“Thank you,” Irene replied, lips turning into a small smile. “Please, sit. This won’t take long. I just didn’t want to risk someone overhearing as that would ruin the plan entirely.”
Mrs. Beauchamp sat on the couch, and Joe sat in his armchair. Irene grabbed the wrapped bundle from the dining table and sat next to Mrs. Beauchamp, handing her the package.
As Mrs. Beauchamp unwrapped the perfume bottle, Miss Hudson arrived with tea in the finest china Joe had seen at Baker Street. It was white with blue flowers adorning the edge of the cups with tiny silver spoons on each matching plate.
Mrs. Beauchamp gasped when she saw the perfume bottle with its rounded seashell shape and emerald green colour.
“A Rene Lalique!” she exclaimed. “How did you ever find this?”
“I made a special deal,” Irene said. “It is yours to borrow.”
Joe cringed as the bottle sat precariously in Mrs. Beauchamp’s lap, and he wished Irene would take it from the woman as she made her tea. That bottle was worth a lot of money, and they’d promised Lestrade to be careful with it.
“You are going to make a big to-do about this bottle,” Irene added. “Say that your husband just found it while sorting through old boxes from the war. Show Molly especially, then announce that while the bottle is nice, there is no room for it on your dresser and you are putting it on one of the shelves in a room you don’t frequent often.”
“What are your intentions with this plan?” Mrs. Beauchamp sipped her tea and lifted the bottle to study it.
“To attract a thief,” Irene said. “Then, to trap him. If you put this bottle out of the way, in a place where its absence won’t be noticed right away, then an opportunity to steal it is presented. Once you have done all this, I need you to plan a Red Rover Society meeting. It will not be hard. Rent the room, gather the tenants, order a caterer, and enjoy your tea. Have the maids attend, as usual, but make sure Molly is not among them.”
“Why?”
“Because she will let the thief into your flat.”
“Miss Holmes, I–”
Irene cut her off. “If this plan fails, then you will not get your items back, and a thief and murderer will walk free. Do you understand?”
She stared at the perfume bottle and nodded. “I shall do my best.”
“You must. That is all. I apologize that we didn’t have any fancy cakes.”
Mrs. Beauchamp chuckled. “This flat has a lot of character, as do you both. Thank you again for taking this case on. I shall ring you when I’ve arranged the tea.”
She left the flat, and as soon as the front door shut behind her, Mrs. Hudson rushed in and addressed Joe and Irene.
“She seemed pleased,” Miss Hudson stated, out of breath. “What did you give her?”
“A perfume bottle worth close to fifty pounds,” Joe said.
He thought Miss Hudson would faint right then and there. “Fifty pounds? Goodness...”
She took the empty tea tray away and told them supper would be in an hour before leaving, muttering something about money.
* * * * *
After supper, Joe read his novel, and Irene stared at their board. She appeared distracted and fidgety, and Joe knew it was a sign that something was on her mind that she needed to discuss, but she didn’t know how to start such a conversation. She’d eased into challenging conversations about herself and her past better and better each week, but Joe learned that he still needed to initiate an exchange, or else she would swallow her thoughts.
“I like the charm that our flat has,” he began hesitantly. “And Mrs. Beauchamp seemed to as well. Her’s may have expensive trinkets, but ours has hard-earned ones. It sure is a different world over there.”
“My uncle moved to Kensington when he married,” Irene said, and Joe knew he’d knocked on the right door to the thoughts that troubled her tonight. “His wife was rich, like Mrs. Beauchamp. He fit right into that crowd as he was intelligent and eloquent enough. Perhaps that’s why I take such issue with the rich folk. People like them took my uncle away. He came back, right enough, but still, for a good few years, he was gone and I disliked it. So did my father. I was too young for him to talk to about some of his cases like I chat out loud to you, and some nights it caused him great frustration. When Uncle John finally came back, Father wrote a brand-new piece of music to play on his violin simply out of happiness that our lives had returned to normal.”
“Your uncle was killed during the war, wasn’t he?” Joe asked quietly.
