The Curse Of The Diogenes Club (19 page)

“Incriminate him?”

“Apparently the princess gave a
nesting doll to each of her lovers. That doll proves de Merville
was one of her lovers and had a motive to kill her.”

She put the five nesting dolls
back together and closed them up. “It also means he didn’t murder
her. The nesting doll in the bathtub must have belonged to the
killer but if this one belongs to de Merville then he cannot be the
killer.”

He quickly revised his theory
and agreed with her logic. “I’ve got some men searching Damery’s
house right now for that same reason. I put some of my best men
onto it when you told me he was currently in the Stranger’s Room
with de Merville. They should report back soon.”

She thought about the other
illustrious lovers. “Did Freddy Cazenove have a doll?”

“Yes, his room at the Carlton
Club was searched last night, along with Damery’s, I might add.
There was a nesting doll in Freddy’s wardrobe but nothing was found
amongst Damery’s possessions. Freddy’s doll is currently in my desk
drawer. And, no, we won’t be conducting a search of Marlborough
House. It’s true the Prince of Wales met with Princess Paraskovia
on two occasions while visiting the dying Earl of Winchester and
that he spent time with the princess in an upstairs bedroom but to
suggest he murdered her because of that fleeting liaison is
stretching credulity. He would need to murder half the ladies at
court and a quite a few from the royal courts of Europe. Mycroft
also met with the princess while visiting the Earl. They walked in
the gardens on at least six occasions. I believe she was sounding
him out about her estrangement from the prince. He may have advised
her on Clarges Hotel.”

“If it turns out that Damery
has a nesting doll,” she reasoned, “then we can assume Prince
Sergei killed his own wife – he’s the only one left. The doll in
the bath must have been his and that’s why he took it. He paid a
visit to the hotel to speak to Mycroft to put the wind up him and
to see if he could retrieve his doll.”

He nodded as he put his hand
out for her to give him the doll then unlocked his desk drawer
using a small key in his pocket and locked de Merville’s doll
inside with Freddy’s.

She gathered up the crockery
and the three trays. “I better get downstairs before Pettigrew has
my guts for garters.”

He chuckled softly. “Where did
a Ukrainian countess learn a phrase like that?”

“You might be shocked by the
answer so I will spare you.”

He noted the coquettish smile
under the moustache and fought the urge to sweep her back into his
arms. “No,” he said blandly, eyeing the sexless butler’s uniform,
“I don’t think anything you say or do will ever shock me again.” He
picked up one of the invitations on the desk and grimaced. “Wish me
luck.”

“What for?”

“I’m going to deliver Mrs
Klein’s invitation in person. If I hurry I will make it just in
time before she changes out of her tea gown into her robe de
shark.”

She thought he said
chic
. “Robe de diner,” she corrected.

“If that’s what you want to
call it.”

So that’s why he had put on the
clean shirt and the brocade waistcoat. She presumed he had spruced
himself up for her benefit. Vanity suffered a flesh wound. “Make
sure you drop the hint that I am hoping she will decline. And don’t
worry about de Merville. I will invite Violet to lunch tomorrow and
tell her how much fun Longchamps will be. I think she fancies you.
She will put the pressure on papa. I will invite Miss Blague too,
just to make sure Mr Blague does not pull out at the last moment.
You will have to fight her off with a stick when she discovers
you’re a baronet. I won’t mention you have mastered the mechanics
of kissing. She will wet herself.”

There were more than a dozen
different responses to that tease, all ending with a demonstration
of something else he had mastered the mechanics of. But he had also
mastered the mechanics of restraint. He snatched up his Savile Row
coat and silk topper from a chair in the corner, well-satisfied
that he had just raced past the first post and galloped ahead of
Jim. “You really are a force to be reckoned with!”

As Major Nash travelled from
Pall Mall to Grosvenor Square he thought about the irony called
Life: He could have any woman he wanted except the
one
he
wanted.

