Echoes of Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  “Flattery does not impress me.”

  “What about grand passion?”

  “You believe it can strike so quickly?” she asked.

  It could, and it had.

  If she were Erda, wise and imperious, he was Hercules, strong and strapping. They made a handsome couple, her beauty and his height both seeming to have come from heaven rather than earth. They twirled through waltzes in ballrooms and stayed in cafés well past midnight arguing about politics. He missed none of her performances at the opera and hired the best photographer in Warsaw to make a cabinet picture of them. He called her Rosina until she reminded him of the sour turn taken in Rosina’s marriage to the count in The Marriage of Figaro, but she never refused his requests that she sing for him, back in his suite at the hotel. He soon found it impossible to imagine life without Irene. She adored him as no one else ever had, loving the man, not the prince. Nothing mattered more to him than possessing this woman who was a vision of strength and loveliness.

  Only a sternly worded telegram from his father reminded him of his true purpose in Warsaw: to persuade a Prussian princess to turn over to him a series of embarrassing love letters written by the Bohemian king during, as his father explained, a lapse in moral judgment. The queen, Wilhelm’s mother, generally took this sort of thing in stride. What royal marriage did not benefit from the occasional lover? Unfortunately, however, this particular princess happened to be the queen’s bête noir, the daughter of the greatest rival of her youth, and the king, upon learning this, had no desire to further risk his tranquil domesticity. Wilhelm, who was close in age to the princess and had always got along well with her, could readily convince her to see reason—or so the king hoped. However, Princess Anna Elisabeth Victoria proved less pliable than the king had imagined, and on the very night the crown prince had met Irene, Wilhelm had all but given up the task. Ladies, it seemed, were loath to relinquish souvenirs of royal affairs.

  “You appear most dejected, Sigi,” Irene said, gliding into the sitting room of his suite. The scent of attar of roses followed her, delicate and sweet. She perched on the arm of the settee where he sat.

  “I am afraid I have failed my father. He is mercilessly disappointed in me.” She pressed him for details, and he held back nothing. The story finished, Irene sighed.

  “I should expect better from the King of Bohemia. How foolish of him to stray so indelicately.”

  “I cannot defend his actions,” the prince said, “but I do wish I could protect my mother from being hurt by his carelessness. Yet what more can I do? I begged Anna to see reason. She was unmoved.”

  “Surely this does not surprise you?” Irene asked. “Cast-aside lovers are not known for their desire to help former paramours.”

  “Perhaps I was foolish to address the matter so directly.”

  “Some things, my love, are better dealt with lady to lady. Allow me to assist you.”

  That afternoon, the Countess Xenia Troitskaya (Irene had always found herself unaccountably fond of the name Xenia) called on Princess Anna Elisabeth Victoria. The two exchanged pleasantries and warmed to each other immediately on discovering a shared adoration of Byron’s poetry, but it was the countless troubles stemming from wiry and untamable hair that brought them closest together.

  “An absolute nightmare,” the countess said. “I know it all too well.”

  “One would never guess it from looking at you,” the princess said. “However did you train your maid? Mine is hopeless.”

  “Adèle is French and a genius. Are you attending the mayor’s ball this evening?”

  “I shouldn’t dream of missing it.”

  “I shall send Adèle to you without delay. You won’t know yourself—or your hair.”

  “But how could you possibly know she would agree?” the crown prince asked later, when he met Irene at her rooms.

  “My dear man, you do not understand ladies in the slightest,” she said, gently removing the Countess Xenia’s enormous wig from her head. “The moment I saw her I identified her hair as her weakness. The texture is difficult, as evidenced from the countless wayward bits sticking up from her scalp in every direction. The number of pins and combs employed told me she does all she can to tame it. Her manner of dress, so self-consciously fashionable, and the preponderance of jewels draped over her so early in the afternoon suggest both vanity and bad judgment. I knew she would not resist my offer of assistance.”

