The List Of Seven (55 page)

Doyle put on the bowler and overcoat, picked up his umbrella—there was a threat of rain—and went down to the carriage entrance. The driver was not known to him, but waiting inside the hansom was Inspector Claude Leboux.

"Claude."

"Arthur," Leboux said, with a curt nod.

Doyle took a seat across from him. Leboux signaled the driver, and they drove away. Leboux was loath to meet Doyle's eye; he appeared simultaneously angered and chastened but was clearly in no mood for confrontation.

"Been keeping well?" asked Doyle.

"Been better."

The ride took twenty minutes, during which Leboux twice consulted his watch. Doyle heard gates open outside as they slowed, then the echo of hoofbeats as they entered a porte cochere. The carriage stopped; Leboux preceded Doyle out of the cab and ushered him through an open, waiting door, where they were greeted by a solid, dignified man of early middle age, alert, intelligent, but weighed by deeply private responsibility. The man struck a note of recognition in Doyle, but he was unable to track its source. The man nodded to Leboux, both thanks and dismissal, and led Doyle away.

They walked through a dimly lit antechamber, down a narrow, wainscoted corridor, and into a comfortable sitting room. Nothing could be learned about its owner from the room; furnishings were exquisite but neutral and impersonal. The man waved a hand at a davenport, inviting him to sit.

"Wait here, please," he said. They were the first words he had spoken.

Doyle nodded, removed his hat, and took a seat. The man left the room.

He heard her footsteps first, a slow, stately rhythm of heel to parquet, then her voice, imperious, golden, asking something of her companion, the man who had escorted Doyle. Doyle heard his name mentioned.

The door opened. Doyle rose as she entered. There was a shock at seeing her in the flesh at such close distance. She was smaller than he'd imagined, not much more than five feet tall, but she projected a stout presence that flowed across the room, closing the distance between them. The familiar face—plain, doughty, as familiar to any English boy as that of his own mother—was nowhere near as stern and adamantine as he had so often seen it depicted. The gray bun of her hair, her simple, matronly black woolen dress, the white linen collar and mantilla, were all talismans as intimate to him as the backs of his own hands. She smiled at the sight of him, an animation never hinted at in pictures, and her smile was dazzling, a diamond in a field of posies.

"Dr. Doyle, I hope this has not proved an inconvenience," said Queen Victoria.

"No, Your Majesty," he said, surprised at the sound of his own voice. He bowed, hoping to offer some semblance of the proper protocol.

"It is very good of you to come," she said, and took a seat. quite informally. "Please."

She extended a hand, indicating the chair to her right, and Doyle sat there. He remembered reading somewhere that she had grown nearly deaf in her left ear. She turned to the man who had served as Doyle's guide. "Thank you, Ponsonby."

Henry Ponsonby, the Queen's private secretary—that's how I know him, from the newspapers, thought Doyle—nodded and left the room. The Queen turned back to Doyle, and he felt the intensity of will in her pale gray eyes turn their full attention to him. They sparkled with warmth at present, but woe to be whosoever feels their wrath, he thought.

"It seems you and I have a very good friend in common," said the Queen.

"Do we?"

"A very good friend indeed."

She's speaking of Jack, he realized. "Yes. Yes, we do."

She nodded knowingly. "We've had a visit from our friend recently. He has told me how you proved such a very great help to him in a matter of no small importance to myself and to my family."

"I hope he hasn't overstated—"

"Our friend is not generally given to inaccuracies of any kind. I would say he has a great fondness for precision. Would you not agree?"

"I would. Most certainly."

"Then I would have no reason not to take him at his word, would I?"

"No, ma'am—Your Majesty."

"Nor you any reason to disavow the free expression of my most heartfelt gratitude."

"None whatsoever, Your Majesty. Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Thank you, Dr. Doyle."

She nodded. Doyle bowed his head in return.

"I've given to understand that as a result of your generous assistance, you have experienced some difficulty with our London police."

"Sadly, yes—"

"Let me assure you that you may consider this a cause for no further concern."

"I am ... most deeply appreciative."

