Castle Shade

by Laurie R. King

  However:

  “Mr—Holmes, is it? Sir, there is a…person. With a message. We suggested that he leave it with us but…”

  Holmes turned to follow the disapproving eyebrow. There in a discreet corner, half-hidden from view, was indeed a person, a young man, getting to his feet. They met halfway across the lobby, the stranger drawing an envelope from an inner pocket. “Mr Holmes?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Your brother asked me to give you this. He told me to put it into your hand.”

  Holmes took it—then shot out the other hand to seize the boy’s arm, propelling him back to the chair.

  “Sir! I’m sorry—I don’t know what—just a little light-headed. The heat, you know.”

  “You came by aeroplane,” Holmes said. “And your stomach didn’t care for it.”

  “How did you—oh, right. You’re like your brother.”

  “Stay there,” Holmes ordered, and strode back to the hotel desk. “That young man is quite exhausted and no doubt dehydrated. Give him a room, and food when he wants it, add it to my bill. Oh—and have his clothing cleaned.”

  He ripped open the envelope, and read Mycroft’s handwriting. Three names, three brief descriptions, two telephone numbers. Nothing, in fact, that could not have been sent by cable, saving the poor boy a trip. He shook his head and went back to the green-looking lad, who bore the stink of a long and queasy trip about him. “What is your name?”

  “Warburton. Bill.”

  “Mr Warburton, this gentleman will see you to your room upstairs. Sleep. Eat when you can. And give him your clothes. The maids will return them to you in the morning.”

  The boy looked down at his woollen sleeves, which showed every one of the 1300 miles they had travelled since leaving London, and stammered his thanks, but Holmes had already turned away, to demand a map of the city and a means of exchanging his francs for lei.

  In his own room, Holmes ordered a pot of coffee and picked up the telephone to hunt down his brother’s short list of informants. The first, an Anarchist known to favour the Hungarian cause, proved to be in hospital—with, bizarrely enough, a harsh case of the gout. The second, a Communist named Mihai Dalca, was in Moscow, although it seemed that there was a secretary by name of Ivanov who was acting in his place. The third was an Englishman, whose job description gave Holmes pause.

  Deep in thought, he set the bath-water running, shaved, and donned a fresh shirt, heading down the stairs to beard a Bolshevik agitator in his den—or at least, in his outdoor café.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I walked with Princess Ileana down the hill to the stables. The Queen was just arriving, and I watched her dismount to greet the villagers pressing up to be near her. It was a startlingly feudal scene, in this modern era when crowds were things to be kept back from royalty and handshakes were indications of honour. Caps were doffed, forelocks tugged, the Queen’s outstretched hand seized and kissed, over and over again.

  The gleaming horse was led away by a stable hand. The Queen continued her gracious benedictions—until she happened to glance up and see us, over the heads of the short villagers.

  An expression of astonishment and horror opened up on the Queen’s beautiful features. She dropped her hand and her royal dignity to march forward, villagers parting like the Red Sea. But two of the men who had come out of the stables were moving forward to sort out matters, so I let Ileana go forward without me.

  Cowardice? No doubt. But I was here as an investigator, not a counsellor, and I had no wish to be drawn into that battle. Much better to spend my evening out of the way, until the tears had dried and nerves settled.

  Which was why I had already asked one of the guards to inform Florescu that I would not be there for dinner.

  It took me time and trickery to locate the house of Vera Dumitru. Doors closed in my face, literally and figuratively, until I slipped into the village shop just as it was closing and came out with a quantity of boiled sweets. I found a low wall to sit on, making a show of choosing the very best one and inserting it into my blissful mouth.

  I sucked, rattling the thing around my teeth, and though I had been afraid it was too near to the dinner hour for my purposes, I soon felt eyes upon me—and on the brown paper twist at my side. I sat, intently studying the sign with hours for the doctor’s surgery: Monday, Thursday, Saturday, 10:00–7:00. Meaning that he should have been here, but his shooting-brake was not in its space. No doubt if he was off with another patient, the village would know where to find him.

