He looked at me, deliberate, phlegmatic, a friend. He nodded twice and pursed his lips.
“Struck me, though, what with everyone leaving yesterday, you might be a bit lacking tonight. Can I offer you a bowl of soup? Tillie sent it over, with a chicken and some of her cheese bread, if you’re hungry.” Tillie was Patrick’s lady friend and the owner of the village inn, and her kitchen attracted patrons from Eastbourne and even London. I accepted with enthusiasm and walked with him down to his snug little house near the barn.
Later that night, warmed through and well fed, I reentered my house and stood without turning on the lights, listening to the faint shifting of 250-year-old beams, the whisper of the breeze from the kitchen window, the faint sensations of an old building adjusting itself to emptiness. I had loved this house as a child, our summer cottage before my entire family had died, killed by a car accident in California the year before I had met Holmes. I stood in the dark, wondering if I might coax back the shades of my mother and my father and my little brother, now that my aunt was gone, then walked up the stairs to stand in the door of what had been my parents’ bedroom, a seldom-used guest room during my aunt’s reign. It felt warmer in there, despite the swirls of mist. I smiled at my fancies, closed and latched the window, and went to bed.
In the morning, I rang Holmes, but Mrs Hudson had not seen him in some days. The house was miserably cold and damp and reproachful, and I abandoned it to the mercies of the decorators by returning to London.
PATRICK DROVE ME to the station in the old dogcart. When he had reined in, he dug into the pocket of his greatcoat and brought out a small wrapped parcel, which he thrust out in my general direction.
“Meant to wish you many happy returns, Miss Mary. Forgot to last night.”
“Patrick, you didn’t need to do that.” Indeed, he never had before. I undid the wrappings, which looked as if they had been used a number of times before, and found inside a fine lawn handkerchief with my initials twining in one corner and a row of tiny purple-and-blue flowers chasing one another around the border. It was impractical, pretty, ridiculous, and touching. “How absolutely lovely.”
“You like it, then. Good. Good. M’sister does ’em. Asked me what kind of flower you liked. Told her those what d’you call ’em, pansy things. Did I get it right?”
“Completely. I shall take it out and wave it in front of people all day and touch it delicately to the tip of my nose, and all of London will admire it. It’s the nicest birthday present I’ve had.”
“Get many, did you?”
“Er, no.” Excluding the pounds, dollars, and francs, three houses, two factories, and a ranch in California, but those did not count as presents. “But I’m sure Mrs Hudson will have something for me when I see her.”
“Mr Holmes not bein’ one for gifts and all.”
“The last present he gave me was a set of picklocks. This is immeasurably nicer,” I said, waving it about. I leaned over and kissed him on his bristly cheek, ignoring the furious blush this brought on, and dashed for my train.
I was outside the elves’ shop when they put up the shutters, and I spent several hours there—expense I had expected, but I’d never have believed that clothing one’s self could be so time-consuming! The two of them seemed oddly apprehensive when they ushered me into the room used for displaying the finished product (they used no live mannequins—in fact, the only people they seemed able to put up with having under foot were the two grandsons who tidied up after them, refolding the patterns, rerolling the strewn bolts of fabric, and sweeping up the pins and snippets). One glance explained their apprehension—the elves, confronted with a rail-thin woman nearly six feet tall in her stockinged feet who walked like a woodsman and hated frips and frills, had opted for drama, plain and simple.
The first piece, the only finished one, was not too bad, a suit of soft grey-blue wool with a wide band of Kashmiri-style embroidery, white and a darker blue, set into the jacket and the skirt. The fit was nearly as comfortable as my father’s old linen shirt, for which I was grateful.
Then I caught sight of their idea of an evening gown suited to me.
