Dreaming Spies: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

“My dear young thing, neither Russell nor I is raw enough to be caught shooting meaningful glances at co-conspirators.”

  “Nonetheless, you do not need to know.”

  And that was all she would tell us. We agreed to a means of delivering a message to her, if and when we achieved an invitation. Other than that, the next time we saw her would be at the party itself.

  I laid down my cup. “Well, I have an appointment with a geisha, and Holmes intends to spend the afternoon investigating Tokyo’s world of ladies’ fashion. We shall see you on Friday.”

  In fine new clothing

  I feel so unlike myself,

  I am another.

  Bashō’s poem ran through my mind as I stared aghast at the cheval mirror later that evening. “You honestly thought this frock appropriate for your wife?”

  “Good Lord, no. But for the young bride of ‘Bobby Russell’? I fear so.” I sighed. “The glasses don’t go with it.”

  “It is not the dress of a bluestocking,” he agreed. Easy for him to say: he had perfect vision, and he could wear the same evening suit every night of the week. “How was your afternoon with the geisha?”

  I contorted myself, trying to catch a glance of the garment’s back. I would have to wear shoes with heels. “Surprisingly interesting. One almost begins to suspect that the Floating World contains the most sensible women in Japan.” Certainly the most clever conversationalists. I told him about the Flapper’s sister, who had mastered the traditional arts of samisen, dance, and waiting on drunken men, then gone on to do the same with the parallel arts of the twentieth century. “I wouldn’t have thought a person in full kimono could manage a Charleston, but she did. A somewhat constricted version of it, at any rate.” She also knew the words to many American songs, could discuss (in simple, charmingly accented English) the relative merits of Lillian Gish and Louise Brooks, and seemed to have a better understanding of the stock market than I did. She also played a mean game of poker.

  “Geisha is all about entertainment, and she’s expanding her realm to the Western world. She seems to be doing very well for herself, too. And that reminds me,” I added, looking around my mascara brush at him. “I bought you a gift. It’s in my handbag, there.”

  With considerable suspicion—we did not, in the general course of things, buy each other gifts—he picked up the small bag and worked the clasp. The box inside bore the usual meticulous Japanese presentation, with perfectly folded wrapping paper and a decorative twine designed to complement not only the paper, but the contents and the giver as well. He tugged, unfolded, opened … and winced.

  When it comes to evening wear, a man’s options for peacockery are somewhat limited. Unless Holmes were willing to stoop to some shocking heresy—a wristwatch, say, or a cummerbund—that left the width of his lapel, the pattern of braid on his trousers, or the weave of his white silk scarf—a garment generally abandoned at the door.

  However, if I were to be a flighty young thing, some degree of iconoclasm would only be expected of my escort. Therefore, my mad addition to his wardrobe.

  “Cufflinks?”

  “And studs.”

  “One cannot wear—”

  “Sherlock Holmes cannot wear cufflinks other than the standard black studs. But Robert Russell? Go wild, Holmes.”

  He prised one of the objects from its box, tilting it towards the light. It was, in fact, mostly black. However, the parts that were not …

  “I do not think I could eat my dinner, looking at these.”

  “You won’t be looking at your own cufflinks, Holmes, and everyone else will find them nicely daring.”

  “I do not think …”

  “Holmes, if I must wear this, you have to wear those.”

  His eyes came up, and studied the dress he had … well, I couldn’t precisely accuse him of choosing it, but he had approved it to the extent of exchanging money for it.

  Where the garment lacked fringe, it had sequins; where it had neither, it was caked with garish embroidery and—to prove money was no object—seed pearls. It looked like an explosion in a haberdashery.

  With a matching bandeau for my hair.

  The cufflinks I had chosen for him were oval, and two millimetres larger than his usual studs. Their shiny black surface was circled by a pencil-thin line of red enamel, and set with a ruby approximately one millimetre across. The stone had been mounted deliberately off-centre.

  He shuddered, then cast another look at my dress. Wordlessly, he proceeded to thread the offending objects through his cuffs. I resumed my work at the mirror. The bandeau resembled a fallen doll-house chandelier.

