The Curse Of The Diogenes Club (18 page)

“Is it Dr Watson?” he said.

“Is it Dr Watson what?”

“Are you married to Dr
Watson?”

The question this time
concerning her marital status did not surprise her; she had been
expecting it to crop up sooner or later. A widow and a widower
travelling together for months on end were bound to attract
speculation. She refused to warrant her relationship to Dr Watson
with an explanation. “You need to concentrate. Is Mycroft upstairs
in the dome?”

He noticed how she didn’t deny
it. In his experience a lack of denial was an affirmation. No
accounting for taste, but a woman who didn’t need to marry for
money often made the oddest choices. One of his sister’s rich
girlfriends married a mediocre Welsh poet with bandy legs and Lady
Brocklseby-Brown married a penniless farmer from Cumbria after
being widowed. A middle-aged Scottish doctor who was not the
sharpest tool in the box was probably a prize compared to the
above.

“No, something came up suddenly
and Mr Holmes went out after lunch.”

“After your phone call?”

He tried not to show surprise;
her guesses were uncanny. “Yes.”

“Was it something to do with
the bomb man? Is that what you were discussing on the phone just
before I delivered your lunch?”

Uncanny was an understatement.
He had to get to the bottom of how she could possibly know either
of those two things. Mounting the telephonic device on the wall by
the door that gave onto the landing was a grave mistake. He
believed it should have been mounted between the two windows,
furthest from the door and yet within reach of his desk. “Did you
overhear the telephone conversation from the landing?”

“No, I told you I thought de
Merville might have listened through the jib door. When I was
leaving the Stranger’s Room I heard de Merville say to Damery and
Blague that he had just learned something extraordinary that only
Scotland Yard and Machiavelli knew – that the bomb man had been
found.”

There was no disguising his
shock. “Did he actually use the word Machiavelli or is that one of
your embellishments?”

“He said
our own
Machiavelli
.”

“I see.”

“Judging by the look on your
face, Major Nash, de Merville heard every word you said. Who were
you speaking to?”

There was no point lying. She
knew too much already and there was nothing to be gained by keeping
the rest from her. “Inspector Lestrade.”

“He arrested the bomb man? The
roaming photographer?”

“No he fished him out of the
lake in Battersea Park.”

“Oh, excellent ! Excellent!’
she trilled, and it reminded him of someone he knew but he couldn’t
think who.

“Are they the invitations to
Longchamps?”

The Countess was about to go
back down to the butler’s pantry before Pettigrew became suspicious
of her long absence when she spotted a stack of envelopes on the
desk.

“Yes,” said Major Nash. “And
you can take three of them down to the Stranger’s Room right away.”
He sifted through them to find the ones for Damery, de Merville and
Blague. “I was going to hand deliver them this evening and you will
save me quite a bit of time. If they ask, just say they’re from Mr
Holmes but I instructed you to deliver them. They will think I
spotted their names in the sign-in book. Don’t enter into any
conversation, especially about where Mr Holmes has gone.”

She hurried out and left the
two trays behind so that she would have an excuse to return to his
office later. On her way to the Stranger’s Room she snatched a box
of cigars from the pantry, telling Colchester that de Merville
instructed her to restock the humidor.

She was about to knock when she
thought better of it and just walked in. The three men had polished
off most of the whiskey and were slumped in their seats. Damery was
facing the door and noticed her before the others, despite his
droopy eyelids.

“Fresh cigars,” he slurred.
“Good job.”

She stepped forward briskly and
put all of the invitations into his hand. “Major Nash instructed me
to deliver these, sir, on behalf of Mr Holmes.”

With her back to the three men
but her ears pealed, she restocked the humidor as slowly as
possible. She removed all the old cigars one at a time and lined
them up on the sideboard, then put them back one at a time. She did
the same with the new batch.

“What the devil is Machiavelli
playing at now?” grumbled de Merville when he ran his bloodshot
eyeballs over his invitation. “Longchamps? Kent? This weekend! I’m
going to a regimental dinner at Horse Guards! And I know where I’d
rather be!”