She nodded again and was silent for a moment, regarding him with what seemed to be a benign fondness, if not coquetry.

"Axe you a married man, Doctor?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"Really? A vigorous, handsome young man such as yourself. And a doctor? Why, I can't imagine."

"I can only say that the appropriate ... situation has not presented itself to me."

"Mark my word," she said, leaning forward and raising a royal finger. "Someone will come along. The married state is not often what we expect it to be, but we soon discover it is most definitely what we require."

Doyle nodded politely, trying to take the words to heart. She leaned back, moving immediately to the next item on her agenda.

"How do you find my grandson's health? I mean the Duke of Clarence."

Having been so effortlessly disarmed, Doyle was set back by the directness of the question. "Without having had a chance to thoroughly examine him, I—"

"Your opinion only, Doctor, please."

Doyle hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "I would respectfully advise Your Majesty that the Duke should hereafter remain under close if not constant supervision."

The Queen nodded, digesting the full implication of his statement before moving on. "Now. We will demand of you, Doctor, your oath never to speak on any of what you have heard or witnessed, to any living soul, as long as you may live."

"I do so swear, my most solemn oath."

"And nary a word about our mutual friend and his friendship to us. On both these points, I am afraid, we must absolutely insist."

"Yes. Upon my life."

She looked at him, found satisfaction in the sincerity of his answer, and relaxed her scrutiny. Doyle sensed the audience was at an end.

"I find you a most impressive gentleman for your years, Dr. Doyle."

"Your Majesty is too kind."

She rose to her feet. Doyle preceded her, extending a hand, which she accepted, instantly fearing that he'd committed some dreadful faux pas. If so, the reassuring squeeze she gave before letting go set his mind at rest.

"You bear closer examination. We shall have our eye on you. And if we find just occasion to call upon you again, be fair warned we will not hesitate to do so."

"I only hope I shall not disappoint."

"Of that, young man, I have precious little doubt."

Queen Victoria smiled once more—the unexpected radiance dazzling again—and turned to go. For the moment, the weight of the world truly appeared to rest on those improbable shoulders. She hadn't taken two steps before Ponsonby, telepathically, it seemed, appeared in the doorway.

"If I may be bold enough to ask . . ." said Doyle.

The queen stopped and looked at him.

"Did our mutual friend give Your Majesty any indication of where he might be going?"

He wasn't certain at first if the question—or the interruption itself—had violated some invisible line of propriety.

"With regard to the movements of our mutual friend," said the Queen in measured tones, "we have found it advisable ... never to inquire." Victoria raised a sly eyebrow: Courtesy of

Jack, a moment of unprecedented intimacy passed between them. Doyle smiled and bowed slightly as she passed from the room, Ponsonby falling in alongside like a tug escorting a clipper.

I'm a man who's been for a ride on a comet, thought Doyle: I know I'm back on terra firma now, but, for better or worse, it will somehow never look or feel the same again.

Ponsonby returned moments later, and they retraced then-steps through the private corridors of Buckingham Palace back to the waiting carriage. The secretary opened the door for Doyle, waited for him to take his seat, and handed him a small, rectangular package.

"Her Majesty's compliments," said Ponsonby.

Doyle thanked him. Ponsonby nodded, then closed the door, and Doyle rode back to his hotel alone. He waited to open the package until he was again inside his room.

It was a fountain pen. A sleek black fountain pen. It lay as delicately balanced in his hand as a feather.

chapter twenty BROTHERS

HE WAS TO STAY ON AT THE MELWYN FOR ANOTHER THREE days. He spent the mornings strolling leisurely from shop to shop, in search of replacements for the most necessary of his lost possessions. Which forced him to consider a most welcome question: What does one actually need?

After taking a long lunch alone, Doyle each day returned to the privacy of his room and wrote through the afternoon, letters to Eileen; all the many things he'd wished he'd said to her and hoped he would still one day have an opportunity to say.