He thought about Mycroft’s
relationship to the Countess too. As soon as the idea struck him
that the two of them were lovers he couldn’t shake it. He recalled
the secret dossier Mycroft Holmes had compiled on Countess Varvara
Volodymyrovna. It ran to more than a hundred pages. He’d never even
heard of her until Mycroft instructed him to find out everything he
could. It made for fascinating reading. She had been born out of
wedlock to a nameless stage actress – a euphemism for prostitute.
The father was unknown, most likely the Count of Odessos,
presumably a client of the prostitute, and the man who paid
generously to adopt the child.

He’d always assumed Mycroft was
planning to recruit the Countess to spy on Russia but perhaps it
was more personal than that. Or perhaps both – spy and lover? That
was the usual way. Mycroft made Machiavelli look like a rank
amateur. Heaven help England if he ever decided to swap sides.

Spy and lover? Yes, that’s
probably why Mycroft took all those walks in the garden with the
princess while supposedly visiting the dying Earl of Winchester.
He’d told her six walks but it was double that. Mycroft was
probably gathering more information on the Countess’s early life.
There were no secrets among Russia’s nobility. Hmm, odd that Prince
Sergei should be staying in Odessa around the time of the death of
the Count of Odessos. Did the princess know more about that sudden
death? Did she pass the information to Mycroft? Was Mycroft
planning to use it against Russia’s new ambassador in order to
extort favours?

It’s no wonder Mycroft called
the Countess in when the body of the princess was discovered in the
bathtub. And it’s no wonder she came running. She found the nesting
dolls, including the littlest, and the birch bark too. She knew
what to look for. She understood the significance. She did
Mycroft’s bidding.

Mycroft went briefly to
Battersea Park to view the bloated face of the man who had set the
bombs. He didn’t expect to recognize him. The man was a petty
criminal. He would have placed the bombs where he had been told to
place them. The positioning of the bombs could not have been done
earlier because they might have been discovered by the Prince’s
guardsmen or even one of the guests, as had happened to the third
bomb – inadvertently moved by someone at the last moment and put
under the stairs. Someone else at the ball, possibly a member of
staff, would have switched on the timers ready for detonation and
fled.

By tomorrow Lestrade would give
up trying to identify the bomb man and Sherlock would be summoned.
He would leave Sherlock to deal with the petty criminals.

He exchanged a few words with
Lestrade then proceeded to the estate of the Earl of Winchester. He
would sit for a few minutes by the bedside of his old friend and
then walk down to the birch wood before it got dark. There was a
lake and a folly; nothing grand, not a Greek Temple to the gods but
a little wooden tea-house. The sort of thing you see in children’s
fairy tales about Hansel and Gretel.

“Where have you been, Grimsby?”
Pettigrew seemed to be in a perennially bad mood. Not that she
could blame him. Her butlering skills left a lot to be desired and
her erratic behaviour would have driven most maître d’s to
distraction. He was glaring at the three trays covered with an
assortment of dirty plates, cups and glasses.

“I was tidying Major Nash’s
office, sir. He spilled his tea on his desk and it made a mess of
his papers, sir. He asked me to clean it up.”

He regarded her suspiciously.
“You were in his office unsupervised?”

“No, sir, Major Nash was there
to supervise. He has now gone out. I saw him go out the door as I
was crossing the hall, sir.”

Pettigrew seemed satisfied.
“You missed your tea break. You can take it now. There are cold
roast beef sandwiches and slices of ginger cake in the staff dining
room off the kitchen. I think you missed your lunch too. You can
take an extra ten minutes for your tea, Grimsby, and then I want
you to set the tables for dinner. One setting per table.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Oh, God! She couldn’t take any
more of this punishment! She had always thought of herself as hardy
– rich and spoilt but never pampered - until she put on this horrid
butler’s uniform. She would never complain about a tight corset
again after having her breasts strapped with bandages. Her feet
were throbbing like crazy and her legs were ready to drop off.
She’d been up and down the staircase a hundred times. She pictured
Dr Watson lazing about on a cushioned bench in the Turkish Baths
and almost wept.

Mycroft Holmes returned to find
her folding linen napkins into the shape of fleur-de-lis. It was
like origami for idiots.

