A Soul of Steel (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes)

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  He was so impatient that he seized my hatpin as soon as I had released it and began stabbing at the envelope.

  “There is an opener here,” said I, taking the now-mangled correspondence to the small writing desk. Godfrey had never shown a subtle hand with the correspondence in chambers. I neatly slit the seam and pulled out a folded paper.

  “Very fine quality,” I noted, as Irene might.

  Godfrey sighed. “What does it say?”

  “It is from Mrs. Waterston. Quentin Stanhope’s married sister, as Mrs. Turnpenny was.”

  “What does she say?”

  “Only that... my goodness!”

  “Nell!”

  I sat down. “She recalls me as her sister’s governess—is that not nice?”

  “Wonderful! Sublime! What does she—?”

  “She wants us to call as soon as possible. This evening if possible.”

  “Marvelous!”

  “She says that her aged mother is most interested in news of her long-lost, dear son Quentin... Oh, Godfrey—”

  “What?”

  “She does not know of his... condition. We cannot disabuse poor old Mrs. Stanhope of her illusions.”

  “We will not. We will relieve his relations of the information we require and give them next to nothing in return.”

  “Is that fair?”

  “No, but it is useful.”

  “You sound like Irene!”

  “Thank you.”

  I sank unhappily onto the Louis XIV chair before the escritoire.

  “We are here to serve the greater good, Nell. That may require... compromise.”

  “I am not used to compromise.”

  That gave him pause. “Neither was Quentin Stanhope. Until Afghanistan.”

  “Oh!”

  Godfrey came and leaned over me in a most emphatic manner, his hands braced on the chair arms. “Nell, we are thrust into matters of great moment. Nicety has no place in our calculations. We must steel ourselves to serve the truth, and hope that it will hurt no one for whom we care.”

  “I do not even know these women.”

  “No, but you know their lost loved one. Irene would never have let you come if she had suspected that you would succumb to such qualms of conscience.”

  “Let me come! Irene cannot come because she is known here!”

  “Would that stop her? She thought that the trip would do you good.”

  “Do me good? Why?”

  Godfrey withdrew, suddenly subdued. “You are the springboard of the current puzzle. Irene thought you deserved the opportunity to investigate your own mystery.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  “You need not glower like the Queen’s Counsel, Godfrey. I understand that I am broaching my past, and Irene’s past as well, in this affair. Very well; I will call upon Mrs. Waterston and endeavor to learn what we must know in order to best serve her true interests, even if we cannot confide fully in her.”

  “Brava, Nell.” He smiled like a man relieved of a burden not his.

  Godfrey glanced at my veiled bonnet lying like a wounded pheasant on the pier table. “And I think you can dispense with that bonnet. The idea is for you to be recognizable in Grosvenor Square.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  A NOSY NIECE

  Godfrey again perused my list of Baker Street visitors in the cab en route to Grosvenor Square, shaking his head. “Not promising, Nell. Obviously Holmes is either gone or keeping to his rooms. None of the visitors is a candidate for the doctor, except this stocky chap who arrived with the pale-looking man. The old lady is likely the housekeeper, or landlady, as you surmise. When our interview on Grosvenor Square is done, we shall have to take steps.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that we will have to inquire after Dr. Watson ourselves,” he said.

  “I as well? Mr. Holmes could be lurking about, and I have been seen by him.”

  “But in circumstances in which he would be likely to overlook you.”

  “I thought he was a formidable detective. How should he overlook me?” I asked.

  “Irene has said that he has a weakness for women.”

  “Indeed! That is the first that I have heard of such a failing.”

  Godfrey smiled. “Not in the common way that the phrase is meant. She claims that he is uninterested in women to a fault, so that he is forever underestimating their importance and wit. That gives women a kind of invisibility.”

  “He appeared perfectly capable of noticing Irene, and found her on the crowded terrace of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.”

  His smile faded. “Ah, but that was Irene. Irene is always noticeable unless she is taking especial care not to be. Here is number forty-four.”

  Anyone who has lived in London is well aware that Grosvenor numbers among the city’s most lordly squares. Our cab drew up before an imposing stone fence. A piece of antique statuary peeked from beyond the manicured greenery of high summer.

