bank clerk.
        "It's the bedroom you have to see," Lestrade said. He led us in.
        "Good God!" I said.
        The room, dominated by a huge brass bedstead, was a veritable portrait gallery. The tea-rose wallpaper was almost hidden by woodcuts and daguerreotypes of mythological and religious scenes. The images were disquieting.
        Over half were of pretty female martyrs, nude or in gauzy wrappings: St Catherine stretched on the wheel, St Agatha being tortured with pincers, St Faith chained to an iron bedstead, along with many others I didn't recognise, variously hanging, tied, chained, nailed, tormented, in dozens of poses. The rest of the pictures were of muscular and athletic men posing naked under the guise of Apollo, Hermes, Hercules and other ancient gods and heroes.
        "Nasty stuff," Lestrade said. "And look in here."
        He opened the drawer beneath the tall gothic wardrobe, revealing a neat array of paraphernalia: riding crops, a tawse, some iron chains and padlocks, and several hanks of precisely-coiled hemp rope.
        Holmes glanced over. "Hmmmm," he said without apparent interest; he was busy tilting the picture-frames to look behind them. He looked under the bed, and examined the corner-posts and patchwork coverlet with his magnifying glass. "What else did you find?"
        Lestrade pointed out Lawford's correspondence; the clerk had it laid out across his desk in a neat overlapping row. "Third one down," he said.
        "Have these been moved?" Holmes asked.
        "Not so's you'd notice."
        Holmes folded back the letters and looked at the one Lestrade had indicated. "My sweetest Harry," he read. "When will we be together again ..."
        "Y'see," Lestrade said. "It's a love letter from this Flitch character."
        "I gather so," Holmes said. "Right, Watson, I think we should pay another visit to Mr Flitch."
        "You know where he is?" Lestrade said testily. "Really, Mr Holmes, you must co-operate more with the police force!"
        "I am doing just that," Holmes said. "Follow our cab to Whitechapel."

En route I described to Holmes my visit to Flitch. "It is clear that this marriage must not proceed," I said. "To be blunt, Flitch is dying of the pox, and even if Lawford has not caught the infection, a man who keeps such low company is quite unsuitable as a match for Miss Blakedon."
        "Perhaps," Holmes said. "But there is more to this than meets the eye."
        "How so?"
        "As a medical man, does not Lawford's choice of art strike you as strange? His interests appear strangely broad."
        "Some folk are attracted to both men and women," I said. "Why, I remember in India..."
        "Perhaps," Holmes said. "But I took the liberty of peeping behind the pictures. I found the wallpaper was unfaded behind those of the female martyrs; but faded behind those of the male athletes. The latter have been placed there very recently."
        "Strange indeed," I said.
        "And there is the letter. That too has been placed in Lawford's filing system out of sequence; the exposed portion had scarcely any dust on it, compared to the letters above and below. Whatever Lawford's orientation may be, Watson, someone has gone to great lengths to convince us of his relationship with Flitch."

At Skinner's Yard, I led Holmes up the darkened stairs. As we neared the top, Flitch's door opened, and the elderly man looked out in alarm.
        "I say, Holmes, that's the chap!" I said, hurrying up the last flight despite the ache from the old jezail wound in my thigh.
        Flitch suddenly threw off his feebleness and lameness like a cloak, and as I reached the landing, he ran out and grabbed at my throat with demonic strength. Unable to breathe, I instinctively tried a manoeuvre that had saved my life more than once in Afghanistan; I brought my knee up hard between his legs.
        I was rewarded only with a sharp pain in my kneecap. He snarled at me, and kneed me in return. As I doubled up, sickened, he shoved me off the top step, right into the path of Holmes and Lestrade, who tripped over me.
        Lestrade scrambled over us, but reached the room too late. "Dammit, man, the fellow's got out through the skylight!" he roared. "Climbs like a monkey!"
        Curled around my pain, I sat there panting and faint.
        "Never mind, old chap," Holmes said, clapping me on the shoulder. "Are you all right?"
        "I'll know in a moment," I groaned. But the pain in my groin had diminished sufficiently for me to note the lesser pain in my knee. "The blackguard was wearing a box," I said. "A cricketer's abdominal protector."
        "So it seems," Holmes said. "Perhaps we are looking for a cricket player. But it's odd that he should be so prepared. Still, we have his hat."
        "What use is a hat?" I grumbled, standing painfully.
        "A great deal," he said. "Let's visit Lawford at the gaol first."

