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

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  Through the murky window glass facing Dr. Watson’s domicile we watched the plain and simple pantomime: child reaching up to ring the bell. Maid answering. Child vanishing within. Child reappearing, sans note. A few moments later, the door opening to disgorge Dr. Watson.

  “Hastily, Nell,” Irene hissed. “We must both get a good look at the bag. If we have sent him off with the one we want, a different scheme will be necessary.”

  She thrust my appropriated pince-nez at me. I was able to position it in time to see the doctor’s bag swinging beside him as he trotted past us toward the underground station.

  “Brass!” I gasped.

  “What?”

  “I saw the glimmer of bright brass fittings. Surely a new bag.”

  Irene nodded. “I thought so, too. Then we wait until our little miss leaves.”

  This looked to take some doing. The child had returned to her step across the way. I scouted the chemist’s and found some French pastilles—the only thing of French manufacture for which I had developed a taste—but Irene hailed me to the window again.

  “Gone inside to watch Mama’s fitting at last, thank God.”

  We scuttled around the comer like thieves, Irene donning my pince-nez again despite my warnings. There are none so blind as those that will not see. Soon we were poised before the door that Godfrey and I had broached but three days before.

  I rang the bell. When the maid’s broad pale face appeared behind an opening door I recalled that this poor unsuspecting soul must have been the one to “discover” the dead cobra. For a moment I was tongue-tied with shame.

  Into the breach leaped the golden tongue of my shameless companion. “Is the master or mistress of the house in? We are seeking donations to St. Aldwyn-the-Bald’s-on-the-Moor. A most worthy cause.”

  The maid’s lips folded in undecided reluctance.

  “What is it, Prudence?” came a kindly voice.

  “The doctor is out on a case,” the speaker continued, drawing the door wider to see us and thus revealing herself to be Mrs. Watson.

  “That ith quite all righth,” I found myself saying, “you would do nithely.”

  Irene had decided that pretending to a catarrh would allow me to press a handkerchief to my lower face, and the concurrent lisp would serve to disguise my voice. All I need do was breathe through my mouth, as I had on one key occasion in France....

  “Do?” The poor lady looked utterly puzzled.

  Irene made a great business of glancing at the brass plate proclaiming the resident’s name and business. “Mrs. Watson, is it? We would most appreciate speaking with you in your husband’s absence. We are parishioners of St.-Aldwyn-the-Bald’s-on-the-Moor, a church in nearby Notting Hill, which has suffered from a fire.”

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. Watson frowned at the notion of the mythical fire. “I have not heard of your congregation... or your conflagration—”

  “Of course not,” Irene said sadly. “The fire has grievously reduced our numbers and resources. That is why we must go door-to-door seeking what charity we can.”

  “I suppose I could—” the good woman began. “But, how rude I am. Come in, ladies.”

  Thus we entered the Watson house, I for a second occasion. We were led into a charming little parlor, with a lace-covered table in the street-facing window. A stereopticon upon it caught a stray beam of sunlight.

  “Now,” Mrs. Watson said, once we were seated. She was a tiny, fine-boned woman; it would be unforgivable to lie to her transparent blue eyes. I cringed on both our behalves. “I can spare a few coins—”

  “Oh, no!” Irene raised a forbidding hand. “Please. We do not seek money.”

  “Then how can I help you?”

  “If you have some unused item about, something that could prove useful to our congregation... old books, for instance, that you would rid yourself of anyway.”

  “Books? I do not think John would care to donate those. Nor would I... I could never part with my Mrs. Gaskells, or the Waverlys, or Miss Austen....”

  “Since your husband is a doctor,” Irene said briskly to stop what promised to be a complete catalogue, “perhaps you could spare some older medical books, even a medical bag he no longer uses.”

  Mrs. Watson shook her head. “There is nothing of that sort that I could give away in his absence. You must admit that a husband’s possessions are sacred.”

  “I am sure of it,” Irene said.

  Mrs. Watson looked politely to me.

  “I would nod know.” I sniffled sadly into my lacy bit of Irish linen. “I am not married.”

