The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4: The Beekeeper's Apprentice; A Monstrous Regiment of Women; A Letter of Mary; The Moor (65 page)

The fog had closed in. Such a mild monosyllable,
fog
, for London’s own particular brand of purgatory, this greasy, burning, indescribably thick yellow miasma that seared the nose and fouled the lungs, rotted clothing and blackened buildings, caused hundreds of deaths by mishaps and brought the proud capital of an empire stumbling literally to its knees.

I made my way out the door and down the remembered four steps, patted my way down the front of the station a few feet, and allowed my shoulders to slump back against the bricks. God, I was tired, weary to the marrow of my bones. My right shoulder ached with the damp and the wrenching it had received, the two cuts on my left arm throbbed along with it, and my head pounded with the reaction of violence, received and committed, followed by two hours of verbal fencing with Inspector Richmond, with nothing in my stomach but sour Camp coffee. I leant my poor trampled hat back against the wall, aware of a trembling that threatened to surface from deep within my body, and tried to summon the energy to walk one and a half blind miles to my unwelcoming flat.

I always hated what Londoners called with such wry pride their “particulars,” their “peculiars,” their “pea soupers,” like the beaming parents of some uncontrollable and pathologically destructive brat. Myopia is too close to a permanent state of fog to make for any entertainment in finding one’s self groping through the streets with hands outstretched, with the additional irritant of having to be constantly wiping one’s spectacles and wondering if it would not be simpler to dispense with them entirely until such time as the Thames deigned to melt back into its solid banks and its fluid state. Also, truth to tell, I have always been a bit of a claustrophobe, and the edginess that comes from suppressing an irritating and irrational fear, combined with my current far-from-irrational caution about venturing into a London bristling, for all I knew, with knife-wielding youths all too willing to pick up where their colleague had left off, made me regret that the chief inspector had not decided to keep me locked up overnight. Perhaps
I ought to turn myself in, I thought in disgust. Fling my picklocks on the charge desk and myself into the burly hands of the sergeant on duty. I wiped my spectacles with my handkerchief and replaced them on my nose, then moved the white linen square slowly away from my eyes. Standing as I was directly under the entrance light of the station, at arm’s length the handkerchief was only a vaguely lighter streak in the soup. From up the street came a heavy thud and a metallic screech, followed immediately by two frightened shrieks, one female and one equine, and two male voices began to curse each other hugely. Taxi and cart colliding, I diagnosed, and sighed.

In response, a voice spoke from the gloom on my right.

“Russell?”

I jerked and the handkerchief dropped from my hand, lost forever in the Stygian depths of the pavement, but had he been standing nearer than the ten feet or so that separated us, I believe I should have flung my arms about him and kissed him. As it was, I had to content myself with merely grinning—idiotic, considering the ambiguity of my feelings about the man over the past few weeks. But the lift in my heart could not be denied, as if the door to my own house had suddenly opened up before me on the street.

“Damn it, Holmes, how do you do that? I swear you must have psychic powers, or the best conjuring manual in the business.”

I heard his footsteps come up to me as surely as if it had been a clear spring morning, and an impression of his face swam into view.

“Just a brother, with ears in many places. Mycroft reached me an hour ago with the message that the police had a dangerous young woman in custody. I came on the Underground, which is still operating, if slowly. Had you not emerged in another half hour, I should have gone to your rescue, but I thought it might be less complicated were I to let you talk your own way out. You were not injured?”

“Not seriously, either by the man with the knife or by the metropolitan police, thank you. What are you doing back in town? You said yesterday you were going back to Sussex for a few days.”

“I never left, although town has seen nothing of Sherlock Holmes.”

I had a sudden brief vision of Holmes moving crablike through the city, sidling through the background of scenes in first one guise, then another.

“Basil the driver?”

“Some of his cousins, perhaps,” he agreed. “I decided that the experiments awaiting me were of less importance than the business I have here.”

“And I am keeping you from it.”

“You are it.” Before I could consider whether to be warmed or forewarned by this, he went on. “You said you were going up to Oxford for a few days. Have you changed your mind?”

“Holmes, I can’t change my plans. I promised Duncan.”

“Quite. In that case, I shall assume the London end of the investigation until you return. Not, perhaps, inside your Temple, but nearby. Although, come to think of it, they may need a casual workman. Perhaps even a cleaning woman.”

“Holmes, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“No? You may be right. It is, after all, your investigation. Is there some way I can be of service?” he asked politely, as if he might actually consider standing in the wings awaiting an invitation. I nearly laughed.

“At the moment, I fear, I am more in need of skills domestic than investigative. I am cold, Holmes, and I am hungry.” I could not, of course, see his expression, but I did not think he smiled at my unintentionally plaintive words. He just turned and, tucking my right arm through his left one, began to stroll into the curry yellow night.

He did not even demand speech of me, but as we made our way—or rather, as he surefootedly steered me—through what my ears and nose told me were streets punctuated by narrow and unsavoury passageways, he told me a lengthy tale of a long-ago experiment into sensory deprivation—namely, living for eight unbroken weeks as a blind man, wearing completely opaque lenses and led about by the young urchin Billy.