  “In truth, Godfrey,” I said, my eyes surveying the blank expanse of windows lining the great house, “I dare not confront this family again. I am but a mere mote in their memories....”

  “Fortunately their son and brother is not,” he said in firm tones, stepping down from the cab to help me out before he paid the driver. “And we are expected.”

  I sighed. “I suppose it is my duty.”

  “Of course it is.” He drew my hand through the crook of his elbow. “Yet it would be more amusing to regard this as an adventure.”

  His use of that particular, overadvertized word reminded me of Quentin. How could I tell a man who had faced the unthinkable in India and Afghanistan that I was reduced to a quailing girl by his own family? Not that I was ever likely to see Quentin Stanhope again. Still, passing up that long, formal walk into that long, formal house was for me a return to a once-pleasant past that now seemed beyond reach. I was nothing to these people except a link between our common history and their lost member.

  The butler who answered the door was impeccably noncommittal. I felt like a pair of galoshes that had been inadvertently left on the steps. Godfrey’s hat, stick and gloves were swiftly stripped from him; at least women could retain the accessory armor of hat and gloves indoors.

  We were shown into a front receiving room full of strangers.

  “Please, come right in!” cried a pretty young woman in a buttercup-yellow mousseline tea-gown, rising to draw us in as we paused politely on the threshold. “Why, Miss Huxleigh, you have grown so smart!”

  Her words astounded me, but her identity amazed me even more.

  “And you have simply grown! Miss Allegra?” I asked rather than exclaimed. “Miss Turnpenny now, rather.”

  “No, I am Allegra still,” said this ingratiating creature, taking my hands and laughing. “But what has happened to Miss Huxleigh’s mouse-gray skirts and cream cotton shirtwaists?”

  “I have... changed,” I said, “and so have you.”

  “And are you still Miss Huxleigh?” inquired the impertinent young person, eyeing Godfrey with an interest unbecoming to a well-brought-up girl.

  “Indeed,” I said hastily. “That has not changed. May I introduce Mr. Godfrey Norton, a barrister who practices in Paris? He, too, is aware of the news I have come to convey.” At least here we could use our true identities.

  “Then you must meet the others.”

  The young woman spun to introduce the array of middle-aged ladies seated behind her: her aunt, Mrs. Waterston; her mother, Mrs. Codwell Turnpenny, who had grayed greatly since Berkeley Square; her other aunt, Mrs. Compton. These three women were Quentin Stanhope’s older sisters, I realized with a jolt. Looking into their genteel, concerned faces, I wondered what on earth I should tell them about the fate of their baby brother.

  We were seated and plied with tea and crumpets of a vastly superior variety. Godfrey accepted the female doting they bestowed with calm good grace, refusing all offers of cucumber sandwiches until the
social flutter had died a natural death.

  “It is wonderful to see you, Miss Huxleigh,” Mrs. Turnpenny finally ventured over her cup of tea. “You do not look a day older.” I could not truthfully say the same of her, so remained attentively silent. “Now, please, you must tell us what you know of Quentin.”

  “Perhaps,” Godfrey intervened, capturing their instant attention by being both handsome and a man of affairs, “you should tell us what you know first.”

  Their eyes, all pale watercolor shades of blue and gray, gently consulted each other. I imagined a family portrait— perhaps by the Florence-born American, Singer Sargent, who in his London studio attired his female subjects in such a swooning shimmer of pale paint—with the sisters portrayed as the fading Three Graces. I then pictured the brother and beloved uncle we had first seen in Paris—bearded, bronzed, berobed, ill—thrust into their midst. No. Quentin Stanhope as he now was made a more proper subject for one of those Bohemian bistro painters of Paris—a Mucha or a Chéret.

  Mrs. Turnpenny spoke. “I am a widow. Yes, my dear,” she explained with a glance at me, “Colonel Turnpenny died in Afghanistan. Not at Maiwand, but ironically in the victorious battle that followed it.”

  “I am so sorry,” I murmured.