One of the problems I have in clothing myself is a concern that never would have come up in my mother’s day, but since the war, with dresses becoming ever more skimpy, evening wear was nearly impossible, and I had tended simply to avoid those few formal affairs I might have been tempted by. On Thursday, I had been forced to strip to the skin before Mrs Elf to demonstrate just why low necklines are not suitable: I do not care to have my fellows at table or on the dance floor offended by, or speculating on, my scar tissue. The automobile accident that killed my family when I was fourteen had left me just able to wear a cautious degree of décolleté, but five years later the bullet through my right shoulder put an end to any thoughts of bare flesh below the neck.
This dress, though—as a piece of pure engineering, it was fascinating; as a piece of evening wear, even in its present incomplete state, it transformed the padded torso on which it hung. High on the right shoulder, it dropped down to expose the left and continued down and yet farther down, the fabric barely meeting at the waist before it began a slit up the left side, where the hem angled down in a mirror image of the bodice line. The ice blue silk made it aloof—in any warmer colour, it would have been an incitement to riot.
I gulped, smiled feebly at Mrs Elf, declined her eager invitation for me to try it on, and turned to the other two half-formed outfits. One was a rich brown with slashes of crimson that looked as if they would appear and disappear with movement; the other was an intense eaude-nil sheath with lots of little tucks and ruches that made the dressmaker’s dummy look like the representation of a woman considerably more voluptuous than I. I clutched the fronts of my new overjacket and told them that I should have to return for a fitting soon, but I was not allowed to escape so easily. First I had to choose a pair of shoes from a huge stack they had caused to be delivered (I think they did not trust me not to wear mud-spattered brogues beneath their creation) and then Mrs Elf insisted on arranging her small cloche hat (matching embroidery, of course) on my hair, and even then I had to reassure them that I would remove my overcoat whenever possible.
I achieved the street, feeling like some child’s costly doll. My toes were indignant about the unfamiliar shape they were being pushed into, and cloche hats always made me feel as if I were wearing a soft chamber pot. I was hungry and ruffled and not in the best mood to approach Margery and her Temple of women, and I stood on the street and said aloud the first thing that came to my tongue: “Holmes, where the hell are you?”
I was immediately abashed, particularly as neither the organgrinder nor the pie-seller metamorphised into him, and even the man on the delivery wagon merely glanced at me and flipped the reins.
I had to admit it: I wanted to see Holmes, who, although one of the most peculiar individuals I had ever met, was nonetheless the sanest and most reliable of men. Beyond that, I wanted to know what had been done with Miles Fitzwarren, four days ago. I had expected Holmes to be in touch before this. I stood undecided, until my eye caught a post office sign, and then I knew what I would do. I used their telephone, but no, the Vicissitude was holding no message for me, so, before I could reconsider, I wrote out a telegram and had it sent to five separate places, including his cottage in Sussex, if by some remote chance he had landed there. Each one said:
AM UNEASY NEED CONSULT
RUSSELL
I regretted it immediately the message had irrevocably left my hand. Perhaps he will not answer, I comforted myself, then took myself to Selfridges for something to eat.
MY TUTORIAL WITH Margery was for half-past four. Upon my arrival at the Temple, I sat down at a table and took out my chequebook, then handed the completed cheque to the startled secretary.
“This is for the library fund, which I believe Miss Beaconsfield is in charge of. Would you kindly give it to her when she comes in?”
Communication within the Temple was ex
cellent. Margery greeted me with all the naughts of my cheque in her eyes, although of course she did not mention it, and when she saw my clothing, the transformation was complete. I regretted it, but to have continued with her thinking me a bluestocking forced to mend the ladders in said stockings would have been too painful. I returned her greetings evenly, sat down, and prepared to teach her about her Bible.
We were interrupted only once, by a telegram for me, which read:
EIGHT OCLOCK DOMINICS
SH
It cheered me greatly. I folded it and made to thrust it into my pocket, only to discover that I had none. I put it instead into my handbag, turned back to Margery with a smile, and continued my brief overview of the history of Judaism and Christianity.
“So, we have the Hebrew Bible, roughly what you would call the Old Testament, composed of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings; we have the intertestamental literature, or Apocrypha; and we have the Greek, or New Testament, composed of the four life stories of Jesus, called Gospels, the Acts of the early church, various letters and writings, and the Revelation of John.
