A Soul of Steel (24 page)

“My cousin,” Godfrey said with a courteous nod at me. The desk clerk inclined his head politely. He eyed the trunks a man had deposited in the lobby and rang for a manservant.

Shortly after we and our baggage were escorted by a modern lift to our rooms high above Old Bond Street. They were adjacent, but no one could accuse us of cohabiting without a lewd imagination.

It was not until Godfrey had paid our baggage toter an unholy amount of coinage for the Herculean task of conveying our baggage up six flights in a lift that I was able to doff my bonnet and gloves and speak my mind.

We stood in the sitting room of my suite, where my trunk had been deposited until a maid could unpack it.

“This is splendid accommodation, Godfrey,” I admitted, “but it is shockingly extravagant for us to occupy two rooms each. I could do quite nicely with one.”

“Surely, Nell, you do not wish to be perceived as entertaining gentlemen in your bedchamber? And I will find it necessary to visit you, or vice versa, so we can compare notes on the day’s investigations.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but you are my ‘cousin.’ And what do you mean by ‘gentlemen’ plural? Surely my rooms are not to become an interrogation center for cabmen and snake charmers?”

He smiled. “How quick you are. I was thinking, of course, of Stanhope. Well, Nell, if—when—we locate him, it is possible that we will need to offer him the discretion of a private talk. So you see, our parlors are needed as interview rooms, so to speak, as well as for our own consultations.”

“A long way around to justify extra expense,” I said. “And where did you come by those ridiculous pseudonyms? Irene, no doubt?”

He bowed. “Irene had nothing to do with it. I am in charge of this expedition.”

“Feverall Marshwine?!”

“It leaped into my mind at the cable office. Have you never wanted to pretend to be someone else?”

“No, I have not. I know what I myself have been up to, but some other identity may be another case entirely. And how did you come by ‘Lucy Maison-Nouveau’? Do not tell me it was another inspiration of the cable office.”

“But it was! Based upon your sterling example, as always. I recalled the cable from Belgium you signed with the code name Casanova.”

“Oh. I see. Maison-Nouveau is French for the same thing. In English it would be Newhouse. Perhaps the better choice, Godfrey. No one will ever mistake me for a Frenchwoman. And the ‘Lucy’?”

Like many a delinquent charge from my governess days, Godfrey guiltily eyed his boot tips, polished to as glossy a black as Lucifer’s fur after an hour’s licking.

“Lucifer! Godfrey, how could you?” I managed to avoid laughing.

“A hasty and desperate invention, Nell,” he said contritely, “and ‘Lucille’ is a French name. Forgive me, but I thought it better for us to travel incognito.”

His apology was approximately as sincere as Irene’s respect for the literal truth. At least no one in London who had known me would suspect that I was masquerading as a French female who had no objections to engaging a suite adjacent to that of an unrelated man, which, I admit, was decidedly “French” behavior.

“Now that we are here, what is our plan?” I asked.

“First, to eliminate the obvious.”

“You mean this ‘Dr. Watson’ who, Irene is convinced shares rooms with Sherlock Holmes?”

“Irene saw
two
men entering 221B Baker Street late at night after the rather underhanded charade in St. John’s Wood.”

“I agree with you on the underhandedness of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Godfrey. I cannot comprehend how Irene can profess such admiration for a man who would stoop to impersonating a clergyman while attempting to trick a helpless woman out of the sole artifact that defends her from another man’s unwanted attentions, and a king’s at that!”

“I agree with you,” he said, “except for the ‘helpless.’ In fact, I consider it highly charitable of you, Nell, to campaign for the life of a man who very likely pitched the plumber’s rocket into your drawing-room windows at Briony Lodge. It was a shabby if all too effective ploy to trick Irene into revealing the hidden chamber in which lay the photograph of her and the King of Bohemia.”

“You think that Dr. Watson did such a despicable thing? He is a medical man.”

“You are a former governess, but I believe that you have essayed a deceptive mission or two for Irene’s sake.”

“That is quite different! Nothing I have ever done could possibly be construed as malicious mischief.”

“Oh? What of your masquerade as Irene’s housekeeper, gloating over Mr. Holmes and King Willie when they found their trap sprung and their quarry gone?”