“He was.” She nodded and pulled her legs under her, picking at her fingernails. “In forty-four, a month after the landings in France. He had come to London in an attempt to convince me to move back out to the bee farm. I was working in the university, and I refused to even entertain the idea of going back. In the middle of our argument, a buzz bomb hit the building we were in, and he didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry, Irene,” Joe said, leaning forward, trying to comfort her from his chair.
“Don’t apologize. You weren’t the one who sent the bombs,” She smirked, but there was no accompanying twinkle in her eyes.
She was trying to make light of the situation, but Joe saw the sadness in her eyes. He knew that he needed to keep going, for if he gave in to the humour she was attempting, this conversation would get swept under the rug and added to the pile of emotional memories that took its toll on Irene.
“It was bad luck.” He tried to make his point again.
“Was it?” All humour left her face and voice, and anger flashed across her features.
“Yes.” He was firm with his words. “You know first-hand how many bombs hit the city. There was no pattern and there was no escaping them.”
She sighed and blinked rapidly, fighting back the tears. She ripped a strip of skin from her cuticle a little too hard, and it startled to bleed. She sucked on the side of her finger, and the faded scars on her arm caught the light.
“Is that where you got some of those scars?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Most of these are from investigating things as a child. The buzz bomb did give me a scar, though, from when it knocked me tail-over-tea-kettle before I blacked out.”
Irene stood and stepped over to him, craning her neck and pulling her hair away from her shoulder.
Joe stood as well to observe where her finger pointed. A quarter-inch thick silver scar ran from below her ear and along her hairline, under the hair that she’d gathered. It was quite a significant scar and didn’t seem to end. Joe wrapped his fingers over hers and pushed more of her hair out of the way. Goosebumps sprang up along her skin as his fingertips glided across the back of her neck.
He found the end of the scar and quickly measured with his eyes. Almost four inches long. As he stared at the old injury, Joe tried to gather words to comfort her, but couldn’t think of the right ones to say. He knew that Irene was in London for most of the war, and she’d hinted at being hit by a bomb, but he had no idea that it was a direct hit that had injured her and killed her uncle.
She released her hair, and Joe caught a whiff of the new citrus-scented shampoo she’d started using a few weeks prior. The smell made him acutely aware that he was still holding her hair back, and his face was mere inches from her neck.
He went to mumble an apology, though she never minded when he inadvertently invaded her personal space, as she did it twofold to him.
Before he could say anything, though, Irene stepped away and wandered to the couch, flopping down on the cushions.
“Last week I went past the building where we were hit,” she said, fiddling with the bottom button of her pyjama shirt. “They’d fixed it. Patched it up and re-bricked it as if nothing happened to it. Put in new windows and everything. There was even a class going on.”
Joe sat in his chair again. “Is that what’s been troubling you lately?”
“A repaired building?” She scoffed, sounding offended.
Joe shrugged. “Perhaps memories of your
uncle at times when you don’t want to remember? Or how easily a place of great impact was fixed.”
Irene squirmed at his observation, a frown on her face. “I do not know. But I can tell you that, whether it’s because of this case or not, I have been bitter. Perhaps it is the weather. Or the fact that Christmas is coming up and Miss Hudson will want to make it a whole to-do now that I am back here, especially it being your first Christmas at 221B.”
Joe laughed. “Perhaps a big to-do is needed. The war is over. You’re solving the crimes that you want to solve. I am certainly happy. Perhaps Christmas should be a fun holiday again.”
She pouted as if wanting to stay sad and miserable for a while longer, but after a moment, she spoke slowly and sounded tired with each word. “I suppose a tree would look quite nice in that corner by the window if we moved my desk closer to yours.”
Her eyes flew around the room, and Joe knew she was decorating the rest of the flat in her mind. Irene sat up a bit straighter, pressing her forefinger to her lips in thought.
Joe smiled and grabbed his novel, glad he’d been able to talk Irene through this memory.