At a conjunction of walls which, if invisible, had a familiar feel in its echoes, Holmes took out a key and the wall again opened. I greeted the Constable politely and the Vernet as an old friend, ate the food Holmes set before me, drank the brandy he pressed into my hand, and allowed myself to be pushed into the bedroom. The door shut behind me, and with neither qualms nor questions, I let the remnants of the elves’ handiwork slither to the floor and sank with immense gratitude beneath the bedclothes, and slept.

  16  

SATURDAY
, 22
JANUARY

Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies
we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not
hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we
have no voice, or representation.

—
ABIGAIL ADAMS
(1774–1818)

I
WOKE TO
find a valise containing clothing from my flat just inside the door. I scorned the silks for the moment in favour of a dressing gown I found in the wardrobe, so old that the thread had abandoned the quilted cuffs and collar, but quite long enough to cover my extremities. Holmes was seated in front of his fire, a cup at his elbow, a pipe in his hand, a book on his knee.

“Interior domestic,” I remarked. “Portrait of an
amateur
at rest. What time is it?”

“Nearly ten.”

“Good heavens, how sybaritic of me.”

“Shocking,” he agreed. “Tea or coffee?”

“Is there milk?”

“There is.”

“All the comforts. Tea, and I’ll make it. A scene as picturesque as the one you occupy must not be broken.”

My arm gave off twinges as I reached for pot and canister, but nowhere near so much as I had anticipated. I hadn’t realised Holmes was watching me until he commented.

“The cut is not troublesome, I see.”

“No, happily enough. It burns, of course, but I was lucky.”

“More so than your assailant. He is dead.”

“
What
? But I didn’t . . . Ah. Murdered.”

“In his hospital bed, at four o’clock this morning. Not by the sword he lived by, I fear, and the hospital declares itself uncertain until the autopsy, but even they are aware that villains rarely drop dead of natural causes under such circumstances. Someone in a hospital coat with a needle or a pillow, no doubt while the constable was away fetching tea.” He was annoyed rather than disturbed.

“Fast work. Inspector Richmond will be livid. Do you want a cup?”

“Yes, thanks. I’ll cook your breakfast when you’re ready.”

He was quite the perfect host, producing on cue boiled eggs, toast and marmalade, tinned peaches, and coffee. Beyond that, he was the Sherlock Holmes of old, my friend and compatriot. We had not, I realised, had a great deal of time for simply chatting since I had gone up to Oxford at the beginning of the previous October, and we made up for some of the missed conversation that morning. His monographs and my papers took a solid hour, to say nothing of his bees, his chemical experiments, and the latest developments in forensic pathology, always an exciting topic.

There was actually little need for a conference with Holmes, and as he expressed little interest in what bits of hard information I had gleaned, I began to suspect that the reason for his presence outside the police station had been less the business he had claimed than—what was the alternative? Pleasure?

When eventually I rose to dress, I had forgotten about the rip in
my arm and brushed painfully against the back of the chair. Holmes insisted on looking at it then. I hesitated, as beneath the dressing gown, I was wearing only my silk underclothing, but then I thought, Don’t be stupid, Russell, he’s seen you in a lot less than this. Still, I submitted to his ministrations with a heightened awareness of his fingers on my arm, although, for his part, he seemed unaware of a change, simply fitting a clean dressing across the rapidly healing cut as if the arm being serviced were his own.

I told myself firmly that I preferred it this way.

Certainly by the time we left the bolt-hole, we were friends again, which counted for a great deal.

T
HE OWNER OF
the office building where Holmes had established his refuge was an enlightened employer, and the Saturday half day was so scrupulously observed that the place was all but deserted by two in the afternoon. I put a ladder in my stockings climbing out of the wardrobe (no wonder women got in the habit of allowing themselves to be handed in and out of places, with the sorts of clothing we have been forced to wear).

We returned to the station, where I signed the statement for Inspector Richmond and managed to slip away before he could question me further regarding a death I knew nothing about. That task completed, we strolled along to the nearest Lyons for coffee, a cheery place that struck me as an incongruous setting for Holmes until I thought of its anonymity. Outside on the pavement, he seemed oddly reluctant to part.

“You’ll have that arm looked at in a day or two?”

“I said I would, Holmes.”

“You’re certain you don’t want me to . . .”

“Holmes, it’s only a week. Six days. Veronica is safe; I’m already entrenched in the Temple. I don’t want you to dress up as a cleaning
woman. As soon as I’ve finished with the presentation, I’ll come back to work.”

“I don’t like it,” he burst out.

“Holmes, hands off! You said yourself, this is my investigation—this side of it, at any rate. See what luck you have with solving the two other deaths. That should be a challenge even for you, deaths classified as accidents months ago. I give you a week, and then we can both tackle the Temple in an all-out effort.”

His narrowed eyes followed a brewer’s dray negotiating a turn into a narrow alleyway. He shook his head.

“I’ve never taken orders, from anyone,” he muttered, almost too low to hear.

“High time then, Holmes,” I pronounced with asperity. “I may be in town Tuesday or Wednesday; otherwise, I’ll see you on Saturday morning at the flat.” I turned and walked away.