  When I had finished, I tucked my arm in his. We looked at the reflection in the glass, gave identical shakes of our heads, and turned to head for the night life.

  The salon was in full swing. Mina, the geisha’s sister, was there, although Kiko had been replaced by half a dozen other Japanese Flappers, wearing more expensive clothing and speaking better English.

  A piano was pounding out music that I eventually decided was a string of American songs, although they were either in a different scale or the instrument needed tuning. That didn’t stop the people, however, who shouted merrily over it and occasionally jittered to the beat, although the salon was both carpeted and too crowded for dancing. The cigarette smoke was heavy, the alcohol fumes positively hazardous, and we had no trouble locating our “friends” of the night before.

  And this time, their circle included the object of all this folderol: Lord Darley.

  The man, as one might expect of a person with grey in his hair, looked somewhat less enchanted with his surroundings than his son did. Even his wife looked amused at the tumult.

  I felt Holmes summon a deep breath very like my own. Then we both pasted on expressions of committed gaiety and moved into the crowd.

  Twenty minutes or so later, the last intervening clot of individuals shifted away and we found ourselves face to face with the Darleys. The countess was flushed, the earl was drunk, and they were both astonished to see us.

  “The Russells! Dear, look, it’s those lovely people from the ship.”

  “Old chap!” he exclaimed, sticking out a hand to Holmes, whose hesitation was imperceptible. “Good to spot someone who isn’t twelve years old among this lot!”

  “Have you been in Tokyo all this time?” she asked. “Why haven’t we seen you before this?”

  Most of that I got by reading her lips, then I leaned forward to shout, “No, we just arrived a couple of days ago. We’ve been seeing something of the country, what a fascinating place! But now we’ve made it here, we’re certainly going to stay for a while. I had an absolutely spellbinding time yesterday with one of Tommy’s Japanese friends, her sister is actually a geisha, can you believe it? And she invited us to come along and watch her sister get ready for an evening—Lord! I thought dressing for a garden party at the Palace was an ordeal!”

  My voice sounded brittle to my own ears, the words too filled with naïve gusto for belief. However, in a room that noisy, it is necessary in any event to over-emote, and neither of the Darleys seemed to find anything odd in my transformation from shipboard bluestocking to enthusiastic social butterfly. So I continued gushing, until Lady Darley cut in with a question about one of the shops I’d visited.

  She and I talked commerce for a time, while Holmes kept Darley entertained with a largely invented tale of Japanese railways, his distaste for the man firmly tucked behind Bobby Russell’s amiable façade. At last, as I was racking my memory for intriguing items to spend money on, she gave a quick exclamation and glanced at the diamond-studded wrist-watch she wore.

  “Oh, darling,” she exclaimed, “we told Mr Takahashi we would meet him at eight. Time to run! So nice to meet you again, Mrs Russell, I hope we meet again.”

  Oh, God, I thought: would we have to perform this charade again tomorrow night? “It was indeed,” I told her. “If you’d like me to arrange a visit to the geisha, I’d be happy to go along a second time
. There’s a lifetime of lessons there!”

  “Perhaps they’d like dinner one night?” Holmes interjected. “What about that funny little place down the Ginza?”

  “It would have to be the first part of next week, I’m afraid,” Lady Darley replied. “We’re scheduled to leave on Thursday, and this week is rather heavily booked.” And just when I was having to restrain my tongue from blurting out a demand to attend her party, she turned to place a dainty hand on her husband’s arm. “In fact, darling, we could use another pair of handsome faces on Friday, couldn’t we?”

  “Capital idea, m’dear! Capital! By all means, do come, you two.”

  “Are you by chance free, Friday evening?” Lady Darley asked us. “It’s just that we’re having a little party for some rather important Japanese leaders. I can’t really tell you their names—security, you know? And it seems that, although a year ago we’d have had no problem filling the room with the right kind of English people, since the earthquake, civilians to balance the officers and diplomatic staff have become rather thin on the ground. You do have evening wear?” Her eyebrows rose in concern. Or was it a sudden memory of the Bohemian figure of the Thomas Carlyle?

