The Curse of the Hansom Cab

By Anna Lord

Book 15 in a series of chronological stand-alone plots.

Australia, November 1900
Eager to embrace the horse racing carnival and the cricket season, Watson and the Countess are drawn to Melbourne where the Countess meets her mother (Irene Adler) for the first time, while the doctor discovers that news of his brother's death has been greatly exaggerated.
With Henry Sherrinford Watson giving Dr Watson the runaround, it is up to Irene and the Countess to investigate the murder of a popular young cricketer inside a hansom cab. But will amateur sleuthing be up to the task when Godfrey Norton (husband of Irene) becomes a suspect?
Can two women track down a murderer while navigating a man's world dominated by sportsmen, gamblers and touts… a world in fear of itself, overrun by sexual alchemy, eschatology, biblical revelation, and demonic hellcarts?
Homage to Fergus Hume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Lord
• Release date: Nov 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005295622

Anna Lord

Anna Lord has long been fascinated by myth and metaphor, and the way they inform human thought. With an English and Philosophy degree focused on metaphysical poets and logical thinking there was only one creative avenue for her to follow: two rational detectives battling to make sense of a superstitious gas-lit world. Anna's Ukrainian background, coupled with a love for whodunnits, Victorian settings, and Gothic characters, inspires her literary world and makes the books a joy to write. The result is her new series: Watson and the Countess. www.twitter.com/CountessVarvara

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1 Dark of the Moon

2 Hackneyed

3 Oh, Henry

4 Detectrix

5 Old Sherry

6 Men Only

7 Raffles and Bunny

8 CCC

9 Hell Cab

10 Chinatown

11 Dark Times

12 Quong’s Palace

13 Dies Irae

1

Dark of the Moon

Beastly dark tonight.

Dark of the moon… good night for murder… mind how you go.

Raffles and Bunny would recount that anonymous exchange, overheard by chance, countless times over the next few days. First to a barrister, then to the police, then to club members, and finally to the newspapers.

For reasons best known to themselves, the two Englishmen were loath to court publicity, but the murder of a popular player at the start of the cricket season would inevitably turn into a cause celebre and there would be no avoiding the spotlight when it came to information that might lead to a swift arrest.

They had lingered longer than intended at the Cremorne Cricket Club but as dinner and drinks had formed part of the evening’s celebration, and as A.J. Raffles was guest of honour, it would have been churlish to sneak out before speeches concluded. Consequently, they were among the last to leave.

Did you hear that? hissed Bunny as they crossed Gosch’s Paddock.

New moon tonight, returned Raffles mildly. Happens every month.

I meant the bit about murder.

Happens more often than you imagine, old bean. Ah! The familiar clip-clop of a one-horse carriage if I’m not mistaken.

A hansom cab shimmered briefly in the frosted lamplight as it came to a halt and a passenger hoisted himself into the seat, the mudguard clicked into place, and the shiny black cab-horse shied to avoid a small object whizzing over its head, snorting and pawing the ground before moving on. It went all the way to the bridge before executing an abrupt turn and heading back in the direction from whence it came, pausing at a water trough to slake itself for the journey ahead.

In days to come the horse would be described as a phantom steed harnessed to a hell-cart passing through an invisible portal into a world of perpetual night...

Drat and blast! Bunny blew into cupped hands to save his fingers turning white. Those two chaps beat us to it.

Only one of them. The other decided to walk. Did I ever tell you there are seven thousand, five hundred and fifty hansom cabs in London? At least, that was the number at last count.

Bunny marvelled at his friend’s ability to store facts and figures in his head; it was the same with cricket – overs bowled, runs scored, batting averages. I wish there were more of the dratted things here in boomtown. What’s the point of living in the wealthiest city in the world if you cannot get a cab when you need one? I wish I’d remembered my gloves. I expected Melbourne to be warmer, more like the Transvaal.

"Melburnians will shiver through a frosty night and wake tomorrow to sunshine and a perfect blue sky; no Maxim machine guns, Long Tom siege guns, and no Colonel bloody Arbuthnot… Forget your gloves and just look at all those glorious stars, old bean."

Amongst the many qualities Bunny admired about his stellar friend, his laissez faire way of looking at the world topped the list. Nothing ever fazed Raffles. Not even a cricket ball coming at him faster than a Boer bullet fired from a German Mauser.

