Garment of Shadows: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  “There was a party of some kind, at the Roman ruins,” he bellowed, handing me a stale bread-roll into which he had shoved a wedge of soft cheese. “It seems that this lorry was being used to clear up afterwards. If you can think of any use for seven long tables, a hundred place-settings, and four acetylene lamps, we have those as well.”

  There was even drink, a half-empty bottle of wine for us, some very fizzy lemonade for Mahmoud and the boy.

  Warmth; food; transport. If the abused engine did not die completely and the lorry retained its wheels—insh’Allah!—we should cover the thirty miles or so to Fez in little more than an hour. I took a harder grip on the steering wheel (which vibration was adding loose shoulder sockets to my list of ailments) and stepped more firmly on the accelerator. The noise grew. I raised my voice. “Do you believe our man is at Dar Mnehbi?”

  Holmes said something. I asked him to repeat it, then a third time. “Certainly, someone inside the staff is behind these attacks,” he bellowed in agreement.

  I leant towards him. “How will we get in the gates?” I shouted. “You want to telephone to Lyautey?”

  “Sorry?”

  I took a deep breath and tried again. “Telephone? Lyautey?”

  “No!”

  “Wait until morning?”

  “Exactly!” he said. “There must be another way.”

  “What?”

  “Another way … to warn him!”

  “Warn him? I said morning!”

  I felt a hand then upon my juddering arm. The other two passengers had been communicating, Mahmoud’s mouth to the boy’s ear, the replies visible by the light from the head-beam. I tipped my head to the side, and felt as much as heard Mahmoud’s words.

  “Idir knows a way in.”

  I glanced across the child at him. Mahmoud repeated the offer to Holmes, who looked at me for a long moment. We both shrugged. I gestured for Mahmoud to shift forward, then said into his ear, “Where?”

  He and the boy consulted for a couple of miles, ending with a vigorous nod of the young head. Mahmoud spoke against my hair. “The north end of the town, near the tanneries.”

  “Lord, I hope we don’t have to wade through them!” I exclaimed, recalling all too vividly the stink.

  “What was that?”

  But I shook my head, and drove.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Fez was dark, apart from a few lights in the new quarter. I steered along the city’s north-facing walls, pausing for Holmes to get Mahmoud and the boy out, then continued on a mile into the hills before aiming the lorry off the road and letting the brakes kill the engine.

  With a cough, silence returned to the night (so far as I could tell over the ringing in my ears). I cradled my aching arms for a moment, then kicked open the door, hitched up my djellaba, and trotted back along the road, abandoning tables, silver, and acetylene lamps to the resident thieves and lepers.

  Limited by Mahmoud’s pace, the three had barely reached the wall when I came up to them. There was a lot of débris out here, and we settled Mahmoud cautiously onto a trunk-sized hunk of fallen wall, trusting that the rest of the structure wasn’t about to come down on us.

  Holmes handed me the torch, which now had an obscuring handkerchief around its beam, and drew a pair of empty lemonade bottles from his robes. “Idir, take these and see if you can find a fountain.” His voice was low, but fortunately, the ringing in my ears was subsiding.

  Mahmoud protested that he was fine to go on, but Idir was already trotting off. We all knew that it would be an arduous trip across the city to Dar Mnehbi. Apart from which:

  “We’re looking at Youssef, right?” I asked.

  “I don’t believe we are,” Holmes said.

  “Holmes, the man brought me a drugged meal! And he’s the very definition of a shadowy presence. He’s everywhere in the house, overhears everything, no one questions him.”

  “Yes, Youssef brought you the meal.”

  “What—you think the cook was responsible?”

  “You said that there was a delay while someone spoke with Youssef outside of the door on Tuesday evening.”

  “Yes, Youssef apologised for letting the meal go cool, although it wasn’t actually—”

  “Whose voice was it?”

  “I couldn’t hear.”

  “What was your impression?”

  “Holmes, are you asking me to guess?”

  “Your impression.”