  “Of course,” I told her. “I could even dig out the old tiara, if you wish.”

  She looked reassured; he looked proud; Holmes looked near to boiling over.

  We made our escape from the salon two minutes after the Darley heads passed through the doorway. We spent the rest of the evening in our rooms, wearing pyjama trousers and yukata kimonos, quietly turning the pages of our respective books. In addition, having achieved our invitation meant that we were now blessed with an entire thirty-six hours of freedom in which to map the battlefield, collect information, synchronise plans with our collaborator—and see something of Tokyo.

  In the end, our Tokyo sight-seeing was done mostly through the windows of various motorcars, although I did manage to escape across the way to the park for a stroll among the hanami parties beneath the cherries. And we did catch two or three glimpses of Fuji, when the mountain ventured out from the clouds.

  Unexpected sights:

  Moon on blossoms; prince’s laugh;

  Fool with a silver tray.

  There was always a chance that Darley was better than we thought. A chance that he had recognised Holmes, without showing it. Not that Holmes looked much like the images set before the reading public, but Britain was a small nation, and Darley might move in the kinds of circles that actually knew Holmes the man.

  However, we had been watching Darley closely from the moment we encountered him on the ship, and neither of us had caught so much as a trace of suspicion on his face. Holmes was certain of the man’s ignorance. I was less sanguine, but I did not believe Darley clever enough to lay a trap that we would walk into.

  The blackmailer’s one unavoidable moment of vulnerability is when the exchange is made. No matter what threats he raises or how thoroughly he has locked away the object being ransomed, be it incautious love letter or key to an Empire, at some point he or a trusted representative must creep out from the dark corner to trade it for payment.

  Darley’s protection lay both in numbers and in the Prince Regent’s reluctance to bring matters into the light. Unless the Prince wished to risk exposure, the exchange could be made in the centre of a crowded room, with no one the wiser.

  Still, Holmes and I agreed that payment was unlikely to be taken at the beginning of tonight’s party. Even a business-like extortionist prizes the gloating. Forcing a Son of Heaven to stand about in a crowded room with a drink in his hand and a hundred people competing for his attentions would be a memory to treasure long after the £20,000 was spent.

  The end results of the evening would not do his friend’s porcelain business any good, but I doubted that knowledge would trouble the earl’s sleep.

  By noon Friday, we knew every nook and cranny of Mr Wright’s idiosyncratic hotel. The Mayan wonderland was composed of a long central block, the ground floor containing the lobby and dining room, the upper level holding private dining rooms, a parlour, an auditorium, and a wide promenade that connected the entire block with two longer, narrower guest wings. Its footprint resembled a sturdy canoe balanced by a pair of outriggers.

  Normally, a party such as that hosted by Lord Darley would be held in the private dining rooms. However, either in the interest of security, or because it was more impressive, the earl and his countess would take over the upper level of an entire wing for the night. Beds and dressing tables were moved out, potted palms and mirrors were brought in, turning the two adjoining rooms at the end of the wing into a private lounge with a dramatic view. The end rooms even had substantial balconies, if the weather permitted.

  By the afternoon, decorative screens tended by bodyguards were obscuring the wing. From that point on, no one would be permitted entrance without either an invitation or a hotel uniform.

  Between the party and the guard station lay the Darleys’ actual rooms, on either side of the corridor. Convenient for Darley: rather than distort the fit of his evening wear with a bulky rectangle, he merely needed to slip away from his party and retrieve the book.

  But not if Holmes and I found it first.

  Our initial plan had been just that: slip away from the party when it was at its peak and find the book. Once Haruki-san was brought in as translator, we had another set of eyes, early warning in case one of the Darleys left the party.

  My first intimation that all would not go as planned came when I walked up the corridor and into the converted guest rooms, and found myself face to face with the Emperor’s Fool.