“None of this was written in English. Now, that may sound ridiculous, but one gets so into the habit of thinking the Authorised Version as the direct word of God, that one needs to be reminded that it’s only three hundred years old and was the work of men.” I reached into my bag and took out two sheets of paper I had prepared earlier.
“I want you to commit these two alphabets to memory. This is Greek, for your purposes more necessary perhaps than the Hebrew. The letters are alpha, beta, gamma.” I continued on to omega. “And these are the sounds they make, in this column. You’ll see the similarities; that’s because the alphabet we use in English grew in part from this one. Now, using the chart, sound out these three words.”
She did it laboriously, but correctly. “Anthropos; anr; gun.”
“Good. In English, we use the word man to translate both anthropos, “human being,” and anr, a “male person.” Gun is woman, the counterpart of anr. Most of the time it is obvious which is meant, and occasionally one finds in Greek anr when one might expect anthropos, and vice versa, but it is good to keep in mind, for example, the fact that Jesus is called the Son of Humanity, not the Son of Man.”
We worked on this for a while and I gave her a Greek Testament to use. We talked briefly about the difference between gender and sex, but since she was fairly fluent in French, I could pass lightly over that issue.
It was a stimulating ninety minutes, and I found, as I had expected, that Margery had a quick mind and an acute ear for theological subtleties, as well as having the determination necessary to overcome her lack of training. She might never compete with an Oxford scholar, but she might communicate with one.
That first session unavoidably served largely to point out to Margery her ignorance. She watched me slide my books into my case, a subdued and almost wistful look on her face.
“It’s quite hopeless, isn’t it, Mary?” she said with a rueful laugh. “I feel like a child who’s just discovered sweets, standing at the sweetshop window. I’ll never have it all.”
“It’s hardly an all-or-nothing proposition, Margery. And remember Akiva—you can at least read.”
11
MONDAY, 3 JANUARY—SATURDAY, 8 JANUARY
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions,
match’d with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight,
and as water unto wine.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809–1892)
I HAD TO wait for a bath at the Vicissitude, and instead of the long, hot soak I had hoped to indulge in, I merely cleaned myself, jabbed the pins back into my hair, and dropped the embroidered suit back over my head. I was more fortunate with a taxi, which appeared only moments after I stepped onto the pavement, and it ducked and slid with ease through the lesser byways to the restaurant (which was not actually called “Dominic’s,” that being a pet name adopted by Holmes based on the proprietor’s name, which was Masters).
The maître d’ recognized me (or perhaps he gave that impression to everyone) and escorted me to the table that had been reserved for Holmes. I declined his offer of drink and looked around me. The restaurant had suffered a brief period of popularity the previous year, but the tide had washed on, assisted, no doubt, by Masters’s refusal to serve cocktails, provide dinner music, or offer unlikely foreign dishes on his menu.
Holmes came in, in one great shake shedding his overcoat, stick, hat, scarf, and gloves onto Masters’s arms, and began to thread his way through the tables towards me. His bones were aching, I thought as I watched him approach, and when he came closer, the contrast between my mood and the gaunt grey exhaustion carved into his face hit me like a slap.
“Holmes,” I blurted out, “you look dreadful!”
“I am sorry, Russell, that my appearance offends,” he said dryly. “I did stop to shave and change my shirt.”
“No, it’s not that; you look fine. Just . . . quiet,” I said inadequately. Only profound exhaustion, not just physical but spiritual, could so dim the normal nervous hum of the man’s movements and voice.
“Ah, well, we cannot have that. I shall assume an air of raucous and disruptive behavior, if it makes you happy. However, I should like to eat first, if I may?” I felt reassured. If he could be rude, he was reviving.
He lowered himself into the chair and offered me a weary smile. “You, on the other hand, appear almost ostentatiously pleased with life.” I sat under his unblinking gaze for a long minute and saw some of the lines in his face relax their hold. “Am I to take it that your majority agrees with you?”
