The Curse of Christmas

  The Curse

  Of

  Christmas

  Book Seven

  Watson & The Countess Series

  ANNA LORD

  Copyright © 2015 by Anna Lord

  Melbourne, Australia

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any

  form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information

  storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations

  embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are

  used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is

  purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Prologue

  Condemned by Original Sin to lonely graves, this blighted bit of earth was an urban cemetery where the outcast dead were buried. Chancing upon the Devil was more likely here than an encounter with the Holy Ghost. Clumps of clay marked the random charnel beds of female hearts broken on the wheel, blanketed now with withered weeds and thorny things that clutched and tore. The heaped up clods looked like slag heaps pricked with wooden crosses that tilted like tipsy scarecrows, some already lying flat and helpless between the tormenting prickles.

  In the heart of this boneyard stood the one and only headstone; wind-whipped, rain-lashed, yet still standing defiantly upright. It had no engraving, no epitaph, but it must have been erected to mark the last resting place of someone important enough to remain anonymous throughout eternity.

  The whiff of something sour hung on the dank air as if in supernatural sympathy with the icy malice of the place. The oozy waste-ground festered something rotten which had the look of fermented marrow from discarded bones. Stinking juices seeped continuously to the surface like a wound turned septic or a sore that refused to heal.

  Crossbones Cemetery was brimmed with soot-stained bricks on one side where the slums of the poor rose up to accommodate them. The rear was marked by a railway viaduct that looked down on the neglected garden not more than half an acre in size and must have given train travellers pause for thought: There but for the grace of God...

  The other two sides were defined by a spiky iron fence that deterred foolhardy trespassers. One side fronted a brothel on Union Street which had a bright red door and some illustrious clients. The other side was punctuated with a gate that opened onto Redcross Way. This was a narrow lane that ran under the railway viaduct and came out onto the busy thoroughfare of Southwark Street. Opposite the gate was the broad back of a grey ghost of a church that blent into its grim surrounds.

  In the fetid darkness two grave-diggers were scratching away at the blotted earth. Toiling industriously, toiling sinisterly - toiling in secret. Sweat sheened their dirty faces, vivid with fear under the rolling midnight moon, cold and bleak as death. Black clouds swarmed like harbingers of hell, minions of the Prince of Darkness, to shield them from the eyes of heaven. The winter wind hectored and bullied and gave a chilling cry.

  Hark! Hist! Scat! The fetch is coming!

  Driven by one soulless quest, a fetch prowled the streets in search of itself, peering through uncurtained windows in the hope of seeing its own image…

  Full of twitchy dread, the two grave-diggers worked feverishly, jumping at every shadow, starting at the haunted weeds that swayed to and fro like revenants stirring to unholy life, rising from the dead. Our body-snatchers appeared to be after a fresh corpse but...

  Something queer shimmered in the lane.

  Abandoning the gaping grave, they ran for their lives.

  Chapter 1 - Pall Mall

  Number 6 Mayfair Mews was not immune to the jaundiced ghosts of London winter. Reflected in the shallow grey puddles pockmarked with raindrops was spectral yellow gaslight, shivering and sickly, proof that not even the posh pavements gracing the red brick mansions would be spared the jolly curse of Christmastime.

  The original mews had been torn down years ago when horse-riding on Rotten Row – previously known as the Route du Roi - fell out of fashion and hundreds of stables near Hyde Park were no longer required. Most of the horses were shipped off to foreign wars and some went to the knackery. The stables were replaced by an elegant terrace of Victorian mansions featuring a virtuoso flourish of architectural details and grand bay windows that projected self-importance. The property developer tried to christen his handiwork Mayfair Mansions, but the old Mews name had stuck and there was nothing doing.

  “Pall Mall and it is an extra two shillings if you hurry, driver!”

  A tallish figure clad in Inverness cape and deerstalker hat clambered into the hansom as the cabbie whipped-up the beast frothed in sweat despite the Arctic air.