“Perhaps that was the tiniest bit mischievous, but it was hardly malicious, Godfrey. No, you will have to find a better apologist for Dr. Watson’s failing than myself. Irene’s freedom and happiness were at stake then. Sherlock Holmes had nothing to gain but a mere fee. His only interest was financial.”

“Odd that he has not pursued the Zone of Diamonds now that he knows Irene is alive....”

“Nothing odd, only ignorance. He knows nothing of the Zone!”

“He knows it existed, for Tiffany himself said he hired Sherlock Holmes as well as Irene to look into its whereabouts. And from your own account of the trio’s visit to Briony Lodge, it is obvious to me that Mr. Holmes had hoped to find a far more glamorous prize than a photograph, or even Irene herself.”

“Obvious? To you? I wrote the account to which you refer, and it was more than obvious to me that no such undercurrent existed.”

“Ah!” Godfrey spread his hands in surrender. “Useless to argue with the author of the document in question. Perhaps I am seeing undercurrents on dry land. So you are convinced now that Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. Watson—should he prove also to be Quentin Stanhope’s Dr. Watson—is a heartless trickster and a lying lackey not worth the effort of saving?”

“If we doled out our acts of charity according to who is worthy, we might have no objects left for our concern,” I said stoutly. “And if Quentin thinks it worth risking his life for this man who saved him in Afghanistan, I can only do my best to aid in this enterprise. Besides, I am convinced that the Dr. Watson from Afghanistan in eighteen-eighty has never set foot in Baker Street except for innocent, unrelated errands! He may not even be in London, or England.”

“Then the only thing to do is to test your—I hesitate to call such a rousing opinion a mere theory—assertion, shall we say?”

“ ‘Assertion’ is a fine, forthright word that does not shilly-shally. So shall we sally forth?”

“First we have two separate duties to perform.”

I grew instantly serious, as the word “duty” invariably encourages me to do.

Godfrey smiled in a way that was eerily reminiscent of Irene. “I must repair to my suite and make some alterations of a personal nature. Irene, I believe, equipped you for slight disguise?”

I produced a length of heavy black veiling, diligently spotted with velour, from the upper shelf of my trunk. “Not efficient for seeing, but most appropriate for mourning—or for not being seen.”

“Excellent. And I believe now would be a good time for you to take the hotel stationery in hand and pen a note to the family of your former employer. Mrs. Turnpenny, was it not?”

“The Turnpennys left Berkeley Square for India. I have no notion where they might reside today.”

“I refer to Mrs. Turnpenny’s family—the Stanhopes.”

“The Stanhopes of Grosvenor Square—Quentin’s parents? You expect me to address them at this late date? I have never met them!”

“But you have encountered their son recently, which may be of some interest to them if he has not already returned to England and made himself known. Merely send them a note identifying your earlier connection with the family and expressing your desire to visit them on a matter concerning their son, et cetera. You composed such communications for me innumerable times at the Temple, dear Nell. What makes you pale at the idea now?”

“They are... well-placed people. I cannot intrude... they would not see me.”

“You underestimate yourself, as usual,” he said with a smile. “Simply write the note, and we will leave it at the hotel desk for a messenger to deliver. And do not look so appalled! Not even Mr. Sherlock Holmes can investigate a mystery without rushing in where he is not wanted; consider his surprise descent on Briony Lodge.”

“Yes, that was cheeky. Very well, I will write the Stanhopes, but I cannot guarantee any response.”

“Who can in this hurly-burly world, Nell?” Godfrey said cheerfully, bowing out of my sitting room.

I spent the next half hour penning the wretched note. Several versions lay crumpled in my wastepaper basket, a pitiable waste of Brown Hotel’s stationery, which was exceptionally fine cream parchment-paper.

Finished at last, I struggled to affix Irene’s disguising veiling to my bonnet, a process that involved several short hatpins and even more prickings of my poor fingers.

Thus far I was not impressed with the business of being a private inquiry agent.

When Godfrey rapped upon my door, I opened it in not very good temper. The sight that greeted me did little to amend my mood.

“Godfrey?! What on earth have you done to yourself?”

He stepped in past me and ducked to regard himself in the small oval mirror near the door. “I’ve removed my mustache. Does it alter my appearance?”

“Indeed it does! And I am not sure for the better.”

“I thought that you disliked facial hair upon men.”