  “Oh,” she said sympathetically. “And you?” she asked Irene.

  “Oh, yes. That is why I asked if there were something lying about that you could spare. My own husband is so determined to cling to every old pair of hunting boots or souvenir of his youth, things he would not possibly use in a hundred years! But there it is. Men must have their clutter.”

  Mrs. Watson smiled. “The doctor is remarkably neat about his possessions. It comes from his sharing lodgings with a bachelor friend in the days before we married. Excellent training.”

  Irene joined her in a wifely laugh at the expense of the absent spouses. “Your good fortune is our misfortune,” she said lightly, rising and blinking pitifully behind my pince-nez.

  “We must look elsewhere. A cast-off medical bag would be just the thing for parish sick calls, but if you are wed to a wonder of organization we will have to seek elsewhere.”

  “Wait!” Mrs. Watson cried as we neared the doorway to the passage. “There is some musty old thing at the bottom of the wardrobe. I believe John had it with him in Afghanistan. He has had no earthly use for it since... would not even miss it after all this time, I am sure. I will fetch it. If it is in any proper condition—”

  “Oh, bless you, Mrs. Watson,” Irene murmured fervently (and most sincerely), clasping her gloved hands. “You are an angel of mercy.”

  The poor woman flew up the stairs, returning shortly with a battered brown leather satchel.

  “It is not new looking,” she said, turning it over in her hands. “It survived a war, after all. If you think that it would serve—?”

  “It will serve magnificently.” Irene clutched the flattened old bag to her bosom. “You have no idea how delighted we are to see this. How... useful it will be. I vouchsafe to say that you and your husband will walk safer these next few days because of this good deed. Heaven has a way of helping those who help others.”

  Mrs. Watson’s faced showed sudden anxiety. “How odd that you should say that. I have been worried, actually. We had an... incident at the house recently. But I’m delighted to help St.-Ethelwed-the-Bold’s-on-the-Mire. Are you certain that a monetary donation—?”

  “No, no,” I said firmly. “To take mere money is begging.”

  “To take cash is to take trash,” Irene paraphrased Othello shamelessly, and somewhat disjointedly, on our exit, “but he—or she—who offers hard goods will always have a sterling reputation.”

  We stood again on the stoop. Mrs. Watson, shadowed in her doorway, still looked puzzled, and even slightly worried. Perhaps the recent incident with the cobra troubled her.

  “There is a sign in the Bible,” Irene said, abruptly employing a serious tone. “To find a dead snake upon one’s doorstep signifies that a powerful protector is watching over you and yours.”

  “Truly?” Shock paled Mrs. Watson’s complexion even more. “How odd you should say that.” A sudden smile made that poignant face radiant. “Certainly my husband does have such a benefactor—the most mentally powerful man in London.”

  “Doubtless the Good Book had other, unseen allies in mind, Mrs. Watson,” Irene said, “but an honest soul can never have enough angels on its side.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  SHERLOCK HOLMES'S LAST CASE

  Irene spent the next evening brooding.

  This she managed with the panache of Sarah Bernhardt on the stage. First she attired hers
elf after dinner in a close-fitting crimson velvet gown of the princess cut. A heliotrope taffeta caftan over her shoulders swept to a wide train in the back and was edged in snowy ermine along the front floor-length reveres.

  This garb was ideal for pacing, which she proceeded to do, the hotel’s rococo decoration fading to a dull backdrop indeed for her formidable foreground presence. Mind you, I do not claim that this performance was planned; merely that Irene’s nature required the properly dramatic setting before her mind could explore its most creative and instinctive territories.

  Naturally, she smoked during this exercise, but fitfully, letting the cigarette in its gold-entwined mother-of-pearl holder smolder unheeded in a dish, until a pale length of ash crowned it like an eighteenth-century French lady’s powdered wig.

  Or she would suddenly seize the holder and her pace would quicken, even as her eyebrows plunged together in a concentrated frown. She would sip swiftly from the delicate holder until her cigarette end burned a constant ember-red. And always wreaths of smoke drifted around her like the fine-net veiling they call “illusion.”