  The cabbie and his horse had been going since dawn and it was nigh on dusk with another poisonous fog creeping up from the river, blurring the hard red edges of the bricks. This would be his last fare for the day. Not far to go he told dobbin as they turned into Old Park Lane and the horse broke into a brisk trot, scenting the lush wet grass of Green Park.

  Left into Piccadilly, and it was a smooth canter along the wide thoroughfare where the gas-lamps burned brighter and the fog seemed to quiver and glow like the hallowed light inside a grand old church lit with holy candles and God’s love. Right into St James’s for a short stretch followed quickly by a wide left curve in front of the royal palace with its twisty chimneystacks reaching up to the darkness of heaven then into proud Pall Mall, bold and warlike, and yet for all its grandness proclaiming the War Office and the Midland Bank it was a bankrupt-looking street, garrisoned both sides with grey blocks of stone like the walls of Jericho or Thebes or Troy before they fell.

  Funny that, because the broad alley was once bounded by a high wall to save the dust being kicked up by carriages spoiling the field where they played a game with a ball and a straw mallet: pelemele, pale mail, palla malleus, as it was called back then, in the days when the King’s men wore powdered wigs and parlayed French and the ground was paved with powdered cockle shells to deaden the ball.

  No accounting for it, but at the tail end of 1899 this was where rich gents still came to have their fun. The Army and Navy Club on the left at number 36. The Oxford and Cambridge Club on the right at number 71. The Reform Club at 104. The Athenaeum at 107. Which club was this gent favouring on this miserable, wet, winter’s night?

  Bang! Bang! with his silver-topped walking stick on the floor of the hansom.

  “Stop here, driver!”

  Ah! So that was it! The club named after some dead Greek whose name he could never pronounce without a wry curl of Cockney lip.

  The cabbie pocketed his last fare for the day plus the extra two shillings and plodded home round Charing Cross toward the muddy embankment where the pea-soup thickened to a rancid stew and even blind dobbin knew he would soon be crossing to the other side where the manufactories hummed and whirred and cranked through the long night, and the red-brick chimneys belched black smoke like the perpetual fires of Hades - a penny for the old guy, ha’penny for the poxy tart, Charon hard at it…no rest for the wicked.

  Queer chap, that last one, rugged up like an Eskimo in a snow storm with a woollen muffler covering half his face and the deerstalker pulled down low over his brow and the up-turned collar swallowing his neck, as if he had a face not fit to be seen in public, and his voice all muffled and queer too, as if he had a frog in his throat or was trying to disguise a poncy accent. No accounting for it.

  A ten-foot Christmas tree in a classical garden urn graced the marble entrance hall of the Diogenes Club - a nod to the Prince Consort who had introduced the Teutonic tradition to Mother England. Pendulous branches, thick with need
les, were decorated with red baubles and little white candles that were never lit thanks to Samuel Pepys and memories of 1666. Nevertheless, it gave off a wonderful woody scent that recalled huntin’, fishin’ and shootin’ parties in Scotland.

  The hall porter had witnessed all types come through the front door of the exclusive gentlemen’s club and knew better than to bat an eye when the stranger flashed a deckle-edged calling card then eschewed removing his damp coat, hunting hat and woolly muffler, indicating with a cavalier gesture that he knew his way to the Stranger’s Room and would not be requiring the services of a liveried footman as he scribbled a signature in the visitor’s book.

  Well, well, so that was the great consulting detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes; not as tall as he imagined - heroes were always a little disappointing in real life - must be paying his brother a visit. Dr Watson had arrived a few minutes ahead of him. Something was afoot.

  What a coup! The muffled stranger felt an exalted frisson as he skirted the Teutonic tree and traversed the chequered marble floor, glancing briefly into the reading room that reeked of expensive cigars, hair oil and flatulent men.