“Yes... but I had become accustomed to yours, and it was just a mustache, after all. Oh, what will Irene say?” I was suddenly reminded of the more intimate effects of mustaches, and blushed furiously.

“We will find out when we return to Paris. In the meantime, I congratulate myself upon the idea. At least I have changed my countenance enough to deceive Sherlock Holmes if we encounter him, for I doubt he ever much noted my appearance,” Godfrey added dryly.

“You expect to encounter
the
man? Really, Godfrey, I have no desire to come that close to him again. He quite terrifies me.”

“The person I expect to encounter is Dr. Watson,” Godfrey said, “of whom I have never seen hide nor hair, and of whose existence and exact relationship to Holmes even you cannot be certain. Perhaps he is a figment of Irene’s imagination, or a blind that Holmes uses for his advertising convenience in the agony columns,
hmm?”

“A third man accompanied Mr. Holmes and the King to Briony Lodge, Godfrey. It could have been—”

“‘Could have beens’ are not evidence. We must venture to Baker Street to test our theory, and we must be prepared to elude the master detective. There, now that you have donned your bonnet and I have doffed my mustache, we look quite unlike ourselves, do we not?”

Godfrey bent so that his face and mine were both visible in the mirror.

“I look like Her Majesty in mourning,” I murmured unhappily from behind my layers of veiling, “and you look like”—now that Godfrey was clean-shaven the resemblance suddenly struck me—”a rather handsome Sherlock Holmes.”

Godfrey recoiled as if snake-bitten, finding the comparison too close for comfort. Yet both men were more than six feet tall, dark-haired and the same age. If both wore top hats, it would take an artist no great skill to sharpen Godfrey’s nose, thicken his brows and produce a creditable simulacrum of the famed detective.

I couldn’t help smiling to myself at his discomfort. He took much harmless amusement in nudging me beyond the bounds of my strict upbringing, but the shoe distinctly pinched the other foot when I pointed out that he and his rival for Irene’s professional interest bore more than a passing similarity in form.

I gave Godfrey my note, addressed to the Stanhopes of Grosvenor Square, then offered my brightest smile.

“Shall we sally forth, as I said before?”

Godfrey drew my hand through his arm and we left, stopping at his rooms to gather hat, stick and gloves. The man at the desk assured us that the note would be delivered by the afternoon. I watched it vanish from my care with regret. So much can be set in motion by an innocent note.

Perhaps Quentin did not wish his family to know of his return. Or perhaps he did not wish them to know of us. At least with Irene absent, Godfrey and I were proceeding in a logical manner, rather than rushing into the unknown on pure instinct and panache.

Thus it was with some surprise that I heard Godfrey direct our cabman to “Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum on the Marylebone Road.”

“Godfrey, why are we going to that awful place?”

“It is not far from Baker Street, and until recent years occupied a Baker Street address,” he replied.

“That would apply to a great many other less loathsome establishments, I would suppose.”

“But none draw as many sightseers. A visit to this attraction will allow us to survey the neighborhood before we concentrate on our quarry at 221 B. I suspect even the Great Mr. Holmes first reconnoitered the Serpentine Mews when he was spying upon Irene.”

“Why, Godfrey, I believe that you do
not
like him at all either!”

“Why should I? He attempted to wrest from Irene her one means of protection against the King; he was willing to confront her with the King again, despite all her efforts to prevent contact. In addition, despite your opinion, I suspect that he knew of the Zone of Diamonds and hoped to capture that, as well.

“I cannot think of a single good turn the man has done us, save for keeping his peace about Irene’s and my survival after our supposed deaths. Even there he may have some self-serving motive. He is, after all, available for hire. Irene offers her... diagnostic services for nothing.”

“You
are
indeed a bit jealous, as you said in Monte Carlo!”

“A serious charge, and nothing to smile about, Nell, I assure you.” Godfrey idly rapped his cane tip on the hansom’s wooden floor. “Say rather that I am uneasy. We do not really know where this Holmes sits when it comes to secret knowledge and profit.”

“That is why I am relieved that Irene remained abroad,” I put in. “I feared she could not resist the opportunity to engage a foe of such caliber again. She does relish challenge,” I admitted, “to an alarming degree. Now there is a woman that Mr. Stanhope could honestly call adventuresome, although he has not seen her in action.”