  At last, a small, grubby child wandered up, kicking a rock and all but whistling his nonchalance. I could hear giggles and whispers in the background.

  I nodded to him, and picked up the bag to choose another sweet, deftly palming the first sticky ball as I did so.

  “Allo,” he said.

  “Good afternoon, Sir.”

  More giggles from behind the hedge. The urchin eyed me for any signs of mockery. I gave him none.

  “Where you from?” he demanded. Clearly, he already knew, having addressed me in sounds that resembled English.

  “London,” I replied, figuring that the words East Dean, Sussex would not mean much to him.

  “Why you come?”

  “To see the Queen.”

  “Why?”

  Our conversation was deteriorating, somewhat. “I wanted to see Bran. Good place. Good haystacks.” He looked blank, so I turned to point at one of the shaggy green monsters looming nearby. “Haystack.”

  He made a sound that resembled cabbage, which seemed doubtful—perhaps I’d have recognised its Latin cognates had it been on a page rather than in a throat. I nodded. “Great cabbages, here in Bran.”

  He goggled at me, and his companions started rolling about laughing. We both ignored the shaking branches.

  “Do you know Bran?” I asked, tossing the bag of sweets up and down in my palm to reinforce his attention.

  “Yes of course.”

  “No, I don’t think so. You are too small.”

  Our audience went still at this insult. The urchin stared daggers at me. “I not small,” he snapped, ending the sentence with a phrase that I was afraid I could guess at, all too well.

  “Prove it,” I said, then simplified it to, “show me.”

  He planted his feet, put his fists on his hips, and raised his chin, accepting the challenge. I narrowed my eyes, then deliberately reached into the bag and held up one sweet between thumb and forefinger. “There is a black rooster in Bran. Show me.”

  I had seen the rooster not twenty minutes before, and indeed, he led me straight to it. I handed him the sweet, then held up another. “The house of the man who plays the concertina.” The word stumped him, until I demonstrated the pushing-pulling action, and off we went, trailing a company of small boys.

  Next came: the house of the driver of the Queen’s big car. This proved to be a tiny, spotlessly clean place on the other side of town. Then: the postal box (which I had seen across from the church the day before). When there were six sweets bulging the sides of his face out, I shook my head, as if to say these were too easy, and challenged him with “The house of Vera, who works in the castle.”

  When I had that one, I threw up my hands, admitting defeat, and handed over what was left of the sweets. I watched him march proudly away to our audience, where he started plucking half-sucked sweets from his mouth and presenting them to chosen others.

  The untouched ones vanished into some grubby fold of his clothing.

  And I walked up to the door of the Dumitru house.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Sherlock Holmes knew the kind of Bolshevik he would encounter the moment the voice on the telephone informed him that Tovarisch Ivanov, the secretary in charge while Tovarisch Dalca was off in Moscow, would be taking an early dinner with friends at La Cina, before an eve
ning political rally.

  La Cina was one of the most fashionable restaurants in Bucharest, a brief walk from the Athenee Palace, and despite the heat and the early hour, its terrace was crowded with bureaucrats in no hurry to set off for their homes.

  Many of the men here were clean-shaven. Most of the women had short hair, although their skirts were several inches longer than was the fashion in Paris, or even London. Holmes ignored the maître d’ who had stepped forward to greet him, running his eye over the men with beards—only to catch on an unexpected but familiar face. After a moment, he smiled. He might have known.

  He dodged La Cina’s greeter and wound through the tables, waiting for his target to notice him. An expression of horror came onto the man’s face—satisfying confirmation that Sherlock Holmes still held some sway in the underworld.

  Also satisfying, to think that there were some things Mycroft did not know.

  The man’s requisite beard did not conceal the sick look that came over his face as Holmes approached. His three companions, two men and a woman, broke off to look up at the approaching Englishman.

