37. THE CASE OF THE NEW SHOWER

In the days of horse-drawn transport the roads could get quite disgusting...

It was one of those days that would have been left to the pages of history by Holmes and I spending the twenty-four hours in our beds and away from it all. There can have been few days when the weather has been more foul with unremitting rain slashing down in dreadful torrents as though we ought to have spent the past week building an ark.

But despite the deluge, Holmes was summoned to see Mycroft and I, rather gratefully, was left to my own devices ... and when left to my own devices and with no patient requiring my urgent attention I spent the time recording some of our recent adventures for the Strand magazine to publish.

Holmes returned late in the afternoon, and I had to turn my smile away from him so as not to cause him any more grief than the weather and street conditions already had.

He was soaking and had smears and dribbles of mud, some of it my olfactory sense suggested might be highly offensive and have originated in a horse’s digestive system.

“Watson!” he shouted in that peremptory way he had on the rare occasions when nothing seems to be going right for him, “the streets out there are disgusting and it’s about time the internal combustion engine replaced all equines in the field of transport. At least the rattling and noisy things don’t eject their faeces all over the place, to get stirred by the kind of downpour we’re being subjected to today into rank and offensive quagmires made disgracefully mobile by any passing vehicle that has wheels!”

“You do need a bath, Holmes,” I suggested.

“And a bath I shall have even though I barely have time to turn a tap on,” grated Holmes. “Meanwhile, Watson, I have a task for you.”

“As long as I don’t have to get wet, Holmes,” I grunted.

“We have that new telephone thing and you can use that to your heart’s content as long as you find me a plumber who will come as soon as maybe and fit us a shower in the bathroom,” he almost shouted. “I’m a busy man and I can’t afford the time to run a bath every time I get mud on me, and in this climate that’s almost every day!”

Then he stomped into the bathroom and I heard water splashing into the bath.

Telephones are remarkably fine things as long as there is an instrument at both ends of the wire that terminates with the little pot reel attached to the upstairs wall, but that isn’t always the case. I had the devil of a job locating my first plumber on the telephone, and when I did it turned out that he was twenty miles away and not prepared to venture a step outside his front door in the present weather conditions. Even when I dropped the name of Sherlock Holmes into my request he was adamant.

To cut what might be a fairy lengthy account short, I failed. Not one plumber who lives sufficiently close to us on Baker Street had a telephone. Plumbers, it seems, belong to a trade that doesn’t see the need to make contact with them an easy thing for potential customers. They want you to call on them. They probably need to see the cut of your jib, so to speak, to be confident that he will be paid for his services.

Holmes was dry and dressed in a rather florid housecoat when he wandered back into our parlour. I shook my head and explained the difficulties had had with the telephone.

“So you didn’t try Mycroft?” he asked in a superior way that I always found annoying.

“Mycroft is your brother rather than mine and has nothing to to do with plumbing,” I said levelly, trying not to show my annoyance at his attitude.

“Mycroft has to do with everything,” he replied, “if the Prince needs someone to divert attention from his latest affair with a courtesan he turns to Mycroft and the matter is sorted. So he must surely be able to assist a brother who needs a shower fitting over his bath?”

“He’s your brother, not mine,” I snorted again.

“You’re a bit tetchy today, Watson,” he chided me, picking up the telephone earpiece.

Mycroft was at his club, the Diogenes where he seemed to spend the great majority of his time, and with just a few words Holmes managed to convey his need for a shower and get his brother to arrange for a plumber to call.

“Mrs Hudson!” shouted Holmes when everything was apparently arranged and he had his brother’s assurance that a plumber was on his way.

“She’s at her sister’s,” I told him, “and coming back tomorrow as you well know.”

“What? When I feel a pot of tea would be a useful tonic for a man fresh from his bath?” growled he who was apparently never to be satisfied on this particular day.

“I’ll make one,” I said, trying not to glare.

“Only women can make tea properly,” he grunted, “and I don’t think you’re one of those. After all, there has got to be something that the female of our species is good at and in my opinion it is making pots of tea when the men of the house require them.”

“Then I won’t,” I muttered, peeved.

We were about to have a full-blown disagreement, something that happened from time to time due, usually, to Holmes’ tendency to be both belligerent and wrong, when the doorbell rang and I went down the stairs to answer it.

It was the plumber.

“My goodness, you took no time at all!” I congratulated him.

“I have premises just round the back, not a minute’s walk away,” he replied as I invited him in and showed him into the bathroom. “Name of Timkins, plumbers to the gentry. No telephone, though, don’t hold with newfangled things like telephones.”

“So that’s why I couldn’t locate you, Timkins. Holmes requires a shower for when the weather is a bit like this,” I said. “He’s a busy man and he just returned home in quite an unsavoury state!”

“So his brother said,” mumbled the plumber, and within minutes he had sketched a plan that, he said, would satisfy our needs, and it wouldn’t take long to install.

“Just a couple of feet of new pipe,” he mumbled, “and a tap. You’ll need one that can be used to adjust the temperature. And a rose. A nice big one with loads of holes for a decent spray. Yes, I can do that. Will tomorrow do?”

“Of course!” I said, wondering where Holmes was and why he hadn’t put his twopenn'orth into the debate. I guessed he must have resorted to a tea substitute, possible out of a bottle or maybe out of a syringe.

“Nine o’clock, then,” the plumber said, and I showed him out.

Next day Timkins came as arranged, and in pretty short order had installed the pipe and shower head, and a modern tap that you turned one way for hot and the other way for cold with the right temperature somewhere in between depending on the efficiency of the geyser.

Holmes was delighted with it and announced his willingness to christen it by having his morning ablutions under its heady spray.

“Keep away while I’m showering,” he said, meaningfully, “a shower is not like a bath in which a gentleman can retain some aspects of modesty, and any toweld held under it will get too wet for drying purposes.”

“Of course, Holmes,” I acknowledged, and he disappeared into the bathroom.

It was while he was having a shower and I was reading the paper in peace that Mrs Hudson returned from her sister’s and went straight to the bathroom to wash her face and do those things that ladies like to do upon returning home.

The first I knew about it was the scream, penetrating, blood-curdling, and Mrs Hudson running along the passage from the bathroom as though pursued by a thousand devils.

“You wouldn’t want to know what I’ve just seen!” she screeched, “it was horrible, the most horrible thing in the world, and it was in my bathroom!”

© Peter Rogerson 27.08.17