  She finally stopped, turning at the same time, so her heliotrope train crackled before swirling to rest in a graceful spiral around her lower limbs.

  “No doubt you all have wondered what I did today.”

  We waited attentively, the gentlemen nursing after-dinner cigars whose odor reminded me of burnt burlap. I suffered much in their rank company, but confined myself to embroidering a handkerchief. The one with which I had attempted to clean the actual urchin’s face not four days earlier had been sullied beyond redemption.

  “Dare we suppose that you have done as Quentin and I, and visited the London shops?” Godfrey said.

  I glanced at Quentin, dashing in evening dress like Godfrey, as all good hotel dining rooms required. I had not inquired into the funds for Quentin’s outfitting, suspecting one of my friends’ quiet but spectacular acts of charity, from which I also had benefited in the past.

  Irene sighed. “Not yet, I fear. 1 wish I had done something as interesting as that; I do not often have the opportunity to shop in London. No, my activities were far more commonplace. I was in Woking.”

  “Woking again? Whatever for?” I burst out. “That is an excessively idyllic locale for one with your proclivities for mayhem.”

  Irene smiled at me. “Mayhem is not snobbish about address; it may reside as well behind the moss-grown facade of the manse as the Whitechapel pub. Perhaps you have heard of the Poisoning Parson of Tunbridge Wells.”

  “No, I have not. I think you have made that up.”

  “I? Make something up? Heaven forbid, Nell.”

  “It often does, but you never listen.”

  “Do go on, Irene,” Quentin said. “I am most anxious to learn what you found so fascinating in Woking, though any place that you would honor with your presence would perforce become irresistible.”

  Irene laughed heartily. “Clothes do make the man! Put a desperate exile into white tie and tails and he spouts drawing room hyperbole.”

  Quentin bit at his infant mustache and smiled shyly. He seemed a stranger in civilized clothes. I found that I actually missed his air of wild incongruity.

  Irene laid her cigarette holder in a tray, from which supple ribbons of smoke wafted up like visible incense. She crossed her arms and eyed us with that suppressed excitement that betokens revelations.

  “I went to Woking because that is where resides the young gentleman upon whose behalf Sherlock Holmes’s most recent efforts have been made. Briarbrae is a most impressive house with extensive grounds, and in it dwell Mr. Percy Phelps and his fiancée, Miss Annie Harrison. Mr. Phelps has been ill and under a great strain, but I had a most pleasant tea with Miss Harrison.”

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Godfrey said. “How you persuade strangers to give you not only tea but confidences.”

  “That’s because you were trained as a barrister, Godfrey, and expect people to resist telling you things. I, on the other hand, tell them everything about me. They are so overcome that they reciprocate in kind.”

  “It’s more than that,” I put in. “You make it seem that only by telling you everything will they have any possible chance of doing the right thing. It is a pity that women cannot take holy orders; you would make a most effective clergyman.”

  “It is all a matter of convincing others of an Unreality,” Godfrey added. “Clergymen and actors are not so different.”

  “Be that as it may,” Irene said, bringing our attention upon herself once again; indeed, in her flowing, royal-hued gown she did resemble a pagan priestess. “That simple tea in Woking answered an entire menu of questions.”

  “The first one is why are you concerned about Sherlock Holmes’s last case?” Godfrey put in.

  She smiled at him in sweet patience, faultlessly acted. “Because it is linked to the matter that Quentin presented to us.”

  “I?” the man cited objected. “Surely not.”

  “Surely so,” she replied, absently stroking the soft ermine of one revere. “I first sniffed the matter when I followed Mr. Holmes to the Diogenes Club—an extremely intriguing establishment! The membership is gentlemen only, but of course that was no barrier to me.”

  I sighed pointedly. Quentin, who had seen Irene only as a street boy, not in the full and impressive range of her talents as a male impersonator, looked puzzled.

  “I entered the premises,” Irene explained, “as a waiter in hopes of a position. I regret to say that I failed to achieve one. It must have been my Italian accent.”