  “Good evening, Comrade…‘Ivanov,’ ” Holmes said. “Or should I say, Mr—”

  “Hah!” The man’s loud exclamation of joviality brought nearby conversation to a halt. “My old friend from London. Vat you doing here?”

  “We need to speak,” Holmes said. “Your friends are welcome to remain. Shall I have the waiter bring another—?”

  “No, we just are finishing, eh, tovarischi? I see you later, we finish business then, yes?”

  The other three, startled at the abrupt dismissal, nonetheless rose and made their rather confused way out of the restaurant. The bearded man left behind, meanwhile, scowled at Holmes and lowered his voice, the heavy Russian accent disappearing along with the bonhomie.

  “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “Good to see you, too, Johnston. I had no idea there was money to be had in the Roumanian Communist Party.”

  “Tell me what you want and—” He broke off, seeing the approach of two heavy-laden waiters, who began to distribute plates. The waiter paused when he noticed that Holmes was not the man who had been in that chair when the dinners were ordered, but the Bolshevik secretary gestured impatiently, and down the plate went.

  “You might as well eat that,” he told Holmes, sourly.

  Holmes surveyed the ownerless plates. Did he want to break bread with a man like Ernie Johnston? The man was a criminal. On the other hand, he’d always been more rogue than thug, and had been known to return a portion of his larcenous takings to the widows and orphans left behind. Under some urging. And one assumed that the Communist Party was paying for the meal: even Russell would agree that an English gentleman had the moral obligation to make whatever inroads possible into the Party’s finances.

  So he traded the mass of food before him for the more manageable quantity that the woman had ordered, helped himself to an untouched glass, and picked up his utensils.

  “The beard is new,” he remarked.

  “Itches like billy-o, but it’s part of the job.”

  “What are you up to, Johnston?”

  The man looked at the surrounding tables, then sighed, and swung his backside over to the chair next to Holmes, taking the plate with him. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible amidst the chatter.

  “It fell smack into my lap, I tell you. And say what you will, Mr ’Olmes, I’m a loyal subject of the King—I had an obligation, don’t you know? So, four, five months past, I was down the pub when in strolls this bearded lot of ruffians. They was up to no good, anyone could see, and the bar-man wasn’t keen on serving them, but I says, oi, nuffin’s wrong with their bees n’ honey, and so he gave ’em their pints and they bought me one and we got to talking. And they were practically drippin’ notes out of their pockets so I just sort of…stuck.”

  “And you ended up in Bucharest?”

  “Funny old world, innit?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Seven weeks. Godawful place. I sometimes put a block of ice in the tub, just to cool off.”

  “And how long do you plan on staying?”

  Another sigh, and the man’s fork went down. “Was going to be three weeks. But if you’re here, maybe you should tell me.”

  “I’m not after you, Johnston.”

  “No?”

  “Not unless you give me a reason.”

  The bearded man resumed his meal, but he was clearly paying more attention to his thoughts than the food. “You’re not here after me?”

  “I didn’t know you were in Roumania until I spotted you across the terrace.”

  “ ’Cause if the Bolshies think I’m a grass, I’ll turn up in the river.”

  “I seriously doubt that my business here has any aspect in common with yours, but if the two turn out to be related, I promise to give you time to get clear before the axe falls.”

  Johnston nodded. “Can’t ask for more, I don’t suppose. So, what’s your business?”

  “Tell me what you have heard of any plots against the royal family.”

  “The King?” He’d raised his voice enough to be heard at nearby tables, and when he realised, he glared at his fellow diners.

  “Not ours, you fool,” Holmes murmured. “King Ferdinand. And his wife and daughter.”

  The outrage turned to confusion. “Him? Who’d plot against him?”

  “The Queen is very popular. I’d have thought your Bolshevik friends would want to overturn her, at the very least. They must find it difficult to foment a peasant uprising with her in the hearts of her countrymen.”

