Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mr-11

by Laurie R. King

  “I, too, have seen reason to believe that there are emotional ties there, ties that could make Bert less than wholehearted in his support of an escape.”

  “If he’s Mycroft’s man, he’d never side against his countrymen.”

  “Not consciously, I agree, but a slip of the tongue? A moment’s hesitation?”

  I dangled glumly and had to agree: Mycroft’s undercover agent had best be considered a broken reed, and should not be brought into any plans. “For my part, the only person on my side of the wall with a degree of native wit is Annie, and I consider her judgment clouded by affection for Adam. Certainly, she seems to have a suspect degree of curiosity about the actions of others – you saw how every time one turns around, there she is, blinking her pretty blue eyes.”

  “It is true, beauty and reliability rarely go hand in hand.”

  Which rather trod underfoot the compliment with which he had greeted me. “Thank you, Holmes,” I muttered.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “I said, It looks as if it’s up to the two of us, yet again.”

  I remained at his window for another ten minutes or so while we discussed options and signals, then reluctantly I told him that I had to go or risk falling. He ordered me to give him one hand, which he massaged back to life, then the other. Feeling restored, I dug out my pocket-knife and held it into the inner darkness, then set about climbing back up the wall to the rooftop. Behind me, the metal shutter swung shut on silent hinges, and I reflected that Holmes had contrived to grease them, probably with a pat of butter from his breakfast. That he had done so spoke of his confidence in me.

  As I set my hands upon the rope, there came a melodramatic whisper:

  “ ‘And noiseless as a lovely dream is gone. And was she here? and is he now alone?’ ”em›

  I nearly fell off the rope laughing.

  Warmed by his hands and his attitude, I walked up the wall to the rooftop. There I hung for a couple of minutes, peering over and waiting for motion, but the area was still deserted. I swung up and onto the rooftop, retrieved the rope and bound it around my waist, then clambered to the top of the high dividing wall to stretch my foot down for the bench, left against the wall.

  Except that it was no longer there. Dangling, I craned to look over my shoulder, and saw two figures stand up from their seats on the bench, now ten feet distant.

  They did not rush to seize me. After a moment’s thought, I let go and dropped to the roof, then turned to face my captors.

  There came the scrape of a match, and a flame gave light to our tableau: Annie holding the flame to a candle, with at her side a smaller person. Oh, God: Edith.

  All in all, I’d rather have confronted a pair of armed guards.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  SERGEANT: This is perplexing.

  POLICE: We cannot understand it at all.

  EDITH HAD DISCOVERED me missing first.

  She, or he, had been lying awake in the room she shared – or, he shared … oh, dash it all, call the diabolical brat a female – in the room she shared with her mother, lingering over the day’s events and the basic dreadful pain of adolescence heaped high with the unutterable shame and anguish of being a boy in a dress, when she heard a faint whisper of sound from the hallway. By the time she dressed and figured out the person had been going up rather than down, I was no longer on the roof, and she was too short to reach the top of the wall from the bench-top.

  Annie, whose attention had been caught by the sound of Edith going through two doors and up the stairs, caught the child arranging a chair atop the bench. And although Edith tried hard to convince her that it was the only place the mysterious person could have gone, Annie had the sense to keep Edith from throwing herself on top of the wall and, for all either of them knew, into range of that Purdy shotgun.

  She tried to convince Edith that she had been hearing things, that there was no sign that any intruder had passed here, that the bench had, in fact, been against the wall when they went to bed (even though Edith was adamant that it had not been, and Annie herself not at all sure). In the end, she offered to sit with Edith and wait, thinking that half an hour of staring into nothingness would be enough to convince the child to return to bed.

  But Edith was made of sterner stuff; although I had been gone over an hour, she’d been determined to wait me out.

  “And so you did,” I told her in that jollying voice one uses towards children, which had about as much impact on her as it had on any other child.

  “I’ll rat on you.”

  “Edith, what kind of English is that! You’re not going to give me away.” The warning note was clear in my voice – although, with Annie standing there, I could not very well be more specific about my own side of the threat.

  “I don’t care, tell them if you want, I’ll do the same on you.”

  “Now, why would you do that?” I chided desperately. What could I use on the child to keep her mouth shut? I really did not want the entire household to know that I’d shinnied down the walls at night. For one thing, half of them would promptly demand that I take them along the next-

  Ah.

  “Do you want to go out?”

  Her expression made for a sharp contrast to the warm little light Annie held, being cold and very adult. Idiotic question, she might as well have said aloud.

  “I’m not going to take you over to the men’s house, because there are armed guards over there who might come at any minute. But the next time I go down into the town at night, you can come. If, that is, you don’t mind dressing up as a boy.”

  “I-” She caught her tongue before it gave her away to Annie. “No, I don’t mind. When?”

  “Probably not tomorrow night, but possibly the next.”

  “That’s too long!”

  “Sorry, but I’m not going to put everyone else in danger just to take you on an outing.”

  “You’ll probably go without me.”

  “I promise,” I said, and when the young face continued to eye me with mistrust, I added, “I give you my word as an Englishwoman.”