  She shrugged soulfully. “However, I did learn two or three interesting points about the place. The Diogenes Club is one of the oddest, if not the oldest, in London. Members retreat there for utter isolation and silence, not fellowship. Among them is a certain Mycroft Holmes. According to my hasty but thorough reading of the visitor’s ledger, this Mycroft Holmes is indeed sought after by the most highly placed men in London, including his relation—a brother, I’d think—Sherlock.”

  “So after penetrating the Diogenes Club, you next go gadding off to Woking?” I asked.

  “Yes. How nicely put. I gadded off to Woking. But first I made a few other trifling inquiries. At the Foreign Office, for instance, I had a long chat with the commissionaire’s wife, a rather surly woman. However, once I professed myself a friend of ‘poor Percy’—remember, he worked there—she kindly revealed that he had been under suspicion over a ‘missing paper.’ She also indicated that ‘even a decent God-fearin’ woman’ was suspect in the case, namely herself. She was not treated gently by Scotland Yard, I gather, when she was subjected to a search, always a mistake with the humbler classes. They take offense and are exactly the type to fume and fuss about the matter to all comers.”

  “That paper sounds like a sensitive document.” Godfrey thoughtfully knocked the ash from his cigar into a low dish.

  She answered his comment with a question. “How sensitive would you consider a secret naval treaty between England and Italy?”

  Quentin looked puzzled. “I have long been ignorant of current foreign affairs, thanks to my sojourn in Afghanistan.”

  Godfrey pondered the question. “The only interested parties would be those who would lose by the alliance. Perhaps... France,” he suggested. “Both Italy and France have Mediterranean ports.”

  “Bravo!” Irene said. “That is exactly it.”

  “And how did you know this?” I asked her.

  She donned a modest expression. “Rumors of this event reached the press last spring. I looked up back copies of the Telegram and the Times.”

  “Anyone could do that!” said I indignantly.

  “Of course. But would anyone? And would anyone know what to make of this fact as regards our end of the tangle?”

  “ ‘Our’ end?” I repeated.

  “Ah, you do miss Casanova, Nell, but I do not require an echo at the moment. There is another nation, as well, that would squirm at news of any
such English alliance abroad, and that is her ancient enemy in another quarter of the world.”

  “By Jove—that I do know!” Quentin was sitting up, his precious cigar abandoned in the dish beside him. “Russia! Russia has no European ports. She would be most uneasy with such a treaty, especially since Czar Alexander spurns European connections, except for those few French ones he tolerates for his Empress’s sake.”

  Irene’s smile grew radiant. “There speaks the soul of a spy. There stands the link to the two puzzles: the Afghanistan events of ’eighty and the recent hushed scandal of the missing English-Italian naval treaty. I propose that solving one muddle will resolve the other.”

  “It is preposterous,” Quentin said, sadly. “Ingenious... Ireneous, even, but erroneous,” he added with a flash of humor I had not yet seen in him. “If you can posit a connection between the disaster at Maiwand, Maclaine’s death, my and Dr, Watson’s recent brushes with death and this obscure treaty, my hat—nay, my head—is off to you, Madame Mystery-solver.”

  Irene positively glittered at the challenge. “You think it is impossible? Then listen to what Miss Harrison told me at tea.”

  “Irene,” I asked, “how did you persuade the young woman to tell you anything at all about such a secret matter?”

  “I told her the truth,” Irene answered.

  “Shocking,” Godfrey muttered. “You must have been desperate.”

  “We did not have much time together,” she said tersely. “I had already learned that her fiancé, Mr. Phelps, had spent several weeks abed with brain fever and that recently, to gather from the behavior of Lord Holdhurst, his uncle, and others in the Foreign Office, all pressure had lifted from him. A significant figure present in this matter was Sherlock Holmes, I might add.

  “So when I called upon Miss Harrison I told her of my concern for a noble-spirited Englishman who was a virtual exile from his homeland because of a false disgrace in war. I also told her that I’d heard rumors of her recent trouble and that a Mr. Sherlock Holmes was said to have assisted in the matter. Did she think Mr. Holmes could do anything for me?”