He wore his fame lightly too. Glowingly praised as a dangerous batsman, a brilliant field, and the best spin bowler in England… it did not swell his head one iota. He was the same unaffected chap now as when they first bumped into each other on the cricket pitch at Uppingham: unfailingly courteous, abundantly charming, a true sportsman. Raffles the all-rounder, captain of the XI, the popular head boy he fagged for at school all those years ago and continued to worship to this day, was a star in every sense of the word.

That constellation must be the Southern Cross, mused Bunny, looking to the cloudless heavens as he rubbed his hands to generate some heat.

I say, watch out for that coffin!

Bunny narrowly missed coming a cropper as he hurdled the cricket bag at the edge of the grass. What sort of idiot dumped that there?

An accident waiting to happen, agreed Raffles, checking to see if the idiot might be within range. Most of the fellows had imbibed more alcohol than was good for them but to leave a cricket bag unattended was bloody inexcusable. He took pride in his kit and frowned on any fellow who did otherwise. But he had no further time to dwell on crass carelessness. Here comes another hansom cab. Let’s not allow this one slip through our fingers. Jack Frost is starting to bite.

The following morning, the words overheard by chance took on fresh and sinister meaning.

Bunny was perusing the daily news while Raffles was checking the sports page to see if the Cremorne Cricket Club had rated a mention in the Argus.

Hiram Bennet, said Bunny, peering queerly over the top of his broadsheet. Wasn’t that the chap who was named captain of the CCC last night?

Yes, what of it?

He’s dead.

Raffles felt as if he’d been clean bowled. Hiram Bennet had reminded him of himself back in the days when he first decided to earn a crust from cricket, not as a paid professional, but as an amateur and a gentleman who according to the rules of the game was allowed to cover expenses but make no profit for himself. The profit, of course, was in the cover the game provided, giving entree to rich men’s mansions full of rich pickings. Week-long cricket parties were the most lucrative, though he adhered to a strict personal code of conduct that did not allow him to steal directly from his hosts. Fortunately, there were always plenty of baubles adorning the ladies and most of the male guests sported gold cufflinks and diamond tie pins that were easily concealed in secret compartments inside his coffin. Dead!

Murdered.

Are you serious? He found the news hard to swallow. He’d predicted a long and distinguished cricketing career for Hiram Bennet after the captaincy was announced to unanimous applause.

Bunny obligingly folded the broadsheet into quarters and handed it over. Read for yourself.

The next few minutes passed in silence. Raffles read while Bunny recalled those ominous words from the previous night. Good night for murder… Mind how you go… Was that meant as a friendly warning or a veiled threat?

Raffles ran a keen eye over the article a second time. It wasn’t very forthcoming and he wondered if he’d missed something vital in the skimming. The article made no mention of how Hiram Bennet was killed, who killed him, or why.

It must have been Hiram Bennet who caught that hansom cab last night, reasoned Raffles. The article states that the deceased hailed a cab near the corner of Gosch’s Paddock around midnight. That information came straight from the horse’s mouth. The cabbie also told the police there had been a second man with him who did not enter the cab.

If you’re right, we might be the last ones to have seen Hiram Bennet alive, Bunny said importantly.

Apart from the murderer, you mean.

Yes, apart from him is what I mean.

What about that second chap?

Oh, yes, the one wearing a cap - there’s him too. It was queer the way he spoke. It sent a shiver down my spine. Good night for murder – what sort of chap says that sort of thing?

Mind how you go, echoed Raffles, recalling the title of a penny dreadful he’d read years ago when laid up with a shoulder injury, not caused by bowling too many overs but from a heist he’d pulled off at the Drones Cub in London. A bit ambiguous – it could be taken two ways.

That’s what I thought. Warning or threat? Either way, not the sort of thing to say to a fellow after a celebratory drink at the old cricket club, hey?

Any club for that matter. I can’t say I’ve ever heard a chap say something like that at the Albemarle or the Drones or the Diogenes.

I didn’t realise you were a member of the Diogenes.