  “Our elderly mother is a widow also,” Mrs. Turnpenny added. “She is upstairs in her rooms. We did not wish to upset her unnecessarily. We knew Quentin had been wounded at Maiwand, and that he had been reported missing or dead. Later, the Army insisted that he was alive, and indeed, we finally received a letter in a shaky hand that was certainly his. So we waited for him to recuperate and come home.”

  “He never did!” Allegra interjected this in the aggrieved tone of a disappointed child. “Uncle Quentin never came back. The others had given him up, and certainly it was better for Grandmama to think him dead if we had no word or sign of him, but I have never understood why he left us. Do you know something more, Miss Huxleigh, please? Can you tell us something more?”

  “Allegra!” the young woman’s mother rebuked softly, turning to us. “She remembers him with a child’s freshness. You must forgive her enthusiasm. I would be most grateful for any information you could offer us. We had hoped when the other gentleman called—”

  “Other gentleman?” Godfrey asked.

  Mrs. Turnpenny paused at the urgency in his tone. “Yes, a war veteran, like Quentin. A former member of his company.”

  “When did this gentleman call?” Godfrey wanted to know. Again the three older

  women silently consulted one another, both to bolster their common recollection and to protest Godfrey’s intrusive curiosity.

  “In May,” Mrs. Waterston declared in a no-nonsense voice. “It was my wolfhound Peytor’s birthday.”

  “May,” Godfrey repeated without further comment, in the irritating way of barristers everywhere.

  “Do you know anything of Quentin, Miss Huxleigh?” Allegra beseeched me.

  Suddenly my qualms tumbled like a wall of stone turned to sand before their heartfelt concern.

  “We know that he is relatively well, and alive,” I said briskly. “We encountered him in Paris last week. He has lived in the East for many years.”

  “He was well?” Mrs. Turnpenny demanded. “Why did he not contact us? Why has he not come home, then?”

  “He was not well,” Godfrey put in quite rashly. “We think he had been poisoned.”

  Shock sighed through the room, and their pale powdered faces grew more ashen.

  I said quickly, “Quentin had reasons for staying abroad. There may have been danger to those he came too near. He is quite all right now, save for a troubling touch of fever now and then.”

  “Quentin?” Mrs. Turnpenny repeated with a polite frown.

  Godfrey regarded me with a deeply interested expression, like any barrister curious to see how a witness would extricate herself from an unpardonable blunder.

  I flushed as scarlet as the velvet footstool at Mrs. Turnpenny’s aristocratic feet.

  “Oh, Mama, don’t be a stick!” young Allegra urged with flashing blue eyes. “Miss Huxleigh has known me since the schoolroom, and Uncle Quentin was a favorite visitor there.”

  “It was Nell who roused Mr. Stanhope’s memories of home,” Godfrey added in my defense at last. “He recognized her in Paris.”

  “Nell?” Mrs. Turnpenny murmured again, this time faintly, as if confused beyond the point of fretting about it.

  “That is how my wife and I call Miss Huxleigh,” Godfrey explained.

  Mrs. Turnpenny nodded, reassured that Godfrey had a wife. If only she had met Irene! “And Paris is where Quentin was... poisoned?”

  “We think so,” I said, “or rather Irene does.” A silence. “Godfrey’s wife. Irene. She has remained behind in Paris. It was not serious, the poisoning, only Que—Mr. Stanhope feared for our own safety and vanished. We thought he might have come here, but of course if he fears that whoever he approaches is endangered—”

  “Quite a tale, from what sense I can make of it,” the formidable Mrs. Waterston noted. “Yet it might explain the gentleman caller in May if Quentin has been seen in Europe.”

  “Indeed,” said Godfrey. “So while we can offer no particulars about your loved one at present, we can tell you that he was well not many days ago, and that his long absence has apparently been forced by circumstance, not inclination. But take care to whom you speak of him.”

  “He has always kept you in his mind and heart,” I added. “You must not think that he has not. I hope that one day he can tell you so himself.”

  “As do we,” Mrs. Turnpenny said feelingly. “And what has brought you from Paris to London, so that you could deliver this news?”