"You'll have to excuse Watson," Holmes told Lawford. "He's still grumpy from an injury earlier today."
        Lawford, a fresh-faced young man with a clipped black moustache, looked gloomily through the bars. "He should worry," he said.
        "And you've no idea who this Flitch is?" Holmes said.
        "None at all," Lawford said, sitting on the iron board that passed for a bed in his cell. "I've joined some of the fellows from work, gone out for a pint or two in a public house. But I've never done anything wrong. I remember Flitch; he hung around, tried to touch me for money several times. But I've never been friends with him."
        "I believe you," Holmes said. "Now, Mr Lawford. Forgive me, but I have a question of a most delicate nature. Do you have a perverse relationship with Miss Blakedon?"
        "Holmes!" I exclaimed, but he raised a finger for my silence.
        "Perverse?" Lawford said. "I cannot imagine what you mean, sir."
        "The English vice. I mean algolagnia: revolving around the giving and receiving of pain."
        "That is an outrageous accusation!"
        "You must be honest with me if I am to help you," Holmes said. "We have seen the contents of your bedroom. I found blonde hairs on your bedspread, which certainly are not yours."
        Lawford stared at the wall, biting his lip. "Yes," he said finally. "What of it? It is with her full consent."
        "I make no moral judgement," Holmes said. "All I require is your word that you have no idea at all where she might be."
        "I do not know, Mr Holmes. After she last visited me, we left in a hansom together and I saw her safely to her door in Norwood."
        "Who reported her missing?" Holmes asked Lestrade.
        "Lady Malham-Beck."
        "The old harridan!" Lawford said with venom. "She's been opposed to the marriage from the start. She threatened to cut off Ellie's inheritance unless she stopped seeing me."
        Holmes nodded to Lawford. "I'll see what I can do. Watson, let us direct our attention to Flitch's top hat."

Back at Baker Street, Holmes sat like a mediaeval alchemist amid his test-tubes and flickering alcohol burners, studying the hat minutely.
        "There are some interesting features," he said, scraping samples from it on to a glass slide. "Look at this."
        I peered down the microscope.
        "See those?" he said. "Talc particles, such as actors use to dust their hair to make it appear grey. I am convinced Flitch was in disguise."
        "When I visited him, he never showed himself in full light," I said. "Indeed, it is clear to me now that he was not even ill. His skill at disguise must rival yours, Holmes."
        "Emulating illness is simple enough," Holmes said. "A day's fasting, crusts of beeswax around the lips, belladonna in the eyes, rouge over the cheekbones."
        He clipped another slide to the microscope stage. "See here also; these hairs. According to my monograph on hair morphology and racial type, these come from an oriental head. Since Flitch was clearly European, he must have been wearing a wig; those are often made from oriental hair."
        He picked up the hat again, turning it in his hands. "I'm sure I am missing something." He inhaled, nostrils flared. "Great Scott!" he said. "Sniff the brim there."
        I obeyed. It smelt of gardenia.
        "There's not a moment to lose!" he said. "Hurry, Watson! We must see if Lestrade will release Lawford into our custody. The game is afoot!"

