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

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  My driverless hansom cab bolted on, its impetus pushing me back into the seat. I do not believe that I screamed; the situation was beyond such trivial measures. The hansom rattled across the empty bridge, spans and bars and proud towers flashing past me.... I heard nothing and saw very little.

  I returned to the hotel in the Strand at two the following morning. A kindly fruit vendor bound for Covent Garden had come upon my vehicle and taken charge of both the winded horse and myself. Godfrey was in the lobby waiting. I managed to stammer out some version of the events before he whisked me to the Norton suite and plied me with brandy.

  They both had been mad with worry at our long absence and Irene, he said, was out interrogating cab drivers. I never asked in what guise she undertook this assignment. I barely remember her coming in, though someone bundled me into bed, for that is where I awoke the next day.

  When we three met again in the morning, I related the circumstances more coherently. My friends instantly realized that any action was useless, that both men had plunged together into the swift current, and perished.

  That afternoon we traced the route in a four-wheeler until we came to what proved to be the Hammersmith Bridge. By day the impressive architecture seemed puny. I seemed to observe it from a distant point, like the invisible moon. A drive along the river revealed nothing but gray water. Irene and Godfrey were indefatigable for the next few days, but their inquiries uncovered nothing. New Scotland Yard reclaimed no bodies from the Thames that day or in the next five. The visit we three made later to Grosvenor Square drains through my mind like muddy tea to this day. I remember that Allegra wore black and did not ask to visit Paris. I seemed to have contracted the amnesia that follows brain fever.

  We prepared to return to Paris. Irene packed. I do not know what she did with Quentin’s new clothing.

  Shortly before we left, Godfrey came out of the bedchamber that had been Quentin’s.

  “I have been seeing to it,” he told me, “but I don’t know what to do with it now.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The mongoose.”

  “Oh.” I had forgotten about it.

  “Should I... dispose of it here?”

  “How exactly do you propose to... dispose of it?”

  “Perhaps there are rare-pet dealers.”

  “It is a bit late to think of that,” I reminded him.

  “We could take it on the boat-train to Calais.”

  “Would they allow it?”

  “Would they dare not allow it if Irene insisted?”

  “Messalina is as untidy as Casanova and as predatory as Lucifer.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Most inconvenient.”

  “I cannot argue with you.”

  “We will take it.”

  And so we went.

  On the Channel passage, I was standing by the rail watching the white cliffs of Dover pale to vague clouds on the horizon, when someone came to stand beside me.

  It was Irene, the wind blowing her veiling back. Her face was as sober as I have ever seen it.

  “We have miscalculated dreadfully, Nell,” she said.

  We had not spoken privately since the morning after the awful night on the Hammersmith Bridge Road.

  “How have we miscalculated?” I asked.

  “Not you and I. He and I.”

  “He?”

  “Sherlock Holmes and I.”

  “I didn’t know that you were in partnership.”

  “We were, unknowingly, and we both failed horribly. Neither of us guessed that Colonel Sebastian Moran would be so ferocious when cornered. Neither of us anticipated that he would strike out at the one who first foiled him in Afghanistan. We were... too prideful. We each pictured ourselves contending with the Tiger. We did not see that his oldest enemy was most likely to be his target once we had frustrated him.”

  “Is Mr. Holmes as remorseful as you?”

  She smiled wanly. “He is unaware of this tragic outcome. He did not even know Quentin’s true name.”

  “Quentin is dead,” I said, as I had not before.

  “It seems so.”

  “And Tiger as well.”

  “Likely.”

  I looked at her directly for the first time in days. “Do you truly believe it so?”

  She paused, then brushed the veiling back from her face as if it were hair. “I will not if you do not.”

  I lifted my chin to the sea breeze. It was salty and raw and I did not care for it. “Then I have not decided yet.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  THE CARDBOARD BOX

  One thing can be said for French skies: they are more frequently blue than English ones.

  Unfortunately, an abundant animal life wishes to share in this natural bounty, so the garden at Neuilly that August hummed with cricket song while birds darted down for seeds among the beds of fading roses.