  “I suppose I’d have said it was François Dulac, Madame Lyautey’s secretary.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But he’s a secretary—and not even Lyautey’s secretary.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes. Why? Isn’t it true?”

  “It is true that originally he was hired for Madame la Maréchale, and that he still handles her appointments schedule and official correspondence. However, the major part of what he does now is for the Maréchal.”

  “But strictly speaking, he may regard himself as working for Madame Lyautey?”

  For the first time, Mahmoud spoke up. “A man’s pride would drive the lie in the opposite direction.”

  I opened my mouth to object that it was not a lie, but he had a point: A lady’s secretary might claim to work for the husband, but it was unlikely the claim would go the other way without a reason.

  “You just don’t want it to be Youssef because of his coffee,” I grumbled.

  “An investigation of the link between slipshod work and a more profound breach of trust would indeed make for an interesting monograph,” he mused, “but I doubt that the reverse would prove true: that pride in one aspect of an employee’s life warrants—”

  I interrupted, before Idir could return and find us bogged down in a debate over responsibility and ethics. “If Dulac deliberately misled me, it would suggest that he knew who I was—who we both were. Did he know your name, when you came to visit?”

  “I did not use my name, and my cousin knows to make use of whatever pseudonym I may be employing. In this case, Vernet.”

  “But the Maréchal would not keep your identity from Madame,” I pointed out.

  “True. And,” he went on before I could, “she might have found it so amusing—the idea of having the one and only Shairlock ’Olmes in her house—that she could not resist passing it on.”

  “—in the hearing of either servant or secretary,” I concluded. “Would he also have mentioned Mycroft?”

  “That would be unlikely. My brother is not a public figure.”

  “That would make it less likely that international politics has entered in, which is a relief. If the matter is domestic, then, and the man we’re after could be either Youssef or Dulac, how do you wish to proceed? Secure them both and let your cousin sort it out?”

  “My cousin may be a gifted social tactician, but he has an insufficiently devious mind for unsnarling this kind of knot. He might require evidence before taking action against one of his own servants.”

  “So what are you suggesting? That we break into the Resident General’s house, search the rooms of not one, but two men, and locate evidence without alerting the guards? Simple.” We probably weren’t even going to make it across the city without being caught.

  “We have guns,” Mahmoud spoke up. “You and Holmes can bring both men—and anyone else who wakes—to the library. I will keep them there while you search their rooms.”

  I took off my spectacles and rubbed my tired eyes, visions of bloody gun-fights and international incidents playing out across my mind. “And if we find nothing? If we keep an entire household under gunpoint, and whoever it is already got rid of all evidence? Not even Mycroft would be able to talk us out of that.” I could all but feel the noose around my neck.

  “You could stay here,” Mahmoud said.

  I put my spectacles back on. “Sure. I can always do that.” I glanced in the direction the child had gone. “Isn’t it taking the boy a long time to find water? This city has a fountain on ev
ery— Ah, there he is.”

  With a rattle of loose tiles, a patch of the night took substance, and Idir was there, pressing one of the bottles at Mahmoud, the other at Holmes. We left the empty bottles among the fallen masonry, picking our way after the boy into the medina.

  Our noses alone might have led us inside, considering the almost tangible solidity of the air oozing through the wall’s narrow gap. The tannery stink grew, and an interminable time later, receded, leaving a marvellous freshness to the remaining odours of mildew, urine, damp plaster, and rotting vegetables.

  Silently, we passed through the sleeping city, our way lit by the cloth-muffled torch. I had no sure idea of the time, but it had to be a couple of hours past midnight. Even the perpetually-labouring Resident General might have taken to his bed by now.

  Twice, late-night pedestrians approached down the lanes, their ways lit by bobbing lanterns held by servants. Both times, Mahmoud and Idir at the fore had ample warning, and we pressed back into corners and invisibility.