  “Do put the wig back on,” Wilhelm said. “It rather suits you and I am most fond of Russians, Countess.”

  Irene returned his kisses but then pushed him away. “There is no time for that now.”

  Wilhelm watched as she disappeared into her dressing room, returning half an hour later utterly transformed. Something had dulled her rosy complexion, and dark smudges marred the smooth skin under her eyes, making her look tired and drawn. Her chestnut hair, pulled back into a severe and unflattering bun, did not shine. She wore an ill-fitting black gown with a stiffly starched apron tied over it and held in her hand a maid’s cap.

  “You are to be the maid?” Wilhelm asked, startled, somewhere between shocked and bemused.

  “Sigi, please do not say things that will put me off you,” Irene said. “I thought you to be in possession of more intelligence than that. The details of our scheme should have been evident to you hours ago.”

  “I assumed you were going to send your actual maid to her.”

  “And take the risk that she couldn’t locate the letters? Unthinkable. Be a good man, now, and give your Adèle a kiss. She is fast becoming one of my favorite roles. I shall see you later this evening at the ball.”

  “Will I recognize you?” he asked.

  Irene laughed. “That remains to be seen.”

  The spectacular glory of Princess Anna Elisabeth Victoria’s coiffure would escape no one’s notice that night. Irene had employed every skill her years in the theater had taught her, but even so had doubted—more than once—that she could succeed. Yet she had. The smooth mass of braids and curls, woven with flowers and more than a few diamonds, shimmered.

  “No crown could be more beautiful, madame,” Irene said, her voice, now with a heavy French accent, altered beyond recognition. “My own mistress would—how you say?—desire to change places with you. Is there someone whose attention you seek tonight? He will not be able to resist you. C’est impossible.”

  “Alas, no, Adèle,” the princess said. “My husband is rarely impressed with my appearance. I do not think he sees me at all.”

  “A lady of your station need not limit her options, non? Balls are made for dancing, and I have no doubt your card will be full.”

  The princess sighed. “Perhaps, but I shall never enjoy dancing as I used to. There is no romance in it for me anymore.”

  “Then, madame, you must take your memories of romance with you this evening, and think of them while you are on the dance floor. Sometimes recollection is more satisfying than reality. Do whatever you must to bring your feelings back to the fore tonight.”

  “You are very wise, Adèle,” the princess said.

  The maid took a step back and examined her work. “Your hair is perfection, madame. If I may, the slightest hint of color . . .” She pulled a small container from her bag, opened it, touched her fingers inside, and daubed the princess’s cheeks. “Oui. You are ready, and it is still early. What is your favorite place to sit in this house? I shall bring you a glass of champagne there. It is what the countess always has before a ball. She says it fills her with starlight.”

  When Irene returned to her a quarter of an hour later, in an ornately furnished sitting room, the princess had in her lap a pile of letters wrapped in red ribbon. One she held in her hand; tears glistened in her eyes as she read it.

  “I am confident, madame, you will have a most excellent evening,” Irene said, handing her the champagne. “Drink up. Your carriage waits.”

  “I am indebted to you, Adèle, for your services. You may leave me now
, but please do thank your mistress for sending you to me. You are a true gem.”

  Irene gave a little bow and retreated from the room, into the narrow servants’ corridor behind a hidden door in the wall. She stood quietly, listening, until she heard a man calling for his wife, and the princess, after a certain amount of shuffling about, leaving the room. After a pause, Irene cracked open the servants’ door, and confirming the chamber to be empty, she slipped inside. A quick, well-organized search soon revealed her quarry: the princess had hidden the letters in a small compartment behind a drawer in her writing desk. She started momentarily when the door to the room flung open, but without the slightest hesitation spun around to face the newcomer.

  “Mon dieu,” she said to the butler. “I had hoped you were your mistress, returning for her forgotten cloak.” Adèle held up the satin garment. “I do hope she has not already departed. Will you bring it to her?”