  Sato-san’s quizzical face rose incongruously out of a waiter’s formal garb, his sword arm holding a silver platter laden with champagne flutes. The tray moved smoothly down before us. “Champagne, Sir, Madam-san?”

  Holmes recovered first. He seized two glasses, pressing one into my hand. Sato-san bowed and moved on to the next guest. Neither the bow nor the pronounced hitch in his gait (rendered more pronounced by a pair of overly-large but brilliantly-shined shoes) caused the wine to shift so much as a millimetre on the tray. “Drink your wine and stop staring, Russell,” my husband ordered.

  I reflexively downed a large swig, stifling a cough. “What does this mean?” I muttered to him, my teeth clenched behind a bright grin.

  “When Miss Sato arrives, we shall ask her. Now let us say hello to our hosts.”

  The earl was in his full panoply of decorations and honours, everything short of a Lord Mayor’s collar. Thomas had gone in the opposite direction, with a pristine chest and the glow of youth about him; he looked like a motorcar advert. Lady Darley’s dress could only have come from Paris, in an unusual shade of burnt orange that did wonderful things to her upswept chestnut hair. As one might expect, there were diamonds in her heavy necklace, long earrings, and tiara, but the stones were interspersed with lesser gems that threw off distinctly golden sparkles: topaz, perhaps, or orange sapphire.

  My dress was really quite nice, my emeralds nothing to be ashamed of, but standing before this woman, I felt like an oversized schoolgirl fumbling along in her mother’s patent leather pumps.

  We got through the greetings, followed by two and a half minutes of inane talk and admiration. My glass emptied fast, and I was looking around for the stocky waiter with the limp when half the room came to attention, including the earl’s family.

  Holmes and I dropped from the Darleys’ attention like used tissues, as all three of them moved towards the door. In it stood the Prince Regent, Haruki-san at his elbow and a large man with suspicious eyes at his back. The Prince wore impeccable formal garb of the European style, but Haruki-san was dressed in a stunning kimono in shades of green, an architectural wig concealing her short hair. Even next to the Prince Regent, she looked tiny.

  Stillness settled over the noisy room, broken only by the rustle of silk gowns and the receding tinkle of crystal brushing crystal.

  “Welcome, Your Highness,”
Darley’s voice boomed. “Thank you for coming to my little party.”

  The earl stopped in front of the Prince Regent and thrust out his hand. The Prince looked down, and for an instant, the room was filled with the clash of steel and the coppery reek of arterial blood. Darley’s eyes stretched wide for an instant before his head parted from its shoulders, toppling to the floor while the wrath of Japan … but, no. The moment passed, and the 124th Emperor of the Land Where the Sun Is Born, this direct descendant of the gods, this slim figure for whom every man, woman, and child in the land would willingly die, reluctantly held out his fingers and permitted the Englishman to pump them once or twice.

  I shivered. How did Darley dare touch him, with those waves of godlike fury pounding the room? The bodyguard had come to sharp attention; Haruki-san almost swayed with it, and I could feel Holmes’ tension from ten feet away. The very room creaked—at any rate, its occupants shifted. But not the Darleys: man, wife, and son, they merely smiled, and smiled.

  Haruki-san recovered, her translation stuttering back into life. The Prince gave a brief bow to Lady Darley, and what amounted to a nod to the viscount.

  “Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” Darley asked. “I saw the Palace gardens as I went past them this afternoon. Those cherry trees you have are magnificent. I was telling my wife that we’ll have to take some home with us. They’d be gorgeous in our garden in London.”

  It was difficult not to read a double meaning into the words, but the Prince did not so much as clench his jaw at the possessive overtures of this English enemy. Either that, or Haruki-san toned the words down in the translation. Lady Darley, who may or may not have understood the reason for the Prince’s expressionless features, stepped forward and asked if His Highness cared for a glass of champagne.

  I looked around, wondering uneasily what the future Emperor would do when confronted with the onsen owner of Mojiro-joku in a hotel uniform, but the thin older man who stepped forward with a tray looked nothing like him. Indeed, Sato-san was nowhere in sight.