  “The next time you go down to the street, you’ll take me, too?”

  Annie started to object, but I put up a hand to stop her. “I will take you.”

  “Then I won’t tell that you went away tonight.”

  I put out my hand, and we shook on it.

  “Now, you must go back to bed,” I told her. “And make sure you don’t go dropping large hints to the others tomorrow about adventures you’re going on. If they find out, I won’t be able to take you.”

  “You have to come to bed, too!”

  “I need to have a word with Annie.”

  “But-”

  “Go.”

  Drooping and dragging her slippers, Edith slumped across the rooftop and through the door. I waited; eventually, it clicked all the way shut.

  Annie, too, had stood waiting, and now she chuckled, and dribbled a bit of wax onto the bench to attach the candle upright. She settled herself across one end of it, and I straddled the other, wondering what I was going to have to promise this older foe.

  “Don’t tell me you want to dress up as a boy and walk through the bazaar at night, too?” I asked her.

  “You’re not as bright as I thought you’d be.”

  “I beg your pardon?” My husband had back-handedly referred to my lack of beauty; now an actress was questioning my brains?

  “I figured you’d have this all sorted in nothing flat, and we could all go home, waving the flag and cocking a snook at His Majesty’s enemies.”

  “I-” I stopped. Oh Lord. She was right, I was being exceedingly stupid. “You’re Mycroft’s operative.”

  She made the gesture of smacking her forehead, and gave me a grin that made her look both younger and more competent. “One of them.”

  “Bert?”

  “At least you caught that. Or should I feel proud, that I’m better than he?”

  She was right: I was every bit as gui
lty as the others, overlooking this person because she was a woman – a very pretty woman. Still …

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “I recognised your husband. And I had heard about you, so when the two of you appeared, well, I figured you were on the same track as I.”

  “Perhaps you should explain why you are here?”

  “I’ve been working on this case for six months, so that-”

  “Which case is that?”

  “What do you mean, which case? La Rocha and his brother, of course. What other case is there?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “So you’re not here because Mycroft sent you?”

  “Just at the moment, I don’t know that I would cross the street for Mycroft. No, I’m doing a favour for a Scotland Yard friend.”

  “Extraordinary.”

  “Extraordinary doesn’t begin to describe it. But you were telling me why you were here.”

  It was a typical Mycroft assignment – if any of Mycroft’s assignments could be called “typical.” In early summer, Annie had been told to look into the activities of La Rocha and the man I knew as Samuel, with no suggestion as to how she might go about doing that. Taking up residence in Lisbon, she had spent several months in disguise, doing what amounted to keeping her ears open. Then a few weeks ago, a rumour circulated through the Lisbon hills that Fflytte Films was coming to do a film about – aha! – pirates.

  She made enquiries and discovered the name of Fflytte’s local liaison: Senhor Fernando Pessoa, the man of many personalities, who clearly had played an appropriately diverse number of rôles in this unscripted little drama of ours. Annie arranged to fall into casual conversation with the translator one evening at his favourite drinking establishment, loosened him up with poetry and port, and steered him towards the topic of pirates, and Pirates. Once she understood the set-up (The Pirates of Penzance; filming on location; casting in London and in Lisbon), she took care to remind her new friend of a bit of local colour that might interest his English clients: Captain La Rocha.

  With Pessoa hooked, she booked passage to London, flung off her false spectacles, bohemian clothing, and black wig, and got there in time to try out for a rôle in the picture.

  Although she admitted to me that she was not much of an actress, she got the part (of course she got it, with her perfect skin, snub nose, and big blue eyes – had Bibi been at the casting things might have gone differently, open competition not being a welcome sport among actresses). Once back in Lisbon, she took care to keep away from Pessoa, and no one recognised the sweet-faced English blonde as the town’s dowdy but competent part-time type-writer.

  “I assume Bert came about his part in the same way?”

  “I think he bought off one of the constables who’d already been hired, and took his place.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” I remarked, but shook my head at her look of enquiry. She went on.

  “I was surprised to see him-‘Bert’-on the steamer in Southampton; the last I heard he was in Ankara. But you – if you’re not after La Rocha, why are you here?”

  I could see no reason not to tell her. “I’m looking into Fflytte Films. Everywhere they film, they’re followed around by criminal behaviour. They make a film about guns, and no sooner do they move on than a dozen revolvers go onto the market. A film about cocaine, and the drug is suddenly available. A movie about rum-running, and the world’s most famous rum-runner is arrested.”

  “And after Hannibal, were there elephants all over-”

  “Please, I didn’t say I believed any of it. But I have to agree, the disappearance of Hale’s assistant requires looking into.”

  Annie looked at me sharply, so I gave her what I knew.

  When I was finished, she shook her head. “I’d be happier if they’d found a suicide note.”