  “I must say, Irene, much as I adored the countess—who would not?—and charming though I found Adèle, I prefer you to them both.” Wilhelm had called on her before breakfast, as she had instructed. “Dare I hope your mission proved a success?”

  “Shame on you if you thought otherwise,” she said. “I will not tolerate you doubting me.” She handed the stack of letters to him.

  “I cannot begin to express my gratitude,” he said. “You have saved me from my father’s ire.”

  “There is nothing I would not do for you, Sigi. You have become quite dear to me.”

  “We must celebrate your triumph.”

  “It is not yet a triumph,” Irene said. “We must wait for her to inform you the letters are missing. She will come to you, feeling guilty at having kept them from you and will warn you that they have fallen into unknown hands. She loved your father and will not want to see him hurt.”

  A few hours later, in front of his hotel, Wilhelm met the princess, pale with fright, her hair a mess.

  “My dear man,” she cried. “I am wronged—my letters are gone, and your father’s reputation, as well as my own, is now at risk. I have made a most grievous error in judgment and can only beg your forgiveness.”

  “Have you any idea who might have taken them?” he asked, frowning as Irene had directed him.

  “The Countess Xenia Troitskaya sent her maid to me yesterday and I fear now it was a ruse to steal my letters.”

  “Countess Xenia Troitskaya?” the prince asked. “I am well acquainted with all the Russian aristocrats in Warsaw and had never heard the name before yesterday.”

  “I did not doubt her for an instant,” she said. “I have been such a fool.”

  “Yes, you have,” Wilhelm said, “for it is I who invented the countess with the express purpose of getting the letters back. When you refused to give them to me, I was forced to adopt other methods.”

  “For hours I have have been consumed with panic, searching for them! How could you let me think some miscreant had taken them?” she asked. “You, sir, are not a gentleman.”

  “I am gentleman enough to destroy them rather than let either of you be exposed. You should thank me for the kindness, now that you find yourself in the same precarious situation as my father, the king.”

  “Good morning, Princess Anna Elisabeth Victoria.” A wisp of a boy in an ulster bobbed a bow as he passed them in front of the hotel.

  “Who is that boy?” the princess asked. “His voice is familiar to me.”

  “No one of consequence, I am sure,” Wilhelm said. “I am afraid I have not time to stand here and comfort you over your loss. Good day, Princess.”

  “You were the boy?” Wilhelm was standing in front of her in her dressing room, disbelief on his face.

  “The evidence is before you, is it not?” Irene said, slipping the ulster from her shoulders. “I could not resist one last disguise.”

  “I still do not understand why you had me tell her the truth. I would prefer her not to think I had a role in this business.”

  Irene shrugged. “It would have been cruel to let her spend the rest of her life worrying that the letters might be made public by some unknown thief. She knows you will not compromise your father’s reputation, but it was important for her to have experienced the fear of exposure,” Irene said. “She was terrified her own husband might learn of the affair. That was the emotion consuming her when she came to you, and it is a feeling she will not soon forget.”

  “I wish she did not know I was behind the theft.”

  “She now considers you to be a man with whom one must not trifle.”

  Wilhelm crossed his arms and frowned. “You frighten me, my dear. It is an emotion I do not often feel. I should not like to find myself on the wrong side of you. I shudder at the thought of what you might do.”

  “Why ever would you find yourself in such a situation?” She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away and looked down and studied his tall boots. “You know I adore you, Sigi.”

  “What a queen you would make, Irene. Your wit, your intelligence, your beauty,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Yet it can never be so, can it?”

  “Kings can do what they wish.”

  “Crown princes cannot.”

  “A crown prince could wait until he became king.” Her voice broke, just a bit as she began, for the first time, to doubt him.

  “I did love you,” he said, his lips in a hard line. “It was a lapse in judgment and must be stopped. Crown princes do not permanently ally themselves with girls from the opera. It simply isn’t done.”

  “I did not ask you to make me your queen.” Irene stepped back from him, aghast.

  “I cannot risk that someday you might.” He turned away from her and started for the door.

