Jack the Nipper

Chapter 1.

The world’s greatest private detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes, following a hand fight above the Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps, had perished in the deadly waters below. News of his death was slow in reaching the outside world, in part through its isolated position and because his immediate circle of crime preventing associates decided his many enemies should not rejoice or profit too quickly on hearing of the tragedy.

Consequently, the innocent public continued to call at his lodging at 221b Baker Street seeking his advice and were instead offered the services of his ex-landlady Mrs Hudson and her Cockney maid, Fanny-Annie Grubbins, who were slowly gaining a reputation as the only female private detectives in London, if not the whole of Great Britain and the Empire.

On this particular late spring afternoon, not long after his demise, Miss Prim, Mrs Hudson’s long-suffering next-door neighbour at 221a Baker Street, sat gingerly on the edge of her chair in Mrs Hudson’s sitting room.

Mrs Martha Elizabeth Hudson, 55, was a red-faced chubby cheeked lady of ample proportions, dressed in a pale blue housedress and white cotton cap with tiny ribbons. The widow of the happily remembered Mr Claude E R Hudson, an insurance salesman of note in his day, who, after his passing received an adequate income renting out rooms, latterly to Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, neither of whom resided there any more: Holmes because he was, to put it bluntly, dead; Watson because he now had a practice with accommodation attached elsewhere in London.

The lady of the house passed much of her time when not being Baker Street’s resident sleuth, constantly baking and sewing for the multitude of charities she supported. A smile was never far from her lips, especially when in the presence of someone in distress and needed their spirits bolstered, although on this particular occasion, and in fact when previously encountering her neighbour, it was proving very difficult, as if Miss Prim sucked joy and compassion from the very air around her.

‘Well, my dear Miss Prim,’ the detective lady said as equitably as possible, ‘what exactly is your problem? And please do try and relax and sit comfortably.’

‘That is part of the trouble, Mrs Hudson,’ snapped the irritable Miss Prim, painfully attempting to settle herself. ‘I am quite unable to.’

She was in her inevitable heavy black attire in sympathy, as many ladies of respectable sensibilities were, with the dear bereaved Queen Victoria who had been clothed in her mourning clothes since her husband and consort, Prince Albert, had climbed the golden stairway to heaven thirty years before. Miss Prim had the features of an undernourished vulture with small glittering eyes that missed nothing. Her thin long nose constantly monitored the world for unpleasant odours, which she noticed were prevalent everywhere outside of her own house at 221a.

She winced, sat up stiff and straight, and pressed her lips tightly together; not the most favourable way of imparting information, thought Mrs Hudson. Her assistant detective, Fanny-Annie Grubbins, hovered over the tea tray on the table, occupying herself in the most pointless of activities so as to eavesdrop as inconspicuously as she thought possible in her naive but eager fashion.

This was Miss Prim’s second recent visit. The previous time had been about her missing cat. Now it was something far, far more serious.

‘Yes, Miss Prim?’ said Detective Hudson, after a long and barely sufferable silence.

Miss Prim took a deep breath. ‘I am a victim of, of…’

‘Yes?’

‘Of…’

‘Of?’

‘Of…’

‘Do go on, Miss Prim. Of what, pray?’

Silence again.

Which came to its conclusion when Baker Street’s senior detective lady said to her assistant detective and maid-of-all-work:

‘Miss Grubbins, for heaven’s sake stop fiddling with the tea service and either go and tidy up the kitchen or sit down and keep still!’

‘Yers, Mrs H,’ said Fanny-Annie. ‘Sorry, mum, but I was only just…’ Her mistress glowered at her. ‘I’m sitting, Mrs H, I’m sitting, I am really.’

And the poor gutter girl dropped swiftly onto an upright chair by the wall and clasped her hands meekly on her lap. She was a tragic example of an early life born in gross poverty in the dockland environment sprawling along the congested banks of the greasy River Thames. She was small and thin through an undernourished childhood and now at twenty or thereabouts – arithmetic didn’t count much to her, along with her reading and writing – beheld the bewildered expression of someone perennially confused with life.

She was attired in the traditional maid’s uniform of black skirt and white blouse, white pinafore and cap. Her hair was dark brown and curled from under the cap like spiders’ legs. Her shoes were scuffed and coming apart at the soles despite being relatively new. Fanny-Annie was the kind of girl who had no aptitude for keeping smart and clean and generally careful with her appearance.

‘Garn,’ she’d tell herself, ‘what’s the point, you only gets Doris and Gerty again after you’ve gorn and got wet and washed.’

Her spotless mistress said to Miss Prim, ‘We are both women of the world. Is not our monarch, our dear Queen Victoria, a woman also? This is the burgeoning Age of Womanhood. And although we are not considered their equals, are we women not truly as clever and ingenious as men? There is surely nothing then that we two cannot discuss?’

But apparently there was.