Chapter VII
Catching a Thief Red-Handed
Irene gently touched her bruised cheek, wincing as the cold air hit her face. She stood at the back entrance to the Kensington apartment building, waiting for Mrs. Beauchamp to let them inside. Joe stood behind her, his huddled figure keeping most of the wind off her back.
Thom and Eddy both leaned against the wall, smoking cigarettes, chitchatting about work.
Irene always found it amusing how both men could be bitter rivals one day and have tea together the next.
It had been two days since Mrs. Beauchamp sat in 221B, and the day after, she’d telephoned them to give them a date and time the Red Rover Society would be meeting for their final tea this year. Irene had immediately rung Eddy and told him and Thom the meeting time and place.
The door clicked open, and the men tossed their cigarettes and joined Irene and Joe. Mrs. Beauchamp opened the door, nose wrinkled as a result of whatever she’d observed in the employee entrance.
“I have never been back here,” she stated. “And now I know why.”
She let them in, and as soon as she spotted Eddy and Thom, she fixed her hair and smiled at them. “You must be the inspectors. It’s a pleasure.”
They went up the stairs and reached the fifth floor. Mrs. Beauchamp let them in the maid’s entrance and through the kitchen.
Before they entered the sitting room, Mrs. Beauchamp turned to them and spoke in a hushed voice. “I’ve arranged everything, and it was a lot of work. Molly is remaining here, but there is not much housework to be done so she shouldn’t need to be in the flat while I am out. The bottle is sitting in the guest suite, stuffed in the corner cabinet.”
“You did wonderfully, Mrs. Beauchamp,” Irene said. “And now to catch our thief.”
She shook her head in dismay. “I just don’t know how someone managed to steal all those items from our houses.”
Irene tried her best to keep her mouth closed and not reveal how oblivious the tenants of this building had been, or how apparent the crime was.
It didn’t take long for Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp to leave the flat, locking the door behind them. This left Irene, Joe, Eddy, and Thom standing in the large sitting area. All but Thom looked out of place, and even he gazed around the immense flat, taking stock of everything the Beauchamps owned.
Irene pulled a revolver from her waist beneath her jacket and held it by her side.
Joe spotted the gun first. “Goodness Irene, where did you get that?”
Eddy groaned, and Thom stepped forward to observe it.
“That’s an old army service revolver,” he said. “I am wildly curious, as well.”
“It belonged to my uncle,” she retorted hotly, gazing down at it with a sincere fondness.
“Give it to me.” Thom held his hand out as if she was a child with a dangerous toy.
Irene clutched the loaded gun to her chest. “No. It belongs to me.”
“Out of everyone here,” Thom argued. “I am the most qualified to fire that weapon.”
“And out of everyone here,” Irene snapped. “I am the most skilled to knock you out.”
Eddy stepped between them. “This man could be here at any moment. I have training in firearms, so I will take the gun. Let’s hope that we don’t have to use it, though.”
Irene sighed, but Eddy handling her uncle’s revolver was better than Thom, so she handed it over.
“Thank you,” Eddy said, failing to keep the exasperation from his voice. “Now, can we please hide before he walks in and sees us? I cannot arrest him unless I see him pick something up.”
* * * * *
Irene took another slow, deep breath from her hiding spot behind the couch. They’d stayed hidden for close to an hour with no activity, but Irene didn’t give up hope, though she heard Thom let out a sigh from his spot behind the other couch across the room. If she’d come to know anything about the former soldier, it was that he liked action. She’d found out from Eddy that Thom had risen to the rank of Lieutenant and commanded many young men in battle. Poor Thom was now reduced to crouching behind a couch in a flat he surely wished he resided in.
A grin formed on Irene’s lips as she thought of Joe and Eddy, in their hiding spots as well. She then realized that for the first time during this case, she felt no sour stomach, no grumpiness, and no desire to do anything else but wait and pounce on the thief. Everyone she knew and liked was co-operating with her and not focused on anything else but helping her. No one was making dinner plans, or dates, or anything not related to the Beauchamp’s case.