“I believe it will. Holmes, where have you been?”
He held up a finger and half-turned toward the silent presence of the waiter.
“May we order our meals first, Russell? I have eaten irregularly since last we met and now find myself possessed of an immoderate preoccupation with the idea of meat.”
We ordered a meal that even his obese brother Mycroft would have found more than adequate, and when we were alone, Holmes slumped back and prodded the bread roll on his plate.
“Where have I been, she asks? I have been on a passage through Purgatory, my dear Russell, into the abyss and halfway back. I have been a witness, a guide, and an unwilling participant in a young man’s confrontation with the Furies, and in the process have been reminded of parts of my own history that I should have preferred to forget. I have been nursing, Russell—a rôle for which I am by nature singularly unsuited.”
“You? You were caring for Miles? But Holmes, I never thought—”
“Your faith in my bedside manner is touching, Russell. Yes, I have been helping to care for Miles Fitzwarren. Did you imagine I might draw him out of his house and habits only to deposit him in the hands of my medical friends and then wash my own hands of him? He would not have stayed, without me.”
“So you . . . I am sorry, Holmes. I had no idea that I was getting you into that.”
“No? No, I suppose you would not. It’s quite all right, Russell; you needn’t look so penitent. I’ve spent my entire adult life poking my long nose into the problems of other people; this is only a variation on that activity. Please, Russell, if you wish to be of some service, I beg you to remove that woebegone expression from your face. My old bones are much comforted by basking in the sight of your young radiance. That’s better. A glass of wine?”
“Thank you,” I said, speaking equally between Holmes and the discreet personage who materialised at the side of the table before Holmes could finish the phrase, poured, and faded away.
“How is Miles, then?”
“Ill. Weak. He is drained of self-respect, and filled with self-loathing. At least the worst of the physical reaction is over, thank God, and he’s young and strong. The doctor foresees no immediate problems.”
“So he’ll be cured?”
“Cured is not a word one can use in this situation. His body will be clean. The rest is up t
o him.”
Plates of food began to arrive.
“Well,” I said when the waiter’s arm had withdrawn, “I am most grateful, Holmes, though I hope it will not go on much longer.”
He looked up sharply, a laden fork halfway to his mouth.
“Why? Has something come up?”
“Oh, no. No, nothing urgent, or I should have contacted you earlier.” I concentrated on knife, fork, and plate. “I just . . . Well, it’s odd, not having you there to consult, that’s all.”
I continued eating, and I was aware that seconds passed before his fork continued.
“I see,” he said, and then added, “Would you care to tell me about your activities since Thursday?”
I would care, and proceeded to describe them. He ate with steady determination, and threw in the occasional comment and question. I told him everything, from my visit to the elves to the treatment I had given my Sussex home, and made him chuckle with an exaggerated account of boiling water in the coal scuttle.
Finally, over coffee, he sat back with the familiar unfocused gaze that signaled a massive rallying of forces beneath that thinning hairline.
“Whence comes her money?” he mused.
“Elijah’s ravens did not bring him French hothouse strawberries on bone china,” I agreed.
“My brother Mycroft’s sources of information are better than ours for the purpose,” he noted without emphasis.
I was absurdly warmed by his use of the inclusive plural, as if this were a case we were working, rather than a peculiar and individualistic interest of my own.
“She may have a supporter who holds the purse. It would be interesting to know. Politics makes for strange . . . partners, does it not?”
“You think it nothing more sinister than political manoeuvring, then?” he asked.
“Margery’s money? Cynical as I may be, I cannot see her involved in anything more criminal than circumventing the labour laws. Of course, there’s always sacrilege—that’s a felony, isn’t it? But not, I should have thought, an immensely profitable one. No, I think it’s more likely someone was taken with her and decided to back her to the hilt. It would be very interesting to know who. A wealthy American dowager perhaps? A group of frustrated suffragettes?”
The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4: The Beekeeper's Apprentice; A Monstrous Regiment of Women; A Letter of Mary; The Moor Page 47