  Fortunately the door to the Stranger’s Room was clearly marked and there was no chance of a cock-up. He walked straight in and closed the door behind him. There was no going back now. The room was imbued with a distinctly masculine ambience. Dark oakwood panelling and a weird otherworldly glow from a scatter of table lamps with green shades gave it the feel of a necromancer’s den or alchemist’s lair.

  Mycroft Holmes and Dr Watson were the only two occupants. Like brother wizards swapping magic spells, they were seated in leather wing chairs either side of the fireplace where a coal fire burned quietly in the grate, bathing one half of them in sympathetic light and the other half in shadowy darkness. They were both smoking - one a fat cigar, the other a calabash pipe.

  “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  Mycroft was the first to recover. He balanced his cigar on the lip of a cut-glass ashtray, levered his bulky carapace upright with an effort, and extended a pudgy hand.

  “Countess Volodymyrovna, a pleasure to make your acquaintance at long last.”

  The voice was warm and diplomatic, peppered with a mere tincture of irony, adding piquancy to the cautious smile. The hand felt hot and squishy, though the handshake was firm enough; not as limp as she imagined from toasted butterball. He reminded her of Oscar Wilde sans deathwish; hopefully a genuine genius rather than a frightful egoist with a penchant for paradox: Thinking man loved a paradox, unthinking man adored it – Oscar was greatly adored! Men applauded! He never had anything very clever to say but he said it very cleverly. The applause was deafening!

  Mycroft waved the Countess to a chair and lowered himself back into his seat, tactfully ignoring the painful groan of the other man. “I believe you are acquainted with Dr Watson.”

  “Good evening, Doctor,” she greeted amiably. “How is your cough bearing up now that we are back in London?”

  The doctor managed to articulate his asthmatic discontent into a semi-grammatical groan. “My cough is, er, how did you get past the hall porter?”

  Before responding to the aggrieved rejoinder, she tore off her leather gloves, peeled back the muffler, the deerstalker hat and the Inverness cape - depositing them all in a damp pile on the pristine Turkey rug. “I thought that would have been fairly obvious,” she returned dryly, crossing one leg over the other, relishing the astonishing freedom that trousers afforded the wearer. “What better disguise than Sherlock Holmes?” she continued coyly. “Please don’t punish the hall porter, Uncle Mycroft. He dutifully scanned my calling card. I had twenty of them printed up yesterday. I thought they might come in handy during future cases.”

  She decided to slip the ‘Uncle Mycroft’ incendiary bomb in early to see what explosion might ensue but Mycroft was a born diplomatist and Dr Watson was too distressed.

  Future cases! Dr Watson rolled his eyes. “I cannot believe the hall porter didn’t see straight through that ridiculous disguise despite the blatant forgery!”

  She decided to move right along, talking faster than was her wont in order to keep the disdainers charmed. “I agree I could have done better but I only had a couple of hours to put it all together.”

  “Is that why you were going clothes shopping this afternoon? I remember you mentioning the House of Worth. I didn’t realize they had branched into men’s garments.”

  “House of Mirth,” she corrected with asperity. “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. I was quoting a line from the bible, rather facetiously, I’m afraid. I was intending to pay a call on Dolly Vanderlinden at Mirth House in Belgravia when I heard her butler had died, and decided otherwise. I never actually go clothes shopping. Clothes-shopping is a male ploy to keep women stupid. Hypatia never shopped for clothes and after Cleopatra it was all downhill for thinking. Madame Coqueliquot keeps a mannequin with my measurements and sends me all the haut couture I might require at the commencement of each saison. It saves me countless hours of froufrou.”

  “You are at least six inches shorter than Sherlock,” persisted Dr Watson irascibly, running a rollicking eye back over the male garb. By golly! Well-spotted by Mycroft! That was quick work! For a moment he had actually believed she really was Sherlock!