I don’t put it about. The place is full of mad geriatrics and the food is inedible, the sort of swill you et in the nursery with nanny standing over you wielding a big stick and the threat of no pudding. Raffles felt a stirring in his blood. Yes, he felt in the mood for a bit of adventure after weeks of lying low, keeping out of trouble, staying on the right side of the law, while putting the horrors of the veldt behind him. Did you recognise that second chap – the one in the baggy cap?

Bunny recognised only one thing - the dangerous gleam in his friend’s eye. Raffles was never one to play it safe for long. For several days Bunny had been bracing for an announcement that would make him break out in a cold sweat – a crib to crack, a bank heist…

Not a chance, I was introduced to so many fellows last night I could hardly tell one from the other, especially as they hadn’t bothered to change out of their flannels after that smasher against the Collingwood Battlers. Even under the glare of all that new electric lighting they looked much of a muchness, and don’t get me started on the mania for long bushy beards since W.G. Grace scored his latest century.

The cricket world according to Harry Manders, aka Bunny, was peopled by athletic chaps who tended to be built to the same muscular specifications and to exude the same confident demeanour. A cocksure stance defined each and every one of them the world over, and this was particularly true of the fellows from the CCC - an impressive bunch of young men of substance and privilege, born to rule, born to win.

Raffles recalled how the two young men stood just out of the ghostly flicker of a jet of gaslight, swaying slightly, probably from drink. I wonder if that was deliberate – keeping out of the lamplight. Did you recognise their voices?

Bunny shook his head. That colonial twang makes a mockery of the English tongue. Add a mongrel dialect and a string of slurred syllables muffled by a hairy rug, and the whole thing sounds like a bad joke. I just made sure to laugh on cue most of the night.

Raffles had no argument with that. The Australian accent was thick and impenetrable, and that was before you added a bushy thatch and several pints of ale to the crude patois. The first speaker – Beastly Dark – got into the hansom cab alone. Is that how you remember it, old bean?

Yes, confirmed Bunny, and the second speaker walked off.

Let’s call him Dark-of-the-Moon. He disappeared behind the trees, but not before he lobbed a ball to his mate.

Bunny’s brows pleated quizzically. A ball - are you sure?

Quite sure. He tossed something to Beastly Dark who was seated in the carriage. He tossed it just after the mudguard clicked into place. It was small and reddish. I’m certain it was a cricket ball. Question is - did he take his coffin with him?

He must have. A fellow doesn’t forget his… Oh! Hang on! Do you think it could have been the bag on the grass that almost tripped me up?

Yes, Raffles confirmed in retrospect. "Yes, I do. Beastly Dark leapt into the carriage and secured the guard almost immediately. A coffin is cumbersome, as you know, and yet he didn’t waste time stowing anything at his feet. Our fellow moved with surprising speed and agility once that hansom pulled up. He was unencumbered. It must have been his cricket bag on the grass."

Perhaps he was sharing a coffin with the other chap.

Hmm, yes, that would account for it. Beastly Dark might have had an invitation to a soiree – oh, hang on! – he wasn’t dressed for an evening out – perhaps a romantic rendezvous, yes, something private, ergo he stores his kit in the coffin of Dark-of-the-Moon, or else the coffin belongs to him and he asks Dark-of-the-Moon to take his kit home for him because he’s going someplace where it will be in the way.

I heard some of the chaps say they were going to try their luck at one of the gambling dens in Chinatown where black tie was not required.

That fits… But being the worse for wear, Dark-of-the-Moon sees him off and forgets to pick it up. He definitely walked off empty-handed.

Bunny, who did not often score a point off his own bat, felt rather chuffed. Do you think we should go to the police and report what we overheard?

Raffles pondered the repercussions of introducing himself and his bumbling accomplice to the local constabulary in advance of any criminal caper. Apart from cricket talk, most of the chaps last night kept drooling over an exceptionally wealthy, foreign countess who had arrived for the Melbourne Cup. She resided in a palatial villa in Toorak not far from their present digs. The news had whetted his appetite and caused a rush of unnatural excitement signalling that he was badly in need of the sort of adrenalin rush only a bit of illicit night-time sport could deliver.

I might have a word to the president of the cricket club first. An English barrister from Inner temple who now plies his trade from chambers on Lonsdale Street just down from the Supreme Court. Mr Godfrey Norton of Brodribb & Norton.

I heard mention he is a member of the Melbourne Club. If we turn up at midday, he might shout us lunch at his Club.