“Well, I will be going,”
asserted Mr Blague. “I promised to go to the opera with Batty and
Dolly Vanderlinden. I cannot stand all that goddam caterwauling.
Any excuse to get out of it will be welcome. My invitation includes
my daughter, but I cannot see Mona going to Kent for some blasted
conference to thrash out that New Year’s Eve bash and the threat to
the Prince Regent. She wasn’t even there. She’ll be bored to tears
and we’ve had enough of them lately. She can take my place at the
opera.”

“I’m going to accept too,”
decided Damery. “It will look as if I don’t give two hoots for the
Prince Regent if I decline. And look who else is going. Mycroft has
provided a list of invitees. Prince Sergei is invited. It will be
bad form to turn it down.”

“Trust you to play the
diplomat, Damery. Don’t you ever give it a rest? The prince has
been invited but that doesn’t mean he’ll turn up. I heard he was
going down to Scotland to do a spot of grouse shooting. I doubt
he’ll change his plans at the last moment to go to Kent.”

“Look at the names again,”
suggested Damery, putting the insult of his old friend down to too
much single-malt. “Isadora has been invited. And the Countess too.
I think that will sway things in favour of Kent. The prince fancies
himself as a ladies’ man. And Violet’s name is there too. Didn’t
you say she got on well with the Countess? I think she’ll relish a
weekend away from the smog of London.”

“But look at the name of the
house,” lamented de Merville. “Longchamps is the tumbledown hovel
belonging to Mycroft’s aide de camp. The last baronet shot himself
after running up gambling debts and the place has been allowed to
run to wrack and ruin. Privacy and discretion! My arse! We might as
well stay in an igloo on the frozen tundra! I will forbid Violet
going. She will catch her death. Kent is one big marsh. There’s
more miasma in Kent than in the whole of London.”

“Kent is not that bad,” argued
Damery. “And I got it from Hubbard who got it from Bebbington at
the Carlton Club that Longchamps has been rejuvenated.”

“That’s just gossip dressed up
as news. Once you get membership here you won’t have to spend time
with idiots like Hubbard and Bebbington. The Carlton Club will go
into serious decline when everyone jumps ship. We can double the
membership fee here and buy our own golf course. I was thinking
about that course in St Andrews.”

The conversation drifted to
golf courses and the men seemed to sober up.

“Grimsby,” snapped de Merville,
“leave those blasted cigars alone – you look like you’re putting
them to bed - and fetch three strong black coffees as fast as you
can.”

She returned with coffee to
find that the three men had returned to topic of Longchamps.

“Nash inherited some money from
his great-aunt that had been earmarked specifically for the family
seat,” Damery was saying. “I’ve been meaning to go down and have a
look. The Forsyths were passing through Kent last November and the
old family retainer at Longchamps gave them a tour. They couldn’t
believe the transformation.”

“Well, that’s sealed it for
me,” declared the American tycoon. “I wouldn’t mind a weekend away
from the soot and smoke. If the Valkyrie and the Snow Queen are
there it will improve the view as long as they understand their
role is to entertain the gentlemen. We can get that damned bomb
business out of the way on the first night and enjoy a few hands of
whist.”

“Well, I’m not changing my
mind,” emphasised de Merville strenuously. “And Violet won’t be
going either. You can have all that whist to yourself. Grimsby put
some more coals on the fire and give it a good poke. Then take this
empty bottle and get rid of it behind the bar. No need to say who
drank it. If anyone asks, you have no idea, is that clear?”

She was crossing the entrance
hall when Pettigrew loomed into view. His voice was a low
threatening snarl.

“I haven’t seen you all
afternoon, Grimsby. If I find you’ve been loafing off somewhere,
having a cigarette on the sly in the latrine, it will be your first
and last day in one. What have you got there behind your back?”

She gulped. “An empty bottle,
sir.”

He checked the label and his
face darkened. “Where did you find that?”

“Under the Christmas tree, sir.
I was straightening the limp candles when –”

“It’s all right, Pettigrew,”
interrupted Major Nash, coming down the stairs. “The Scotch was
compliments of Mr Holmes to the three gentlemen in the Stranger’s
Room.” He turned his attention to her. “Colchester will direct you
where to put the empty bottle, Grimsby, and then make me a gin and
tonic and bring it up to my office. No ice. Let’s make that the
last word before there is a formal complaint from one of the
members.”