‘Would you care to set it all down on paper, then, Miss Prim, to ease your troubled mind?’

‘Write it down?’ gasped the middle-aged spinster. ‘The very paper would be consumed in flames! The pen would crumble to dust! The ink would turn into blood!’

‘Oh, for goodness sakes...’

Miss Prim sprang to her feet, causing Fanny-Annie to jump with a muted squeal, and the visitor rapped her umbrella on the seat of her chair.

‘I have been accosted, madam, by, by that vile female molester the newspapers have so vulgarly labelled,’ she breathed in deeply to fortify herself before she finished with, ‘Jack the Nipper!’

‘Aow, Gawd!’ cackled Fanny-Annie.

‘Grubbins! Go down this instant into the kitchen and scrub the flags and put the soiled clothes to soak for tomorrow morning’s laundry session. If you please!’

The lowly gutter girl hung her head, said sorry, mum, I’m sure, and trudged out of the room sniffing and wiping her nose on her sleeve.

The name given by the newspapers to this latest headline celebrity, Jack the Nipper, was further proof of the shallow, callous nature of popular journalism. It was blatantly referring to the disgusting moniker these self same newspapers had given to the relatively recent murderer of numerous women stabbed to death over a number of years, Jack the Ripper. He had never been brought to justice and although his bestial behaviour had ceased to occur, there was a spurious rumour that it was this particular Jack, who in his dotage, was resorting to this tamer bloodless version of abusing womankind.

This recent outbreak was in total contrast to the ghoulish Ripper killing of his victims in the mean streets of the East End and in the bleak hours after midnight when few decent folk were abroad, for Jack the Nipper attacked only in broad daylight on or around the highly respectable West End area of Oxford Street and where there were hundreds of potential observers.

Nonetheless, as Mrs Hudson deduced, ‘It takes far more courage, if one can use such a noble word with respect to this defiler of our female sex, to commit crimes in public places where he is open to immediate capture. The previous Jack could only have been a cowardly shadow of a man by contrast.’

She also pointed out if this current Jack wasn’t brought to justice very soon he might easily become more depraved and unable to refrain from emulating his predecessor in extreme forms of repulsive daylight exhibitionism.

The mature female investigator of 221b Baker Street now turned her attention back to her indignant client from next door and continued as if nothing had interrupted them.

‘Oh!’ she cried in mock shocked horror. ‘Never? Surely not?’

‘Yes!’ cried Miss Prim, the key of common sense having now unlocked the door to her dark secret. ‘Whilst passing through Manchester Square on my way back from a visit to a friend this morning, he jumped from behind the bushes and…well…’

She closed her eyes and began to breathe in rapid shallow breaths.

‘Now, now, Miss Prim,’ said the senior detective, sincerely concerned and not the least bit amused in spite of her dislike of the disagreeable woman. ‘Take your time. Shall I get you a bottle of salts?’

‘I am fine!’ she snapped back. ‘I have my own, thank you, Mrs Hudson.’

The lady of the house showed no open signs of annoyance at her prospective client’s rudeness, dismissing it as an aberration of birth. The only way for us to live, is to forget and forgive, she mentally quoted the religious aphorism acquired from being a member of the Baker Street Primitive Methodist Chapel.

‘It has been a dreadful shock, as one can imagine,’ Miss Prim continued. ‘I can get no rest whatsoever. Nor has solid food passed my lips since my abhorrent assault. I had hoped you would have informed your Mr Holmes on my behalf for him to catch this wicked bounder, however, now he is no more upon this earth...’

Mrs Hudson, the long-time landlady and surrogate mother to her deceased detective lodger, gritted her teeth to stem the continuing pain of sorrow at his corporeal absence, and then stoically resumed the consultation.

‘But surely the Metropolitan police force is out searching for him, according to the papers?’

‘He has not been caught, has he?’ exclaimed the Nipper’s latest victim. ‘He stalks the streets with impunity with his bestial habits. I managed to make my way to Mrs Stockley’s and spent hours in agony and fear while she sent her butler out with a stout walking stick, but he returned without having beaten the cad to pulp! Mrs Stockley is chair of the Good Ladies Campaign for Safe Streets and Clean Public Conveniences, if you are not aware of them, Mrs Hudson. She informed me she would be raising the matter at their next meeting. They are an exceedingly respected and influential society. Their patron is Lord Gillingham’s wife, consequently, they have the ear of the government.’

‘I do believe I have heard of them, Miss Prim,’ Mrs Hudson extemporised, so as not to appear embarrassingly gauche. ‘But they are not on my current social circuit,’ she said, then paused a moment before adding casually, ‘Yet, if an introduction could be made...’

Miss Prim considered this with pouting lips and squinting eyes. Then nodded.

‘I shall see what I can do, Mrs Hudson.’