  The ground rose; street after street of shuttered buildings, windowless houses, skittish cats—but fortunately, few dogs. Dozens of times, we turned left or right or through a ruined building, and after a while, I realised that somehow the lad was managing to circumvent the city’s internal gates.

  How did he know Fez so well?

  Holmes and I followed the pair ahead, our progress slowing as the child took more and more of Mahmoud’s weight. But we did not want to risk coming upon trouble with only a single gun, and putting Holmes under Mahmoud’s arm would leave me the only one able to respond.

  So the child bore the weight, and the child led the way.

  Until we came to a junction I knew.

  “Wait,” I whispered.

  My three companions came to a halt, Mahmoud staggering to put his shoulder against a wall. “I know where we are,” I said in English. “We should go left, not right.”

  Mahmoud translated for the boy, who nodded and pointed to the right.

  “No,” I said, in Arabic this time. “That way leads up to the Kebira. It’s a long way around.”

  But the boy was adamant: to the right. He tugged at Mahmoud’s robe, to underscore his certainty.

  Holmes raised the torch until its diffuse light shone on Idir’s face. “Do you know a back entrance to Dar Mnehbi?”

  Another set of nods, even more emphatic.

  I could hear the precise echo of my own thought running through Holmes’ mind: Just how had this lad come to learn so much about Fez in so few days? I could feel his decision, identical to my own, in the way he stood back with the light, waving the boy towards Mahmoud again. And I knew, as we moved up the road to the right, that he would surreptitiously adjust the rifle he carried across his shoulder, making it ready for instant use.

  The lanes grew ever narrower, from the width of a laden donkey to a passage unsuitable for two men side by side, to a crack between buildings that required us to edge sideways. Mahmoud pulled himself along, unable to conceal his laboured breath. Holmes came next, torch in one hand, rifle in the other. I held back, my own gun at my shoulder, waiting.

  A scratching noise came from ahead, and the procession stopped. The sound was repeated, twice, and then a door opened. Lamp-light poured into the ridiculously thin passageway.

  Youssef looked out.

  And Idir stepped forward to embrace him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I am not certain how Holmes bundled Mahmoud into the lighted room as quickly as he did—I expect he more or less lifted him bodily. But within seconds of the servant’s appearing in the doorway, three Europeans and two rifles were in the room as well. Both rifles pointed straight at Youssef. The room was so small and the guns so long, the muzzle ends nearly brushed his chest.

  The man’s first move was to detach Idir’s arms from his waist and put the boy behind him. Pale beneath his brown skin, he looked from Holmes to me and then to Mahmoud.

  “Monsieur, what—?”

  “Who are you?” Holmes demanded.

  “Monsieur, I am Youssef.”

  “Of what tribe?”

  “Ah.” A degree of comprehension dawned on his features, and something that looked like chagrin. “I am of the Beni Urriaguel.”

  “And the child?”

  “Also of the Urriaguel.”

  “Mahmoud, did you know of this?”

  “I did not.”

  “You are Sayyid Mahmoud?” Youssef asked in surprise, but Holmes overran the question.

  “What relation are the two of you to Abd el-Krim?”

  “No relation, not by blood. I …”

  Youssef paused, looking around the room. It was very full of human beings. The tiny space was irregular, typical of a room fitted into an odd gap between buildings. Both doors were only adequate for someone Idir’s height, and the ceiling was a bare handsbreadth over Holmes’ head. But everything was scrupulously clean and tidy: A low cushioned divan was pushed against one wall, with a trunk at one end and a stool at the other; a small chest of drawers, holding a water jug and bowl, stood near the door. A pair of long shelves mounted to the wall held Youssef’s possessions, among them three framed photographs, a service of gilt-edged glasses, a comb and tooth-brush, and a small leather box, on top of which sat the rosette of the Légion d’honneur.

  And beside the box, a menagerie of carved wooden animals.

  The eyes of Dar Mnehbi’s steward lingered on the gilt glasses, as if he was about to offer tea before he told us his tale. Fortunately, he decided against it, and merely took a seat atop the trunk, gesturing with his hand in an offer of stool or divan.

