A Soul of Steel (28 page)

“Allegra!” the young woman’s mother rebuked softly, turning to us. “She remembers him with a child’s freshness. You must forgive her enthusiasm. I would be most grateful for any information you could offer us. We had hoped when the other gentleman called—”

“Other gentleman?” Godfrey asked.

Mrs. Turnpenny paused at the urgency in his tone. “Yes, a war veteran, like Quentin. A former member of his company.”

“When did this gentleman call?” Godfrey wanted to know. Again the three older

 women silently consulted one another, both to bolster their common recollection and to protest Godfrey’s intrusive curiosity.

“In May,” Mrs. Waterston declared in a no-nonsense voice. “It was my wolfhound Peytor’s birthday.”

“May,” Godfrey repeated without further comment, in the irritating way of barristers everywhere.

“Do
you know anything of Quentin, Miss Huxleigh?” Allegra beseeched me.

Suddenly my qualms tumbled like a wall of stone turned to sand before their heartfelt concern.

“We know that he is relatively well, and alive,” I said briskly. “We encountered him in Paris last week. He has lived in the East for many years.”

“He was well?” Mrs. Turnpenny demanded. “Why did he not contact us? Why has he not come home, then?”

“He was not well,” Godfrey put in quite rashly. “We think he had been poisoned.”

Shock sighed through the room, and their pale powdered faces grew more ashen.

I said quickly, “Quentin had reasons for staying abroad. There may have been danger to those he came too near. He is quite all right now, save for a troubling touch of fever now and then.”

“Quentin?” Mrs. Turnpenny repeated with a polite frown.

Godfrey regarded me with a deeply interested expression, like any barrister curious to see how a witness would extricate herself from an unpardonable blunder.

I flushed as scarlet as the velvet footstool at Mrs. Turnpenny’s aristocratic feet.

“Oh, Mama, don’t be a stick!” young Allegra urged with flashing blue eyes. “Miss Huxleigh has known me since the schoolroom, and Uncle Quentin was a favorite visitor there.”

“It was Nell who roused Mr. Stanhope’s memories of home,” Godfrey added in my defense at last. “He recognized her in Paris.”

“Nell?” Mrs. Turnpenny murmured again, this time faintly, as if confused beyond the point of fretting about it.

“That is how my wife and I call Miss Huxleigh,” Godfrey explained.

Mrs. Turnpenny nodded, reassured that Godfrey had a wife. If only she had met Irene! “And Paris is where Quentin was... poisoned?”

“We think so,” I said, “or rather Irene does.” A silence. “Godfrey’s wife. Irene. She has remained behind in Paris. It was not serious, the poisoning, only Que—Mr. Stanhope feared for our own safety and vanished. We thought he might have come here, but of course if he fears that whoever he approaches is endangered—”

“Quite a tale, from what sense I can make of it,” the formidable Mrs. Waterston noted. “Yet it might explain the gentleman caller in May if Quentin has been seen in Europe.”

“Indeed,” said Godfrey. “So while we can offer no particulars about your loved one at present, we can tell you that he was well not many days ago, and that his long absence has apparently been forced by circumstance, not inclination. But take care to whom you speak of him.”

“He has always kept you in his mind and heart,” I added. “You must not think that he has not. I hope that one day he can tell you so himself.”

“As do we,” Mrs. Turnpenny said feelingly. “And what has brought you from Paris to London, so that you could deliver this news?”

“Shopping,” said Godfrey promptly and somewhat truthfully, given his afternoon activities. “The French are quite inferior at men’s tailoring, but excel in women’s styles. As you can see, Miss Huxleigh has become a formidable fashion plate since her sojourn in Paris.”

The older ladies blinked politely at his mock-serious tone, but Miss Allegra laughed until her eyes watered. “Oh, you remind me of dear Uncle Quentin, Mr. Norton. He was such an unreformed tease! What fun we had when I was young.”

“That is usually the case, miss,” I reminded her primly.