The ex-landlady and now a fully motivated lady detective and doer of good deeds, smiled her thanks. Miss Prim then wiped the smile off her face with a codicil:

‘That is, of course, after this abominable creature is caught and punished unto an inch of his miserable dastardly life!’

‘Ah,’ said a disappointed Mrs Hudson. But then she quickly added in a brisk business-like manner, ‘Yes, quite so, Miss Prim. A perfectly reasonable quid pro quo, I think, eh? Now, I shall write down all of the details, if I may, in my shopping pad. His height first, Miss Prim.’

‘What has his height to do with it? It was his disgusting fingers that did the mischief!’

Chapter 2.

Mrs Hudson gritted her teeth and said, ‘A detective needs facts to go on, Miss Prim. All facts and any facts pertaining to the incident. Surely you must appreciate that? The detective assembles them and builds up a concise picture of a crime and its perpetrator, a motive and a solution.’

‘Huh. You seem unhealthily knowledgeable about the whole subject, if I may say so, madam.’

But Mrs Hudson beamed a noncommittal smile, refusing to be offended by the unconcealed barb. Miss Prim continued.

‘I did not see the wretch, Mrs Hudson. The devil came from behind. Did his nefarious business and disappeared.’

‘I do not suppose you know which hand he used?’

‘No, I do not!’ exploded the victim. ‘This is all getting most uncommonly coarse, Mrs Hudson. I am sure your Mr Holmes, a man though he was, would not have been so gross. I am not a judge of hand nipping, Mrs Hudson. And it was considerably more than nipping, I might add. The whole affair is most revolting. Men should be banned from being on the streets on foggy days. They should be made to keep their hands in their pockets at all times.’ She sniffed into her handkerchief. ‘It was never thus in my mother’s day!’

Rallying to the appeal for justice by one woman to another and as a method of gaining her client’s confidence  and strengthening her societal respectability vis-a-vis becoming associated with the highly desirable Good Ladies Campaign for Safe Streets and Clean Public Conveniences, Mrs Hudson said:

‘I am sure that is true, Miss Prim. We live in a veritable age of Sodom and Gomorrah, I do declare. He who lays the hand of shame on his neighbour, in Hell forever he shall labour, Miss Prim!’

They then paused to rest their susceptibilities. Mrs Hudson glanced at her empty pad, did a doodle of a funny face with horns, and scribbled over it.

‘No details of your attacker? No height or size? His voice, Miss Prim? Did he speak? Did his breath smell of something distinctive? Perhaps a particular brand of cigar? Or were there curry overtones, say, of some distinctive flavour?’

‘What on earth are you talking about? I was being assaulted for goodness sake, Mrs Hudson. Have you no idea what that is like? The ignominy. The heart stopping shock to the system. The appalling mental agony.’

She stiffened and shuddered on the edge of her chair to the extent that Mrs Hudson gathered herself ready to leap forwards and stop her slipping onto the floor in her passion of indignation and revulsion.

Miss Prim then cried out, ‘Someone must apprehend the perverted swine before the whole world of womankind walks forever in fear!’

Before the exchange continued, Fanny-Annie appeared in the doorway nervously wringing her hands together and poking her head forwards in a pose of uncertainty.

‘Yes?’ said her mistress in a sharper tone than she intended due to being so worked up herself by Miss Prim’s outburst.

‘Is, is everything all right, mum? Aow, lor, but what I heard such a load o’ shouting I thought…’

She stopped and a pained expression distorted even more her usually distorted face of displeasure with the way life treated her. Mrs Hudson gave her an impatient look of expectation, which encouraged her to resume and say:

‘That there was some poor soul being murder, or something, Mrs H, if you please, mum …’ tailing off awkwardly before finishing with a brief curtsy.

Mrs Hudson now gave her a facsimile of a warm smile as a form of dismissal for it didn’t do to be too familiar with one’s servants in front of visitors. This point lingered for a moment or two as it occurred to her how familiar she and Fanny-Annie, the gutter girl supreme, were since becoming a detective partnership.

She spoke with her neighbour and new client for a little while longer, but it did not reveal anything substantial, and Mrs Hudson escorted Miss Prim out and said good evening. She rested her back against the door and expelled an exhausted breath.

‘Well, what is the purpose of taking on a case if there are no clues and the prime witness is so difficult to deal with? The old stick only wanted tea and sympathy. And she got none of either, so there!’

She went down into the basement kitchen where Fanny-Annie could be seen in an alcove by the back door, busy with pummelling bed sheets and clothing in a tub of heated water with the wooden dolly with its metal paddle.

‘You look good and properly boxed and bagged, Mrs H, begging your pardon for noticing, mum.’

‘If you mean I am extremely vexed and tired, you are quite right, Grubbins.’

‘Miss Prim’s a one ain’t she just, and all? That Jack the Nipper must have been proper desperate to have a go at fingering her you-know-what, Mrs H, eh?’

‘Can I take it you