  “Maybe. But I hear tell Ferdinand’s sick, and they don’t believe in real Queens here like Victoria, God bless ’er. And that son of theirs is a right pillock—give the country two-three years of him, and they’ll be queuing up to join the Party.”

  “And until then, your Bolshevik friends will bide their time and dine at La Cina.”

  “Could be worse places,” he said, and raised his glass of Tokay at Holmes.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I was not surprised when the woman who came to the Dumitru door spoke no English. It actually made things easier—and her clearly being in the late stages of cooking dinner made it easier yet. I simply kept smiling and repeating her daughter’s name, until she was forced to go and fetch the girl.

  She left the door ajar. And I was standing right there, so I gently reached past the long strings of garlic and drying peppers to encourage the door to drift open a little further…

  Inside was the most colourful room I have ever seen. Even a palace in India makes use of some neutral shades to set off the brilliant fabrics and paintings—but here, the only scraps of relief were some minor patches of whitewashed plaster and portions of the wooden ceiling. Everything was ablaze with the same colours as the embroidered clothing—although whoever lived in this house had a true adoration for German synthetic dyes. If I lived here, I should have to wear tinted lenses.

  The main furniture, draped under all those rugs, blankets, and stuffed pillows, was wooden: A long bench with arms and high back was clearly the family settee, laid with a long green-and-blue woven rectangle. Before it stood a long, narrow trestle table with a cloth of predominantly red and yellow, from under which peeped legs resembling branches, stripped of bark and polished to within an inch of their lives. In the far corner stood a structure like a child-sized bunk bed, its lower levels nearly hidden by the achingly bright red-and-pink geometrical weaving draped from the top. Carpets were scattered across the pristine beaten-earth floor, embroidered scarves were displayed from pairs of pegs set into the walls, needlework curtains were drawn back from the polished windows. Even the collection of family photographs on a sideboard had vibrant little samplers draped over their frames.

 
The only clear space my eyes could find was a small shelf just inside the door. It was the sort of spot a city-dweller would put the keys, or leave a note for another inhabitant of the house.

  In this case, it held six freshly whittled stakes, similar to the teeth of the hand-made hay rakes—except that these were nearly a foot long, as thick as my thumb, and sharpened to a point.

  Behind them on the shelf lay a heavy mallet.

  I had lived on a farm for several years. I could think of no farm-related task that required a sharpened stake and a mallet.

  My horrified thoughts were interrupted by the return of the woman who had answered the door, trailing behind her a young woman, and talking all the while.

  I’m not sure what I expected of Miss Vera Dumitru. The doctor had described her as sensible, the priest as level-headed; on the other hand, she had recently lost her fiancé (and possibly, if I had read between the priest’s lines correctly, a baby) and had been visited twice by ghosts. I anticipated red eyes and a case of the trembles, at the very least. What I got was someone who made Gabriela look shy.

  She was as tall as I was, to begin with, and stood straight-backed to look over her mother’s kerchief-wrapped head at me. At the maternal gush of Roumanian, she gave a roll of the eyes that would have looked at home on a London flapper and elbowed her mother aside—politely, but without hesitation—to lead me down the steps to a bench in the front garden. The protests of the mother grew more urgent, until at last the girl gave her what was very clearly a “Mother, please!”

  With a final despairing phrase, the door banged shut. Vera raised her beautifully plucked eyebrows at me. “Sorry at that.”

  “I do understand. She is worried about you.”

  “She worries of everything. Mothers.”

  I joined her in a what-can-you-do? shake of the head, then watched as she fished a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her traditional embroidered apron and stuck one in her mouth. She offered me one, I declined, and she got it going with a gesture so insouciant, I knew that here was another girl familiar with the cinema in Brașov. She tugged off her flowered kerchief and stuffed it into the same pocket, shaking out her modern, if somewhat crumpled, haircut.