“In some ways you have not changed at all, Miss Huxleigh,” she answered, “and I am glad.”

I smiled at the darling child, who reminded me of her uncle, though she found me less changed than he did.

The rest of the tea was spent in polite chitchat, which Godfrey handled with masterful blandness. As we rose to leave, Godfrey inquired casually, “By the way, what did the gentleman who asked after Mr. Stanhope look like?”

The ladies exchanged another blank glance.

“Quite unremarkable looking,” Mrs. Turnpenny said, consulting her sisters.

“Middle-aged, respectable.” Mrs. Compton nodded soberly.

“I was not at the house at the time,” Mrs. Waterston declared, and that was that.

“I will see them out, Mama,” the charming Allegra offered, frothing to my side in her jonquil gown to lay a hand on my arm like a favorite niece.

As we walked into the tiled entry hall, Allegra spoke in a voice lowered to an excited whisper.

“Not so tall as Mr. Norton,” she said, slipping her arm through his so we three were conspiratorially linked. “Bald as a cue ball. Fierce lapis- lazuli eyes, cold as stone. A most sinister individual. Mama has absolutely no powers of observation,” she added sadly.

She delivered us to the cruising butler, who circled us like a shark, so eager was he to rid the house of its unconventional visitors.

“Do find dear Quentin,” she finished, shaking our arms in light admonishment. “He is quite my favorite uncle.”

“I am afraid,” said I, “that you take after him a great deal.”

“Thank you, Miss Huxleigh,” she said with a last, roguish smile and a curtsy, before melting down the hall.

Out in the square we paused, staring across the vast garden to the line of stately houses beyond.

“Quite helpless and unforthcoming, the ladies of the house,” Godfrey mused as he smoothed his French kid gloves over his knuckles, “but your former charge is a charmer. She reminds me of Irene.”

“I did not have a very long time with her in the schoolroom,” I admitted. “She does take a great deal upon herself.”

“Someone must, in that household.” He sighed. “So Captain Morgan was already hunting for Stanhope in May. Why?”

“Of course!
That
is who the inquiring gentleman was!”

“The real question is what the devil—sorry, Nell—was Stanhope involved in, and why has it turned so urgent now?”

“Oh,” I said without thinking, “I wish Irene were here. She would know what to do.”

Godfrey smiled fondly. “We can cable her, if you like, in the morning, to tell her what we have learned.”

“Oh, yes! But Godfrey—”

“Yes?”

“We must use a code name, in case that odious man Morgan has henchmen in Paris.”

“We already have one,” he pronounced as we strolled toward New Bond Street, where we could more readily hail a cab.

“What is that?”

“Lucy Maison-Nouveau.”

“Oh.”

Chapter Nineteen

SHE SNOOPS TO CONQUER

At last
a Watson in the flesh!

Godfrey and I had decided that we would have more luck finding a physician free later in the day, so we stood before the doctor’s door in Paddington at four o’clock the next afternoon, I in a froth of excitement at finally meeting the figure who might serve as the key to Quentin Stanhope’s dilemmas.

We confronted a semidetached brick residence that sat close to the street but was domestic enough in appearance to promise a garden in the back. A brass lozenge attached to the brick wall read, JOHN H. WATSON, M.D. Was he the same Dr. Watson who had aided Quentin Stanhope on the blazing battlefields of Afghanistan?

The door opened. Instead of a gentleman who had consorted with
the
man of Baker Street, a lady stood in the doorway, regarding us with an air of pleasant but unsurprised inquiry.

“We are here to see Dr. Watson,” Godfrey said. “This is Miss Huxleigh and I am... er, Feverall Marshwine.”

“I am Mrs. Watson. The house girl has the day off. Have you an appointment, Mr. Marshwine?”

“No,” he admitted, “but we will wait.”

“You will wait in either case, for the doctor has been called out suddenly,” she answered with a slight smile. Then she stepped back to allow us in. Mrs. Watson was a dainty, self-possessed woman, whose vivid cornflower-blue eyes eclipsed any plainness in her refined face.