  “Wouldn’t we all? What’s also troubling is the suggestion that Geoffrey Hale makes a habit of seducing his employees. We believe that Anne Hatley – the child playing June – is his. Myrna Hatley is a robust personality, but if this assistant was a more fragile type, or more vulnerable …”

  “If she was pregnant, she might have seen suicide as the only escape. On the other hand, if she chose to assert her rights and make a fuss …”

  I admired the way this woman’s mind worked. “Then Hale might have decided to remove a problem. Either way, he was involved. As now he may be involved with the current situation. Last night, he spent some time in private conversation with La Rocha and Samuel, and afterwards was given leave to impart the message that the men would be permitted a degree more freedom tomorrow – today, rather – if they spent a quiet morning.”

  “Internal tensions in the film world?”

  “Of course, I’ve also had my suspicions of Will-the-Camera. And of you, for that matter.”

  “An embarrassment of riches when it comes to shady types.”

  “Speaking of shady types, what of our pirates? Holmes and I are operating under the assumption that we’re to be put up for ransom. You’ve been investigating La Rocha for months, do you have any idea what he’s up to?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’m not altogether certain that La Rocha’s the centre of this.”

  “Samuel?”

  “As you know him, yes.”

  “He’s both more intelligent and more cold-blooded than La Rocha, a dangerous combination.” I thought of the first time I’d seen Selim, standing behind La Rocha: the power behind the throne?

  “And his sons?”

  “Adam and Jack,” I replied: This was beginning to feel a bit like one of Holmes’ examinations.

  “I don’t think that Adam altogether approves of his father’s … work.”

  The wistfulness in her voice did not sound like the judgment of an experienced espionage agent. It sounded like the wistful desires of a besotted young woman.

  I sighed. “You know, if we’d been working together on this from the beginning, we might be heading home by now. Mycroft’s mania for keeping his left and right hands from communicating leads to more confusion than one requires.”

  “Would you have come if your brother-in-law asked?”

  “No. But you don’t seem-”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she cut me off.

  “Oh. Well.”

  “How much do you know about La Rocha and Samuel?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Well, I had some months to build a dossier. You’ve probably figured out that they’re brothers – or, rather, half-brothers? They believe themselves descended from Murad Reis. You know who that is?”

  “Dutchman. Salé Rovers, English captives.”

  “Converted to Islam in 1622, made Salé his centre, brought slaves from as far as Ireland and Iceland. When the Sultan tried to take the city and failed, he just made the Dutchman governor and married him to one of his daughters. Another sort of conversion, you might say.

  “He had a number of children by his two Moorish wives, and there seems to have been some kind of a pirate in each generation. La Rocha’s grandfather was hanged for killing a man in 1860, when La Rocha was four. La Rocha started his own career before he was twenty, boarding merchant vessels and robbing them, then slipping away. He seems to have paid for his brother to go to university in France, while also buying up holdings that had belonged to earlier generations of the family and been seized as reparations after they were gaoled or hanged.

  “It wasn’t until Selim – Samuel – graduated from university and came into the family business in 1895 that things began to get vicious. Victims would be thrown overboard and their ships stolen, other ships set alight with their dinghies stove in. Women passengers would disappear entirely. Over the next twenty years, the brothers created a network of informants and occasional partners to supplement their crew. During the War they went dormant, because of the number of warships in the Mediterranean, but they did manage to board a small ship that was removing gold from Turkey. A lot of gold.
They lay low after that until the gunships retired, then after the War, started up again. In 1920, they made a raid on what looked like an easy target, and was not. Their ship went down, hands were lost, La Rocha and his brother were very nearly caught.

  “After that, they seem to have taken a hard look at themselves, decided that they weren’t getting younger and the modern world was inhospitable to their profession, and more or less retired to Lisbon.

  “At any rate, La Rocha did. In recent months, there have been signs that they may be rebuilding the old alliances. Several of the pirates Mr Fflytte hired, for example, are the sons or grandsons of the original crew.”

  “Restoring old grandeur? But surely they can’t believe that they can rebuild their pirate kingdom here in Salé, under the noses of the French?” I asked.

  “I imagine that Salé was a symbolic choice, just as the Harlequin was seized upon to evoke the heyday of piracy. Once they’ve finished with the ship and the city, they may slip away.”

  “So you’d say that after selling us back to the British, they’ll take the ransom monies – where? Somewhere out in the Sahara?”

  “A startling amount of this continent is beyond the reach of British guns. The Rif mountains have already declared independence – one can reach them in a day. And,” she added, changing her voice as if to mimic a textbook or lecture, “the giving of ransom is no guarantee of the getting of hostages.”

  The candle suddenly danced; it was down to its final inch. “You’d say they’re not planning on freeing us, then?”

  To my astonishment, she began quietly to sing, in a sweet contralto:

  Here’s a first-rate opportunity,

  To get married with impunity …

  The smile on her shapely mouth contained no humour whatsoever. “After all, what is the Gilbert and Sullivan opera about, ultimately, if not the permanent abduction of young English women?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  GIRLS: We have missed our opportunity

  Of escaping with impunity.

  I GAPED AT Annie as if she’d begun to speak in Pashtu (while the ghost of Miss Sim whispered urgently in my ear: “Oh! burst the Haram – wrong not on your lives one female form”em›). I hastily pulled together my thoughts. “I refuse to believe that La Rocha’s pirates are in fact English aristocrats fallen on hard times who wish to marry English wives.”