  “Shopping,” said Godfrey promptly and somewhat truthfully, given his afternoon activities. “The French are quite inferior at men’s tailoring, but excel in women’s styles. As you can see, Miss Huxleigh has become a formidable fashion plate since her sojourn in Paris.”

  The older ladies blinked politely at his mock-serious tone, but Miss Allegra laughed until her eyes watered. “Oh, you remind me of dear Uncle Quentin, Mr. Norton. He was such an unreformed tease! What fun we had when I was young.”

  “That is usually the case, miss,” I reminded her primly.

  “In some ways you have not changed at all, Miss Huxleigh,” she answered, “and I am glad.”

  I smiled at the darling child, who reminded me of her uncle, though she found me less changed than he did.

  The rest of the tea was spent in polite chitchat, which Godfrey handled with masterful blandness. As we rose to leave, Godfrey inquired casually, “By the way, what did the gentleman who asked after Mr. Stanhope look like?”

  The ladies exchanged another blank glance.

  “Quite unremarkable looking,” Mrs. Turnpenny said, consulting her sisters.

  “Middle-aged, respectable.” Mrs. Compton nodded soberly.

  “I was not at the house at the time,” Mrs. Waterston declared, and that was that.

  “I will see them out, Mama,” the charming Allegra offered, frothing to my side in her jonquil gown to lay a hand on my arm like a favorite niece.

  As we walked into the tiled entry hall, Allegra spoke in a voice lowered to an excited whisper.

  “Not so tall as Mr. Norton,” she said, slipping her arm through his so we three were conspiratorially linked. “Bald as a cue ball. Fierce lapis- lazuli eyes, cold as stone. A most sinister individual. Mama has absolutely no powers of observation,” she added sadly.

  She delivered us to the cruising butler, who circled us like a shark, so eager was he to rid the house of its unconventional visitors.

  “Do find dear Quentin,” she finished, shaking our arms in light admonishment. “He is quite my favorite uncle.”

  “I am afraid,” said I, “that you take after him a great deal.”

  “Thank you, Miss Huxleigh,” she said with a last, roguish smile and a curtsy, before melting down the hall.

&n
bsp; Out in the square we paused, staring across the vast garden to the line of stately houses beyond.

  “Quite helpless and unforthcoming, the ladies of the house,” Godfrey mused as he smoothed his French kid gloves over his knuckles, “but your former charge is a charmer. She reminds me of Irene.”

  “I did not have a very long time with her in the schoolroom,” I admitted. “She does take a great deal upon herself.”

  “Someone must, in that household.” He sighed. “So Captain Morgan was already hunting for Stanhope in May. Why?”

  “Of course! That is who the inquiring gentleman was!”

  “The real question is what the devil—sorry, Nell—was Stanhope involved in, and why has it turned so urgent now?”

  “Oh,” I said without thinking, “I wish Irene were here. She would know what to do.”

  Godfrey smiled fondly. “We can cable her, if you like, in the morning, to tell her what we have learned.”

  “Oh, yes! But Godfrey—”

  “Yes?”

  “We must use a code name, in case that odious man Morgan has henchmen in Paris.”

  “We already have one,” he pronounced as we strolled toward New Bond Street, where we could more readily hail a cab.

  “What is that?”

  “Lucy Maison-Nouveau.”

  “Oh.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  SHE SNOOPS TO CONQUER

  At last a Watson in the flesh!

  Godfrey and I had decided that we would have more luck finding a physician free later in the day, so we stood before the doctor’s door in Paddington at four o’clock the next afternoon, I in a froth of excitement at finally meeting the figure who might serve as the key to Quentin Stanhope’s dilemmas.

  We confronted a semidetached brick residence that sat close to the street but was domestic enough in appearance to promise a garden in the back. A brass lozenge attached to the brick wall read, JOHN H. WATSON, M.D. Was he the same Dr. Watson who had aided Quentin Stanhope on the blazing battlefields of Afghanistan?

  The door opened. Instead of a gentleman who had consorted with the man of Baker Street, a lady stood in the doorway, regarding us with an air of pleasant but unsurprised inquiry.