Good thinking, old bean. Raffles pretended not to notice his modest chum turn pink with unaccustomed praise. In truth, a chap couldn’t wish for a more loyal sidekick. Bunny possessed a coward’s stalwart courage that never failed to come to the fore in that moment when it truly counted. I think Godfrey Norton might have a better handle on the murder of Hiram Bennet than what the newspapers do. The way things have been reported, or not reported, well, it sounds dashed strange to me.

"It sounds as if you’re convinced it was Hiram Bennet we saw getting into that cab?"

It had to be him, old bean, but the question remains – who was Dark-of-the-Moon?

2

Hackneyed

Dr Watson was feeling lucky. Listen to this, he chuckled. Thank goodness we haven’t been roped into this oddball murder case.

Lured to Melbourne for the horse racing carnival and the cricket season, our two sleuths were enjoying the best of both worlds. Today it was the Melbourne Cup, an annual horse race held on the first Tuesday in November, which in the year 1900 fell on the sixth day of the month, an event no less glorious than Royal Ascot or the Kentucky Derby.

Keen to place a few bets, Dr Watson had been checking the field in the Argus when he came across the headline: Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction.

It caught his eye because experience had taught him that an author can rarely create from his own imagination anything more incredible than that which reality can conjure from the hackneyed dregs of the everyday.

What oddball case? prompted his companion.

In anticipation of an extravagant champagne picnic on the lawn at Flemington, they were breakfasting lightly under the crystal-canopied conservatory of Ripponley - the Countess’s Italianate-Romanesque mansion on the fringes of the fledgling metropolis. A scatter of wicker furniture had them comfortably ensconced between a flimmer of tropical palms and tree ferns that thrived under the benevolent outpouring of an Antipodean sun not yet ready to scorch sensitive fronds, soaking up the warmth of the perfumed air heavily scented with frangipani, orchids and bougainvillea.

What oddball case? she repeated when his attention was directed toward a blue butterfly beating its wings against the glass in a desperate bid to find an escape hatch.

The Mysterious Case of the Handsome Cabbie, he paraphrased to save time. Here goes: A man wearing flannels…

Flannels?

Cricketing whites…. hailed a hansom cab in Swan Street…

When was this?

Last Sunday night… he gave his destination as Cremorne…

A nondescript banlieue, north of the Yarra.

No interruptions, please. The journey had barely commenced when the cabbie did an abrupt turn, changed direction, pulled up at a horse trough, and a second man leapt into the cab.

Hitched a free ride, you mean?

It’s not uncommon for men to share a cab if travelling in the same direction.

Was the second man was wearing flannels?

It doesn’t say. He kept his voice in check. Here comes the oddball bit.

She hoped so. Melbourne really was the most civilized place on earth. Where were the Rippers and the Rugeley Poisoners and the Spring-heeled Jacks? A Melbourne consulting detective would soon starve to death. Or die of boredom.

The hansom cab pulled up sharp to avoid collision with a nightcart and a lady leapt from the interior of the cab.

What lady?

That’s the oddball bit. A lady who never entered the cab in the first place fled from it – fled into the night clutching a coffin.

A coffin!

It’s colloquial for cricket bag. Now, stop interrupting, he reprimanded. The cabbie swore that no lady had entered the cab, although he did concede when questioned by police that he had been forced to pull-up three times en route and was three times distracted. Once, when he was forced to stop while a road-gang poured hot pitch near the Richmond railway station, a second time when he halted to avoid a rowdy fist fight outside the Corner Hotel, and then lastly when he had the near-miss with a nightcart.

Did he concede he might have been drinking and imagined the whole thing?

The newspaper doesn’t mention anything about drunkenness. But here’s the rub. When the cabbie finally reached the address in Cremorne, he discovered that one of his passengers was dead and the other missing. Stranger than fiction, I say.

No truism is more hackneyed than when attributed to a murder mystery. Be a darling and open the vent at the top so that the Candalides hyacinthina josephina can find freedom. The window pole is behind you. I’ll just fetch my new silk parasol and we can make tracks.