  “So this is to be our parting?” she asked, blanching. She had not expected the loss of him to cut so close.

  “It cannot be any other way. How could I ever trust a woman like you? I have just watched you deceive, with shocking ease, a respectable woman.”

  “I did it to help you!”

  “Someday you might turn on me,” he said. “I required your assistance, and you gave it—brilliantly. Now that I know what you are capable of, I must never see you again.”

  “I did not expect cruelty from you.” She spat the words.

  “I never thought I would give it, especially to you.” He silently contemplated how easily it had come to him; perhaps he ought not to have rejected it as a useful tool. “Yet I do not think anything else capable of so well severing our ties. I will always think fondly of our time together, Irene.”

  “I shall endeavor to do the same, painful though it will be.” She crossed to her dressing table, upon which the cabinet photograph of the two of them stood, and reached for it. He was gone before she could pick it up and hand it to him. Her heart ached as she looked at the image, taken when they had been so very happy. She would have given it to him, if only to save him from the worry his father had felt knowing his letters might be made public at any time. She had misjudged the prince, taken him for a burly sort of good-hearted barbarian rather than a calculating royal concerned only with his narrow bit of the world.

  Perhaps it was for the best, her having the picture. Not that she would ever use it against him—it was his character, not hers, that deserved to be thrown into doubt—but this last meeting made her wonder if she might, one day, require the protection it could provide. She would never taunt him with it, never threaten him. But what about him? Would Wilhelm ever lash out against her? If so, it could serve as a weapon of defense.

  This, Irene thought, was not the last she would hear from him, this disloyal, ungrateful lout. She would guard the photograph with everything she had. The Crown Prince of Bohemia was not a man to be trusted.

  THE SPIRITUALIST

  by David Morrell

  Again, the nightmare woke him. Again, he couldn’t go back to sleep.

  As the bells of nearby Westminster Abbey sounded two o’clock, Conan Doyle rose from his bed. Always determined not to wa
ste time, he considered going to the desk in his sitting room to write a few more thousand words, but instead his troubled mood prompted him to dress and go down the stairs. Careful not to wake his housekeeper, he unlocked the door and stepped outside.

  A cold mist enveloped shadowy Victoria Street in the heart of metropolitan London. During the day, the rumble and rattle of motor vehicles reverberated off the area’s three-story buildings, but at this solitary hour, the only sound was the echo of Conan Doyle’s shoes as he reached the pavement and turned to the left, proceeding past dark shops.

  Even in the night and the mist, the back of Westminster Abbey dominated, its hulking presence rising over him. He recalled his sense of irony a year earlier when he’d finally found a suitable location for the most important enterprise of his life, noting that it was only a stone’s throw from one of England’s most revered religious sites. He hadn’t spoken with His Grace about their competing views, but he suspected that the archbishop wasn’t amused.

  A hazy streetlamp revealed the sign above the door: PSYCHIC BOOK SHOP, LIBRARY & MUSEUM. Because a sense of urgency always propelled him, Conan Doyle stretched his long legs to walk the short distance, but of late, those legs—once so strong in rugby, soccer, and cricket—had betrayed him, as had his once-powerful chest, making him pause to catch his breath before he unlocked the door and entered.

  A bell rang. During the day, its jangle was welcome, announcing that a rare visitor had arrived, but at night, the bell violated the stillness. Gas lamps would have provided an appropriate moody atmosphere. This was 1926, however. Instead of striking a match and opening a valve, Conan Doyle reached to his left and turned an electrical switch. Two bulbs on each wall provided instant illumination, as did dangling globes in the ceiling. The yellow lights revealed numerous rows of bookshelves, the smell of old and new pages pleasantly filling his nostrils.

  He knew their titles without needing to see them: among them, Letters on Animal Magnetism, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, The Spirit Manifestations, Experiments in Thought Transference, Phantasms of the Living, Minutes of the Society for Psychical Research, Survival of Bodily Death, and—