We followed her down the passage, which was dim, as such hallways usually are, into a back parlor that had been furnished as an office with a large mahogany desk and several leather upholstered chairs. An open door to the room beyond showed a cabinet filled with medical preparations.

“Can you say when you expect him, Mrs. Watson?” Godfrey asked.

“Hardly. Like most physicians’, my husband’s days are filled with long, empty hours broken by sudden flurries of patients or the emergency call.”

“No doubt such enforced idleness encourages a taste for other pursuits,” I commented.

“Why, yes.” The lady glanced rather fondly toward the desk, where some papers lay piled near a crystal inkstand and a Gray’s
Anatomy.
“As a matter of fact, my dear husband has a literary bent. Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee his prompt return. He has left the town.”

I glanced doubtfully at my lapel, about to consult my watch, when Godfrey spoke.

“Thank you, Mrs. Watson. We will wait nevertheless.” She nodded and left us, closing the passage door behind her.

“Why did you use that ridiculous name again?” I demanded. “Marshwine?”

Godfrey seemed genuinely hurt. “I thought that Dr. Watson might recognize my own name. Remember, Sherlock Holmes implied that he knew of Irene’s marriage to me when they all descended on Briony Lodge to trap Irene.”

“Then... why use my real name?” I demanded with some agitation.

“Because, dear Nell, I believe it is always better to tell the truth than to lie, and surely neither Holmes nor Watson can know your name.”

“At any rate,” I declared, “the doctor may be gone for hours—for the day.”

“I sincerely hope so,” Godfrey replied, going to the passage door and listening intently. “We could not have arranged a better opportunity to learn a thing or two about Dr. Watson.” He had paused before a photograph of a gaunt, medal-decorated man framed on the wall. “General Gordon of India. An Afghanistan connection already. I wonder what others may be hidden in drawers.”

“Godfrey! You would use this occasion to spy?”

“Yes, and so will you. Have a look at the desk, will you, Nell? You have a sublime instinct for paperwork.”

Godfrey darted into the neighboring chamber, leaving me no time to object. I gingerly approached the doctor’s large mahogany desk decorated with Chippendale fretwork, still unsure that I would actually stoop to the act required.

A small red Turkish carpet, perhaps two by five feet and somewhat worn, ran from the chair between the desk’s flanking pedestals of drawers, ending at the pair of side chairs for guests.

Obviously intended to protect the chamber’s overall Axminster carpeting, the Turkish rug reminded me of a royal runner, which the desk straddled like a throne to be approached at my own risk. It made the desk look as tempting of exploration as a covered candy dish set upon a brightly colored doily.

My gloved fingers trailed along the desk’s exposed wooden top, then paused at the piled papers. A casement window behind the chair wafted the drone of bees from the honeysuckle bush flowering beyond it. If I wished to investigate, I would have to remove my gloves. Proper paper shuffling requires agile fingers. I tugged the tight cotton off my right hand and soon was riffling through the pile.

I quickly discovered that this was not the usual stack of unconnected documents, but rather a continuous narrative. I could not believe my eyes, even as they read the opening sentence: “To Sherlock Holmes, she is always
the
woman.”

I sank onto the huge chair behind the desk, though its upholstery was lumpy and its legs were mounted on little wheels that gave me an uneasy seat, like a nervous mare. The shocking words leaped into stark emphasis before my eyes, all the more horrible for being penned in a neat, quite legible hand.

In
his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It
was not
that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind.

More than ever was I convinced that
the
man was a monster who, as his biographer admitted, “never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer... who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul,” and who, buried among his books in his Baker Street lodgings, alternated “from week to week between cocaine and ambition....”

My feet had pushed forward on the rug as I read. Beneath my boot soles, the material had rolled into a hard hummock as adamant as a doorstop, which made a useful footrest as I read the awful words before me.