As he grabbed the long pole, he glanced in the direction of the stables situated behind the hedge. Here comes the coachman with the landau. He’s heading toward the porte cochere. Don’t tarry, he warned tetchily, still smarting from all the interruptions, surmising that once she got upstairs, she would change her hat to match her parasol, change her shoes to match her hat, then change her gown to match the rest. I want to place a bet with the bookies before the first race. Clean Sweep is the favourite for the Cup and I reckon the odds will shorten as the day goes on. And don’t forget we got roped into offering a lift to Mrs Bassingthwaite and her son – what’s-his-name – and by we, I mean me. He was still kicking himself and it added to his tetchiness.

Last Sunday evening he found himself seated next to a charming widow, Mrs Hester Bassingthwaite, at the Kettering’s dinner party. He had warmed to the sparkling smile at once but as dinner progressed, he found himself cooling. By the end of the night there was something about her that left him cold. It wasn’t just the way she ingratiated herself with their hostess, heaping fulsome praise on the meal, the wine, the floral centrepiece, and the silver plate; not just the way she tried to worm herself into the bosom of Mr Brodribb, a wealthy old bachelor with no heirs. She did that with more subtlety than he gave her credit for. It was the way she rabbited on about her only son. Clearly, he was a young man with good prospects, but his every virtue, and there were many, soon began to grate. The charming widow didn’t know when to desist.

If later that evening, news had arrived that Young Bassingthwaite had fallen under a herd of stampeding horses, everyone would have cheered: hip hip hooray! – so heartily sick were they of hearing about the law clerk destined for silk, dux of his class, captain of the old Grammarians in cricket, football, and rugby, self-publishing a book on the thousand most common Latin declensions while still at boarding school, and dashing off poetry in the manner of an avant-garde Byron in his spare time.

Toward the end of the night, when Mrs Bassingthwaite cornered him in the hall as they were collecting their hats and cloaks, bemoaning that her carriage was unavailable for race day, and what with young Bassingthwaite travelling by train all the way from Geelong to Melbourne especially for the gala event, and that she was given to understanding the Countess had a landau large enough for four, well, he felt utterly trapped. Before he knew it, he was blurting out that the Countess would be delighted…

Winthrop, the Countess supplied before whirling away, wondering how he could possibly forget a name that had seared itself into her memory. She could hardly wait to meet the prodigy whose ambition it was to be Prime Minister of Australia. Terra Nullius was not even a nation. It was still a colonial outpost tied to the apron strings of Mother England, although the strings were due to be cut on the first day of January 1901, a mere two months away. Queen Victoria had signed the relevant papers making Federation a political fait accompli.

If you want to make the gods laugh, tell them your plans. Or have your mother tell them for you!

Mrs Hester Bassingthwaite resided south of the Yarra in a red brick villa on Toorak Road. The late Mr Bassingthwaite had made his wealth in napery, but the family fortune began to decline after his passing, exacerbated by an influx of Jewish merchants who undercut prices. The family still kept one shop on Collins Street near the Athenaeum Theatre, but the stock was dated, deemed old-fashioned, and it struggled to attract new custom. Women preferred brighter colours to reflect the sunnier Australian climate, and designs that echoed the flora and fauna of their new homeland; tablecloths patterned with sprays of golden wattle rather than blowsy cabbage roses.

Like mother, like son, Mr Winthrop Bassingthwaite praised the Countess’s new parasol, the doctor’s brocade waistcoat, and the perfect spring weather. He was a confident young man in his twenties, fair of face and hair; who had not suffered any setbacks in life and thus took for granted that Life would always bless him with good fortune. The harder I work the luckier I get, he pronounced forthrightly when he expounded at length how he had just secured a publisher for his modernist Byronic verse.

Dr Watson was tempted to disabuse him of the truism that was actually a falsism for he had encountered men and women who toiled day and night and yet ended up with little or no fortune, and not because of any personal failing, for Life had a way of throwing the odd accident, unforeseen illness, and unexpected event in one’s path. He could recount hundreds of examples where someone had had the rug pulled out from under them for no good reason – and that was not even taking his experience during the disastrous war years into account - and was wondering how best to word it without causing offence and ruining what looked like being a wonderful day at the races when he recalled the article in the Argus.

Not always the case I believe, he began tactfully, take that incident with the hansom cab.

Young Bassingthwaite’s curiosity was aroused, evident in the tilt of fair brows. Do you mean the one where one passenger was found dead and the other had vanished into thin air?

That was how they