Tom Taggart is the bartender and landlord of the Moongate Pub in Covent Garden, London. Served with the First Bangalore Fusiliers in India beginning in 1865, where he rode an elephant, and shot and killed a tiger, whose stuffed head adorns the Pub above its front door. Also attended Queen Victoria's 30th anniversary celebration in 1867 with his mother, while working as a ticket-taker in the London underground transit system. Since such tours of duty in Bangalore often lasted five years or longer, unless brought back to Britain by death or disgrace, the publican's service past is checkered, at best -- a fact that he keeps from his mostly military clientele. His ravaged appearance is contradicted by a well-kept moustache of a type characteristic of a Sergeant-Major of the British Army. He is cadaverously thin, with the haunted eyes and sallow complexion of an opium user. He wears a black band around his left arm. The finest darts player the Moongate Pub has ever seen - until Sherlock Holmes shambled through its door, that is. Refuses to play darts unless the challenger is the best in the bar on a given night. Fond of lemon squash. Friends with the proprietor of Bradley's Tobacco Shop, just west of the Pub.
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