A key jiggled in the door lock and Irene tensed. She peered under the couch as two sets of feet entered the flat. She instantly recognized the maid’s shoes, and beside them were a heavy yet expensive pair of dark grey boots that could only belong to Mr. Barry.
Molly giggled, and Irene heard them kiss and knew the poor girl was completely taken by Mr. Barry.
Heavy footsteps crossed the room as Barry strode toward the guest room, the location of the perfume bottle presumably given to him.
From her spot behind the couch, Irene caught the back of Barry as he headed down the small hallway. He was tall and broad-shouldered and walked with the gait of a fighting man, leaning forward on his heavy boots, ready to swing or dodge a hit. His hair was sheared short, and though she didn’t see his face, judging by the rest of his appearance, she thought his features might be just as square and brutish.
It only took eighteen seconds for Barry to exit the room and he looked just like Irene assumed. His nose sat crooked on his face, as if it was broken and never repaired, and his wide jaw was covered in thin dark stubble. His eyes were small and dark and full of smug triumph as he strode out of the room with the bottle in his hand.
A smirk spread across Irene’s lips as she stood from her hiding place.
“I don’t think that scent suits you,” she said. Mr. Barry turned to her, wild surprise on his face. Thom popped up from behind the other couch across the room.
“Mr. Barry,” he called. “I am Detective Inspector Gregory, and you are under arrest.”
Barry’s eyes flicked between the two, blocking his path, and he must have decided Irene was the easier one to escape past. He threw the perfume bottle at her with such force that she ducked, the bottle sailing over her head and smashing on the marble floor behind her.
She heard Barry take two steps and pause, and when she stood again, Eddy had come from the office, revolver aimed at Barry’s chest.
“Stop,” he commanded.
Molly coward by the kitchen, eyes wide as she clutched her apron. Thom pointed to her.
“Over here with him, miss,” he ordered. “Both of you on that couch. Now.”
Barry didn’t move, his eyes trained on the gun aimed at him. Irene did a sweep of him as Molly sniffled and hurried beside him. Barry had an
expensive grey suit on, with shining cufflinks and a pressed collar. His fists were clenched, but he has a set way about his jaw that told Irene he wasn’t submitting to them just yet.
As she opened her mouth to caution the inspectors on a potential move Barry might make, Molly sidled up next to him, and he pounced. He grabbed Molly, wrenching her in front of him, arm around her neck. He pulled a knife from under his jacket and pressed the flat part of the blade to Molly’s throat.
“Stay back!” he shouted. “Stay back, or she dies!”
Eddy held the gun steady, but as soon as Irene glanced at him, she knew he was off-target, presumably for fear that he would hit Molly. Thom’s fists were clenched, and he looked ready to attack, his inner soldier surging to the forefront. Irene, herself, was prepared to fight as well, though she hadn’t quite worked out how she would get Molly away from Barry. His sleeve had pulled back when he grabbed the poor maid, and his forearm brandished a tattoo that appeared to be some sort of large and intimidating spider on a web.
Molly slipped and stumbled, tears streaming down her face as she fought against Barry. He tightened his grip, and she froze, the blade pressing harder into her skin.
“I’m walking out of here,” Barry said, and his voice piqued Irene’s ears. His words sounded over-extended, but he hadn’t spoken enough to allow Irene to place the accent.
“Let her go,” Eddy said. “And we can all talk about what happens next.”
Irene scrambled to think of an idea that she could accomplish from behind the couch next to him. He’d be given plenty of warning to any move she made, and she was on the verge of attempting to talk him down when movement came from her peripherals. Joe walked carefully from the small library, directly behind Barry.
He stared at the back of the man’s head with such anger in his eyes, Irene thought his gaze might burn a hole right through Barry’s skull. Irene remembered how frustrated Joe had been at how Barry treated his two Setters, and Joe seemed to be channelling that anger.
He grabbed the heavy stag statue and took a few more steps, closing the gap between himself and Barry. With an angry grunt, Joe struck Barry on the head with the statue.
The Red Rover Society Page 10