  Mahmoud, deciding it was better to admit weakness than to collapse, lowered himself onto the stool. When he saw that Holmes and I intended to remain on our feet, Youssef patted the divan cushion at his side, and the boy sat down.

  “Mohammed ibn Abd el-Krim al-Khattabi was a student here in Fez,” he began, “many years before the French came. He lived at the madrassa, of course, but because we were both from Ajdir, he often joined my family for dinner, and for friendship. I became like an uncle to him. After he left Fez, to work in Melilla, we wrote from time to time.” He glanced down at the boy, then shifted to French, simple but clear.

  “In the early days of the Revolt, my brother was killed, and his entire family but for this, his youngest son, hamdallah. When the Emir’s men found him, the boy was silent, but the soldiers took him in, and when they returned to the mountains he went with them. They made him a—how do you say?” He said an Arabic phrase I did not know.

  “Mascot,” Mahmoud supplied.

  “A mascot. First one man, then another, would feed the lad and watch over him for a time. When that man was killed or went home to work his crops, another would take him.

  “Not until winter did news reach me that one of my nephews had survived. I sent for him, and put him in a madrassa, here in the town. But the boy was a problem. He did not speak. He would not respond to his name, only to the name he had been given by the soldiers. Day after day, I would receive word that he had left the school and was somewhere in the city, and sooner or later we would find him on the road out of town. He was too young to be put to work here in Dar Mnehbi, too much of a problem to be given to others as an apprentice. He wanted nothing but to return to the mountains.

  “My heart was heavy, for I have no sons of my own, but in the spring, I sat down and wrote to my old friend the Emir. And he came, himself, to Fez. We talked, he and I, and in the end it was decided that although the boy would not be safe up where the fighting was, neither was he safe on the roads or in the town. And so the Emir took my brother’s son away with him. I think—” Youssef turned to ask the boy something, and saw that Idir had fallen asleep. He laid a hand on the dark head, but did not wake him. “I was surprised to see him, a week ago. He came to my room first on the Sunday evening, arriving as he did tonight, and told me—he writes very well now—that he was travelling with a friend of the Emir whom he ca
lled Sayyid Mahmoud, but the Emir commanded that should he find himself among the French, he must say nothing of his relationship with me.

  “This was the Emir’s business, so I agreed. The lad told me that he and Sayyid Mahmoud were taking the train to Rabat the next day, but would return immediately to Fez. However, it was not until Thursday that I saw him again. He put a note under the door during the afternoon, to say that he was in Fez and would come to see me that night. And he did, but it was very late, almost the morning, when he did so.

  “He was very upset. Crying, in fact. His travel companions had disappeared the night before—he wrote that Sayyid Mahmoud had been abducted and their other friend, a woman who looked like a man, had gone as well. It was hard to believe, but he was very disturbed. I told him that we would inform the Maréchal, who would help, but the idea made the boy come near to a panic. To calm him, I agreed to say nothing, and put him to bed. I decided to speak with the lad the next day, when he was calmer, and take him with me to the Maréchal. But in the morning, he was gone. And then in the afternoon, he came to Dar Mnehbi openly, first with Monsieur, then with another person, and finally with a third. And if none of them was named Mahmoud, one did,” he added with a glance at me, “turn out to be a woman who looked like a man.

  “Clearly, this was the Emir’s business. When you returned, Madame, on Tuesday evening, I intended to present you with my questions, but you left before I could do so. And I thought, so much the better: When it comes to my old friend the Emir there are times when it is better not to enquire too closely.”

  The apologetic smile he gave seemed to indicate an end to the story. As he had talked, first I and then Holmes had lowered our heavy guns to the floor. I cleared my throat.

  “When I left on Tuesday, what happened?”

  Youssef looked puzzled. “You left. That is what I was told.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Monsieur Dulac. He said you had wished to see the Maréchal, but when the Maréchal did not return, you remembered other business in the city.”