  She was not one of those females a man might describe as pretty. Her facial features were a little too well-defined, strong and sharp rather than soft and sensual; take away the rich sweep of chestnut hair and she could pass muster as a man easily enough. And though she was slender and svelte, one would never call her delicate or weak. She was taller than most men too. In a time when a lot of Englishmen were malnourished and stunted, she was a tower of vitality. Five feet and six inches at least.

  She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs for the sake of it. “Quite right, but with some proper insteps in my shoes and some work on my gait I could probably walk right into the War Office next.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it, young lady,” warned Mycroft judiciously. “Can I offer you a drink? We don’t do American cocktails but I believe we have selection of vodka.”

  “A glass of port will do nicely, thank you.”

  Mycroft went to the bell pull and gave three gentle yanks. “May I suggest you replace the deerstalker and muffler before the butler wonders what the deuce is going on and you find yourself out on the street.”

  Taking heed, she slapped on the silly hat and finished wrapping the prickly muffler around the lower half of her face just as the butler arrived and she remembered to bury her manicured hands in her pockets. Damned nuisance being a woman! Hands were the hardest thing of all to de-feminise.

  “Some decanted port, Waldegrave, make it the 75, and three glasses.”

  It was traditional for the waiters at the Diogenes Club to be referred to as butlers and addressed in the manner of faithful family retainers of the sort who were the mainstay of large country houses. They responded accordingly. “Very good, Mr Holmes.”

  Dr Watson waited until the door closed and he heard the decisive click. “How did you know where to find me?”

  She was tempted to say: ‘Elementary, my dear Dr Watson’, but bit her tongue.

  “I decided to take a leaf out of Sherlock’s book. After returning to London and settling into Aunt Zoya’s mansion in Mayfair Mews and dispensing with the usual household business in record time, I set about engaging a dozen lads and lassies. Not illiterate guttersnipes, mind, these are master criminals in the making who will one day rival the Shinwell Johnson gang. Housebreaking is a specialty. They found number 221B Baker Street child’s play. A quick sweep of your desk revealed a rendezvous tonight which you had failed to mention when we met for lunch at the Criterion. A serious oversight on your part, Dr Watson, not mentioning something when given the chance means you have something to hide. I had an itch to see what that something was and an urge to meet Uncle Mycroft – two birds with one stone – so here I
am.” She looked blithely from one man to the other, making a warm and engaging connection to both. “I take it you did not get together tonight for a social chit-chat? Am I the topic of conversation or is something brewing?”

  Dr Watson, hackles rising, pulled back from the chummy wreath. “We were not discussing you. We have other things to talk about. And they are a private matter.”

  “If by private you mean secret I am all ears.”

  The door opened and Waldegrave entered balancing a silver salver. Conversation ceased until the butler retreated. Mycroft did the honours.

  “You chose the 75,” she noted approvingly.

  Mycroft acknowledged the observation with a tacit nod as he handed round the glasses.

  “What’s special about the 75?” said the doctor peevishly, biting down on the end of his beautiful ebony mouthpiece and almost snapping it.

  “My year of birth. Nazdorovya, gentlemen!” She waited for the two men to savour the first mouthful of vintage port. “Is the Bank of England about to be raided? Are the Crown jewels under threat?”

  Mycroft gave a whimsical chuckle and handed her a copy of The Times, folded in half, open on page three. She perused the article that had been circled in red.

  “Read it out loud, if you wouldn’t mind,” he instructed.

  “Ghostly Goings-on in a Graveyard! Is the Crossbones Cemetery being haunted by the souls of the undead? Or is it a human hand and a soft shovel behind the sinister shenanigans in Southwark? Who is digging up the graves in the unconsecrated graveyard in the dead of night? Do we have some resurrectionists in our midst? Are hospitals once again dabbling in dead bodies? Is there a new, nefarious, black market for body parts? How long before innocent citizens are having their throats slit by Burkers keen to supply a growing demand for fresh cadavers? All of London is disturbed by these dark deeds and it seems that our Peelers have no answers. It is high time the Yard took this matter seriously. We await further developments. Agrippa.”