“You’re the new butler?” he
addressed her way, loud enough for Pettigrew to hear. “Grimsby,
isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will be dining in my room
tonight, Grimsby. It is the dome room at the top of the stairs. You
can bring my meal up as soon as you are done folding these napkins,
that way you will familiarize yourself with all the different areas
of our club. Bring your silver polishing cloth. My collection of
silver wine coasters needs a good clean. I will have the Beef
Wellington with mushy peas and mash, a slice of Bakewell Tart and a
bottle of the Romanee-Conti Grand Cru.”

“The 82 or 83, sir?”

“Which one do you recommend,
Grimsby?”

“The 83, sir.”

As soon as she delivered
Mycroft’s dinner she threw the polishing cloth on the floor and
fell in a heap on his settee. “I cannot take much more of this. I
have another an hour to go and I think I will die.” After several
more minutes of pathetic whining she hardened up. “Did you view the
body of the bomb man?”

“Yes, but…no matter, the man
was a petty criminal, nothing more. He was strangled and then
thrown in the lake so that he would not lead us to the person who
hired him. Sherlock can follow it up tomorrow. Where’s Major Nash?
The hall porter said he went out more than an hour ago.”

“He wanted to deliver the
invitation to Mrs Klein in person.”

She then went on to explain
about what had transpired in his absence as she helped herself to
his glass of Grand Cru to dull the pain shooting up her legs. He
listened carefully, especially when she paraphrased the
conversation between the three men in the Stranger’s Room and the
fact Major Nash had found a Matryoshka doll in de Merville’s
bedroom. She finished with the news the general had listened in on
the telephone conversation concerning the bomb man.

“That settles it,” said Mycroft
sternly, eating mushy peas straight from his knife like a naughty
schoolboy when he thinks no one is looking. “The telephone will
have to be moved. Nash was right. It will be mounted between the
windows.”

She was lying on her back on
the settee, counting down the minutes while absently reading the
Latin inscription from Plato’s
Republic
that ran around the
perimeter of the dome: A true pilot must of necessity pay attention
to the seas, the heavens, the stars, the winds and everything
proper to the craft if he is to really rule the ship.

Mycroft was the
philosopher-king ruling the ship of state just as Jacques de Molay
was the true pilot during the time of the Crusades but who was the
French king?

“
Dieu n’est pas content,
nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans Le Royaume
.”

Mycroft’s keenly balanced knife
dropped into his portly lap, smearing green mush over his
immaculate crotch. “What did you just say, young lady?”

She didn’t bother to translate
– God is not happy, we have some enemies of the faith in the
kingdom - he spoke fluent French and there was nothing wrong with
his hearing. “The Diogenes Club is not unlike the Order of the
Knights Templar during the times of the Crusades but who is the
French king of the day?”

“Who told you that? It was
Nash, wasn’t it? The man has been trained to withstand torture and
the moment my back is turned he blabs out everything! I won’t ask
what sort of torture you applied!”

“Calm down, Uncle Mycroft,
you’ll give yourself indigestion. And don’t blame Major Nash. It
was not difficult to move deductively from primus baro to first
baron to Templar Knight. Besides, the fact the humidor in the
Stranger’s Room is shaped like the Temple of Solomon rather gives
the game away.”

“Damn Sherlock! That’s what
comes of allowing clever women into gentlemen’s clubs! No one else
has ever made the connection!”

“Well, they wouldn’t unless
they were Jewish and as you are only considering extending
membership to Americans and Irishmen it will be a while yet. I
travelled with my step-aunt through the Holy Land and we had an
excellent dragoman who was an expert on ancient history. The
humidor is rather splendid, especially that secret
compartment…”

“Enough, young lady!”

She redirected her quizzical
gaze to the inscription gracing the dome. “King and Pope? But who
is Philip and who is Clement?”

“Don’t ever repeat what you
just said outside this room,” he warned severely. “I love you
dearly but I will not tolerate any disobedience on this
matter.”

She threw her arms around his
thick neck where a vein throbbed violently, and was about to bestow
a reassuring, devoted kiss on his pasty, avuncular forehead when
Major Nash walked in clutching a Matryoshka doll.