Returning from lunch on his last day in London, he found a letter waiting for him at the desk. The envelope was shockingly familiar, identical to the one he had received at his apartment not so long and worlds ago: a vellum cream. The words inside were written in the same feminine hand, not printed this time, composed in a flawless, flowing script, unmistakably the same hand nonetheless.

Dearest Arthur,

By the time you receive this, I will have left England. I hope you can one day find it in your heart to forgive me for not seeing you before I left and again, now, before I go. My heart, my very soul, had been so soon broken when we met, and the circumstances were thereafter so extreme, a moment never came that provided me with either the time or luxury to grieve. That time has come now.

I never spoke of him to you at any length and I shan't now except to say I was in love with him. We were to be married in the spring. I very much doubt if I will ever love a man as much again. Perhaps time will change that in me but it's far too soon to know.

I know that none of us who lived through those days and nights together shall ever see life with the same blind and blinkered eyes with which most around us look out at the world. Perhaps we have seen too much. I only know that your kindness, your decency, your tenderness to me and your courage are a beacon that will guide me through whatever remains of this dark passage.

Please know, dear man, that you will be forever in my thoughts, that you have my love always, wherever the tide may carry you. Be strong, my darling Arthur, I know in my heart, know truly and believe that the light you possess will burn to the great benefit of this world long after our poor footprints have been washed from the sand.

I love you.

Your Eileen

He read it three times. He tried to find comfort in the words. He knew, objectively, that it was offered there. Perhaps he would discover it on some distant sunlit morning. But not today. He replaced the letter in its envelope and set it gently between the pages of a book.

Where I will find it—he thought with startling prescience—quite by accident, many years from now. And thanks to the dependable erosions of time, I will be unable to remember with any reliable precision the soft, exquisite pain of this terrible moment.

Doyle packed his things—two satchels now, beginning again from scratch—and took a train that afternoon to Bristol.

Two months passed in this fashion: traveling by rail to a new town, somewhere in Britain. Taking a room, anonymously. Gleaning what he could about the environs and its history from libraries and circumspect conversations in public houses until his curiosity about the area was satisfied. Then, moving on, at random, without any pattern or plan, each new destination chosen on the morning of departure. He was assured the police no longer sought him; this was his way of avoiding any other interested patties whose intentions were not so reliable.

He read what newspapers he could find as he went, scouring the pages for signs. One day in northern Scotland, he came across an obituary in a two-week-old London paper: Sir Nigel Gull, erstwhile physician to the royal family. The body found in the study of his country home. A presumed suicide.

It was time.

Now late March when he returned to London, he once again took rooms at the Hotel Melwyn and settled into the same routine he had observed before, certain his life could not move forward until he had some word from Jack, equally certain it would not be long in coming.

Late one night after the passing of a thunderstorm, while he was watching the receding lightning spider across the sky from his window, there came a knock at Doyle's door.

Larry stood outside. The dog, Zeus, was with him. Both wet and sodden. Doyle let them in, and gave him towels. Larry removed his coat and took a seat by the fire, accepting Doyle's offer of a brandy. Zeus lay at his feet. Larry stared into the flames and finished the drink in a few draughts. He seemed smaller than Doyle remembered, his face harder and more careworn. Doyle waited for him to speak.

"We left you at the station like that. Didn't like it. Guv'nor said you'd had enough. Done more than enough, too. No reason to trouble you anymore, he said. He's the boss, wasn't he?"

"I don't blame you for that, Larry."

Larry nodded, grateful for the absolution. "First thing was, see, we had to give me brother a proper burial. Took him home. Put him in the ground besides our Mum. That was good."

"Yes."

"Then Mr. Sparks, he has some business in London. I goes down to Brighton like he asks me, and there I waited. Weeks go by. A month. Mastered every game on the boardwalk, I did. Then here he comes one night wit' news. The movements of a particular schooner. One wot left the port a' Whitby in the first week of the new year. Sailed for Bremen,

that was its destination. That's where we're goin' now, he tells me.

"We catch the next packet 'cross the Channel. Make our way to the German harbor of Bremen. Inquiries are made in that city; Jack speaks the language, no surprise there."