Reading Notes:
As a schoolgirl, I loved Conan Doyle's stories of Holmes and Watson. Then came the very clever, updated television series, 'Sherlock' with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman and it got me thinking that I should try and write a series of 'alternative' Sherlock Holmes tales. What follows is my first effort, and it introduces some other peripheral characters and eventually the main protagonists.
I have taken liberties with Conan Doyle's famous duo, and for that I beg my readers' indulgence. It is my intention to write more about the adventures the two get up to in future chapters. Any comments on this introductory chapter including constructive criticism, will be most welcome.
As in all my stories, any sex play described is consensual and is performed by characters well over the age of eighteen.
July 1965.
The newspapers were so obsessed with the audacious escape from prison of the Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs, that they totally missed the fact that on the same day, Vince Hudson, who was serving eight years for his part in a totally separate, but equally vicious armed robbery, also managed to escape from prison. Two days later, a letter plopped onto the mat behind the front door of 221B Baker Street in London. Olwen Hudson saw it when she returned from her shopping trip. She recognised the scrawled handwriting on the envelope as that of her husband, and she took the letter into the kitchen.
Olwen put the kettle on to boil, and started to put her meagre supply of groceries away. Money was very tight since Vince had been put away, and Olwen was struggling to keep the wolf from the door in his absence. He wasn't much of a husband, he was very handy with his fists if Olwen did something to upset him, and she'd lost count of the number of extra marital affairs he'd had. But he was her husband, and she'd married him 'for better or worse'. And he'd be out in another three years, if he behaved himself. Till then, Olwen would just have to cope as best she could.
All her shopping was put away, the kettle had boiled and Olwen sat down at the kitchen table with a nice hot cup of tea. She lit up her morning cigar and reached for the letter, and ripped the envelope open. Inside was a single sheet of paper.
"Dear Olwen," she read. "I don't have much time, so I'm writing this in haste. I've escaped and I'm leaving the country. Spain is where I'm going first, but my ultimate destination is Brazil, just like Ronnie Biggs. There's no extradition agreement between the UK and Brazil. I won't be coming home again, so this is goodbye. I've had to empty our bank account to pay some people who are going to get me out of Britain. You can keep the house. I won't need it where I'm going. Don't bother trying to find me. We're finished. Do you remember Donna, my probation officer? She helped get me out, and she's coming with me. The silly bitch thinks she loves me. Stay safe and be happy. Vince."
Olwen put the letter down on the kitchen table. She picked up her cup of tea with a shaky hand. Vince had left her. He'd never been willing for her to get a full-time job. She'd had to be at home, at his beck and call at all times, which was ironic, given that before she met Vince, she always took the dominant role in any relationship she had. He had allowed her to take in washing for some local people, and to do some cleaning locally as well. The money she earned went straight to Vince, although she did keep a few shillings every time she was paid, and secreted the money in a small tin that she kept hidden in her wardrobe. She used this money to buy her weekly supply of cigars. It was a habit she had acquired in her previous life, before she met Vince, who as well as being a vicious law breaker and a serial adulterer, was also something of a prude. He didn't approve of Olwen's smoking, and he insisted, sometimes violently, that she give up the filthy habit, as he thought of it. Olwen had taken up smoking again when Vince went to prison.
Now she was on her own, and free to smoke where and whenever she chose. But, she thought, as she savoured the leathery notes of her cigar, money was going to be even tighter now. Admittedly, she had the house, but it was not in the best state of repair, and anyway, it was much too big for one person. What the hell was she going to do? Olwen smoked, sipped her tea and thought.
January 1967.
The newspapers were obsessed again, but this time with the situation in Aden, where British troops were struggling to keep order whilst being under almost constant attack from those who wanted to throw the occupying forces out of South Yemen. But all of this meant nothing to Olwen Hudson. She'd done everything she could to keep her head above water in the two years since her husband had left her.
These days, she lived on the ground floor of the three storey house in Baker Street. She'd closed off the two upper floors, which saved her having to heat them, and she'd moved her bed into the old sitting room. She was often hungry, always poor, but she was determined not to go under. Olwen was a survivor. She got occasional work, skivvying for some rich bloke and his snobby wife up in the West End, but it wasn't regular employment, and Olwen had to work long hours doing degrading, menial tasks in order to receive the meagre wages that the rich couple seemed reluctant to give her.
The washing that she took in meant that she had a small, regular income, but as the seasons and the weather changed, drying the wet clothes became difficult. As the cold, wet summer of 1967 became Autumn, Olwen put yet another load into her ancient washing machine, added a small amount of washing detergent and switched the machine on. She sighed. Doing other people's laundry was both time consuming and degrading. Her one treat to herself these days was the weekly cigar that she looked forward to on a Friday night, after a long week of working for other people.
Olwen looked at the calendar which was hanging from a nail on the back of the scullery door. She frowned. It wasn't Tuesday today, was it? She got up and turned the calender page up. Ah! That was better. Wednedsday, November the first, 1967. A new month, and, Olwen decided there and then, a new start for Olwen Hudson. She began to think how she could go about getting an increased, regular income. And maybe a nice, compliant companion to keep her warm in bed these cold winter nights.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the front door. Olwen got to her feet and went to see who was there. When she opened the door, she saw it was her best friend, Ella, and Olwen invited her in. Ella was a staff nurse at the nearby University College hospital. She was practical, very discrete and Olwen trusted her implicitly.
She sat Ella down at the table and bustled about the kitchen, making a fresh pot of tea. When it had brewed sufficiently, Olwen poured them both a cup, and gratefully accepted the cigar that Ella offered her. Both women lit up and smoked in silence for a few minutes. Then, in answer to Ella's question about how she was coping on her own, Olwen, who had shown Vince's letter to her friend when she'd called round soon after it had been delivered, poured her heart out, telling Ella about her money problems and her need to find herself a special friend to keep her company.
"I'm still skint because my husband's fucked off with another woman, and I don't know what to do," she confessed. "Sir and Lady Fuckwitt-Cunt expect me to drop everything when there's the slightest speck of dust in their mansion, or they need a maid to hold the drink tray whilst their disgusting friends feel my arse or my tits. The women I can cope with. Most of them know how a woman like me likes some tit and nipple attention. It's the men with their pathetic little willies that they expect me to rub, or on some occasions, suck that really give me the creeps!"
Ella smiled and patted her best friend's hand. She knew that Sir and Lady Fuckwitt-Cunt were in fact Sir Gerald and Lady Ursula Fortesque-Hunt, and that he was a distant cousin of the Sovereign, whilst she had been appointed Lady-in-Waiting to the queen's favourite daughter-in-law. They also were both members of a very discrete bondage and domination clique. Ella only knew this because some of the ladies in the clique were also members of another, equally discrete club on the King's Road in Chelsea.
"This place is too big for you on your own," she said. "Why don't you consider taking in a lodger? It would help with your finances and you'd have company. I'd move in here myself, but I think Sadie would have something to say about that."
Sadie was Ella's girlfriend, and a very senior administrator at the hospital where Ella worked, Olwen knew. The two women were outwardly very respectable, but they were also members of a very select club in Chelsea that catered for their and other like-minded women's sapphic needs. Olwen had been a long-standing member who was into the scene many years ago, but then she had met Vince, who had told her in no uncertain terms that sex between two people of the same gender was, in his words, "disgusting, perverted and totally unacceptable." Olwen had meekly accepted this, and she hadn't been back to the club since, although she and Ella had remained the best of friends.