He was waiting for her in his
office when she arrived with his gin and tonic plus a slab of
ginger cake and a cup of tea.

“How did the invitations go
down?” he quizzed. “What’s this? I didn’t request more cake and
another cup of tea?”

“It’s for me. I’m famished. I
missed my lunch because I was up here talking to you.” She chewed
and talked at the same time. “Damery and Blague are all for going
to Kent but de Merville was adamant he and Violet weren’t
going.”

Major Nash’s bold brow drew
down in a thoughtful frown. “If what you said earlier about de
Merville listening in on the telephone conversation was accurate
then it’s imperative for him to be there. If he’s planning a coup
d’etat it puts him in the frame for the bombs. We either need to
expose him or put the wind up him enough to back off. But to do
that we have to get him to Longchamps.”

She moved to the window to look
out on Pall Mall as she gulped her tea. Winter had dropped its dark
mantle hours ago but how wondrously the gaslights burned through
the fog, creating haloes of moony light. In 1807 Pall Mall was the
first street in London to have gas-lamps installed. It reduced the
crime rate and was considered a marvel. Almost one hundred years
later, in the year 1900, it was still a marvel.

“I want to better understand
something and I would ask Mycroft but he’s not here right now,” she
said quizzically. “Explain to me the importance of the role of
primus baro. I still can’t see how it really matters. This is a
gentlemen’s club, albeit with important members, not
parliament.”

He didn’t reply straight away
but moved to the second window, gin and tonic in hand, and stared
at the golden glow of aureoles banishing the gloom while he
considered her relationship to Mycroft Holmes. There was definitely
something between them though she had denied they were married.
Lovers perhaps? Yes, that made sense. Mycroft Holmes had been
behaving strangely ever since the Countess returned to London with
Dr Watson nearly a month ago, and she usually referred to him as
Mycroft, not Mr Holmes, or even Mycroft Holmes, and she softened
the sound of his name when she said it. He wasn’t just imagining
it. She did it again just a moment ago.

“Primus baro means first baron.
Mycroft Holmes might not sit in parliament but he controls almost
everything behind the scenes.”

“How? Why? Who grants him such
power?”

“You’ve heard of the Knights
Templar?”

“Yes, of course.”

“They were the world’s bankers.
That was their power. Nothing’s changed.”

She felt the enormity of that
simple explanation when the hairs on the back of her neck stood on
end. “So whoever is elected primus baro wields enormous financial
clout throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom?”

“Further than that.”

“So it is important for the
primus baro to be an honest man rather than a self-serving
megalomaniac?”

“Yes.”

“The alternative for England
and the world could be a nightmare.”

“Yes.”

His capacity for understatement
served to emphasise just how terrible the nightmare could be.
“Mycroft was elected about three months ago. Tell me how the
elections work.”

“Primus baro is a position for
life. The next primus baro can only get elected if Mycroft dies.
Only the six committee members can put themselves up for election,
five now that Admiral Quantock is deceased. Two don’t want the job
and the third is the incapacitated Earl of Winchester. He’s still a
committee member but no longer primus baro. That only leaves de
Merville. If anything happens to Mycroft it’s a one horse
race.”

She replaced her empty tea cup
on the tray. “If you have no objection, I will use your bathroom. I
cannot use the gentlemen’s latrines for obvious reasons and I
cannot use the ladies’ WC either.”

As she was returning to his
office, passing through the bedroom, she caught sight of the
Matryoshka doll she had spotted earlier on his desk. It was sitting
on the opposite bedside table, split into its five individual
pieces. She scooped them up.

“Where did you get this?”

He managed to hide his surprise
after the first stupefied blink. “Is that the one from my bedside
table?”

“Yes, where did it come
from?”

He took a deep breath. “De
Merville’s room. I conducted a search while he was at lunch. He
will know I’ve got it but he won’t say anything because it will
incriminate him.”