The three of us took a hansom at speed to Lady Malham-Beck's residence at Norwood, a fine Georgian detached house set amid cedars.
        "Why did I not see it?" Holmes said. "It is well known that while a woman cannot normally pass herself off as a man, she can disguise herself as a boy or an elderly man, both of which have the smaller jaw and higher-pitched voice. And Lady Malham-Beck worked for years in the theatre."
        We ran up the drive, finding the house in darkness and the front door locked. "Watson, you take the left!" Holmes said. "Lawford and I will take the right."
        I hurried round the side of the building, stepping through flower-beds and shrubbery. At the rear, I scrambled down to the kitchen yard, where I saw a light shining up through a cellar grating. I knelt and looked through the cobwebbed glass below.
        By the cold light of a single gas-mantle, I saw a young woman tied naked, face-down, over a tall four-legged stool. Although she was blindfolded with a black scarf, I assumed she was Ellen Blakedon. Behind her, in short laced boots and a plain white shift, stood an older woman I recognised by her long grey-shot hair: Lady Malham-Beck.
        I should have called Holmes at once, but to my shame, I lingered to watch in fascination.
        Slowly the standing woman circled, from time to time stooping with the ease of a dancer. I saw her bend to whisper in the blindfolded girl's ear, stroke her cheek and her long wheat-coloured hair, adjust the tight bindings that held her to the stool legs by the wrists and elbows and knees. In her hand Lady Malham-Beck had a leather switch with several thick thongs.
        At last she stopped, bracing her feet wide, and with a long sweeping stroke brought the switch down on the girl's back. I saw the latter twitch and jerk her head up, lips drawn back in a rictus of pain.
        I couldn't tell if she were crying out or merely grimacing, as to me, on the other side of the thick window, the impact was silent, remote. Perhaps that was why I stayed observing so long. As Lady Malham-Beck struck again and again, it was like watching the faded scratchy image of a zoetrope machine at the fair, an automaton repeating the same action endlessly.
        I licked my lips, feeling a pulsing of blood down below that was nothing to do with the jezail wound. My palms were sweating where I gripped the bars of the grating.
        Finally Lady Malham-Beck stopped, and stripped off her shift. She had an excellent figure for her age: high-breasted, strong and lean. She turned into profile, and I saw she had a strange contraption strapped about her waist, a grey triangle that hung at her groin.
        Reaching down, she adjusted something; and a metallic-coloured dildo sprang erect. She placed a cushion on the stone-flagged floor behind the young woman, and knelt, stroking the red-streaked back with delicate fingers. Gripping the tied girl hard by the hips, with a push of her pelvis she slid the dildo into her (she grimaced silently again) and began thrusting frenziedly.
        "Watson?"
        I jumped as Holmes touched my shoulder.
        "How long have you been watching here, Watson?"
        "I am not sure," I said, standing hurriedly.
        Holmes bent to peer down through the window, and gave a wordless exclamation.
        When he stood, he slapped me across the face. "You are as loathsome as she!" he said. "Quickly, we must put a stop to this!"
        He and Lawford broke in the kitchen door, and I followed them as they ran down to the cellar. Screams were echoing up the stairs.
        "Ellie!" yelled Lawford.
        "Release her!" Holmes called.
        Caught in mid-thrust, Lady Malham-Beck gave a wail of dismay and dropped to sit on the cold flags. The dildo contraption (I could see now that it was made of segmented metal) drooped, flaccid. She began to sob.
        We hurried to help Miss Blakedon. Lawford untied her as I checked her back; there were a few very minor cuts, and she seemed otherwise unharmed. She clung to Lawford as he wrapped his jacket around her.
        "She would do it with that boy, that little clerk, but not with me!" Lady Malham-Beck said bitterly, hair hanging down over her face like a madwoman's. "The ungrateful girl."
        "We must settle this now," Holmes said, throwing her the discarded shift. "Inspector Lestrade will be here soon."
        "What do you suggest?" Lawford said, his arm around Ellen.
        "One option," Holmes said. "is to involve the police, with all the unpleasantness that entails. The other, which I propose we adopt, is that Lady Malham-Beck withdraw her objection to the marriage, and give Miss Blakedon immediate rights to her inheritance as compensation for this outrage. What do you say?"
        "I agree," Ellen said firmly. "There is no need for the police." I could see she was a young woman of strength and resolve.
        Lady Malham-Beck scowled up at her. "You leave me no choice," she said. "I also agree."
        "Excellent," Holmes said. "It need go no further. Lestrade can be told that Miss Blakedon had fallen by accident on the cellar stairs, and had been lying stunned. As for Montmorency Flitch, we can guide the good Inspector toward the assumption that he has either fled the country or died; he will never be seen again."
        He turned to Lady Malham-Beck, who crouched in a dejected heap on the cellar floor. "I think this outcome also fulfils your requirement of a resolution without scandal. I shall be expecting my fee shortly. Do not think of reneging; Lestrade may mistrust me on occasion, but we have four witnesses to counter any alternative account you may give. Now, let us all leave this iniquitous place."

At breakfast, Holmes avoided my eye as he buttered his toast.
        Eventually he took a deep breath and spoke. "I am deeply sorry for striking you, old friend," he said.
        I sugared my cup of Darjeeling. "It was justified," I said. "It was abominable of me to watch when I could have intervened sooner."
        "Nonsense," Holmes said. "Most men would have done the same as you."
        "Would you have, Holmes?"
        He looked at me with a steely gaze. "My preferences are a closed book, Watson."
        I lowered my eyes and stirred my tea.
        "It is sad that such a fine woman should turn to the bad," I said.
        "Indeed," Holmes said. "I fear she had an obsessive attraction to Miss Blakedon. When her invention of Montmorency Flitch failed to destroy her ward's relationship with Lawford, she finally lost her reason and abducted the young woman."
        I sipped my tea in silence.
        "Still," Holmes said brightly. "A fascinating device. Remarkable lifelike." He held up Lady Malham-Beck's mechanical dildo, which he'd been tinkering with.
        "Made by Mandelbaum of Leipzig in aluminium, a highly expensive, light and strong metal. No wonder it hurt your knee, old fellow. And the action! She could wear it thus..." He flicked the drooping segmented tube at its centre. "... to pass as a man under normal circumstances. Or thus ..." He pressed a toggle, and the tube sprang up stiff. "To function as one."
        He put it back on the breakfast tray. "I think I shall donate it anonymously to the Black Museum at Scotland Yard."
        "I can't think of any other use for it, Holmes. Unless as a coat peg, but I think Mrs Hudson would object."
        Holmes smiled. "Will you be writing up this adventure?"
        "For the sake of completeness, Holmes; obviously not for publication."
        "Then I suggest you file it as the singular affair of the aluminium crutch. Now, let us plan our day."
        He went to the fireplace and removed an envelope from the stack pinned with a jack-knife to the mantelshelf. "How do you fancy an excursion? The morning's post has brought me news of a strange puzzle in Sussex."

© Ray Girvan, 2001.