  I had persuaded André to move Casanova’s cage outside for the afternoon, and sat in the shade of a plane tree, where I could keep an eye on both the bird and the mongoose. Lucifer was no difficulty; since I was doing some stitchery, he was at my feet alternately unraveling a ball of crochet string and snagging my petticoats.

  Messalina had adapted well to country life. At least she waxed fat and sleek and had proved a tireless guardian of the garden, retreating to her cage near the kitchen door only now and again.

  A mongoose, I had decided, fell between a cat and a parrot as a pet: Messy was far cleverer than Lucifer, less lazy, yet even more independent than Casanova. If she mourned her master, I was not expert enough in mongoose manners to detect any sign.

  That August was quiet to the point of stagnation. Most Parisians fled the city during the last blast of summer heat.

  The country hummed and chirped in tuneless monotony, and nothing disturbed the sunlight or the breeze or the endless days and long, light-bathed evenings in which the setting sun seemed reluctant to depart.

  “And, Nell, what are you doing today?” Godfrey asked as he strolled up the flagstones toward me.

  “What I did yesterday: fancy work.”

  “That seems fancier than usual.”

  I glanced at my project. “It is a pillow cover for Messy, composed of a new stitch—French knots. Being French, they are needlessly intricate and time-consuming, but the result is bright and flamboyant.”

  “So I see. I am sure that the mongoose will appreciate it.”

  I let my handiwork rest in my lap. “Truly, Godfrey, we cannot know whether a mongoose even appreciates a mouse for lunch. I am merely occupying time.”

  He sat beside me on the stone bench. “I never told you what Irene and I discovered during the days before we left London.” I regarded him with a blank gaze. He added, “After the... bridge incident.”

  “Was there anything to do beyond comb the riverbanks?”

  Godfrey laced his hands and kept his eyes on them. He seemed ill at ease, as everyone had seemed with me since what Godfrey called ‘the incident’ at Hammersmith Bridge—everyone except the animals, who were as obnoxious as usual and quite a relief.

  “I—I kept an eye on Moran’s club, in case he had survived and should return, secretly or otherwise.”

  “Did you really? I had no idea, Godfrey.”

  He looked rather sheepish. “Irene insisted on it. She will never give up.”

  “I know.” My sigh drifted into the lazy air. “She is too hopeful for her own good.”

  “At any rate,” he said with forced enthusiasm, “Moran never came back, so I finally represented myself as an interested barrister and gained admittance to the chamber he kept there. I also learned of a fearsome dustup at the club the day before Moran left, never to return. It seems a tall, thin gentlemen came to see Moran on some private matter and nearly bullwhipped the colonel from the premises. You can guess, of course, who the high-tempered visitor was,” Godfrey added archly.

  “No, Godfrey, I cannot.” He regarded me with disbelief. “I have n
ot much had my mind on past events. It seems... better.”

  “Well, that gentleman certainly was Sherlock Holmes himself. I had no idea he was such a Tartar.”

  “I am not surprised,” I said, thinking of the glimpses that Dr. Watson’s clumsy scribblings had offered of Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s temperament and habits. A cold and precise personality was exactly the sort to explode with self-indulgent emotion, especially if he had been drugging himself with cocaine.

  Godfrey sat back, then began again. “Perhaps you would be more fascinated by what I found in Moran’s abandoned chamber, which even Mr. Holmes has not likely penetrated.”

  “Perhaps.” I finished a knot and broke it from the skein with my teeth, a technique that disconcerted Godfrey, but I am a practical woman, and I had not invited spectators to my homely pastimes.

  “Dr. Watson’s service and medical records,” Godfrey said with a pride that reminded me of Lucifer presenting me with a dead field mouse.

  I paused. “Then Quentin was correct in guessing that Tiger had taken them in India.”

  “Yes, but the contents were most... puzzling. The papers record all that we know—Watson’s wounding at Maiwand and the fever that followed, his orderly Murray rescuing him, his stay in Kandahar, his transportation by pack train to the railway at Sinjini and hence to Peshawar—”

  “Godfrey, at the moment I am not up to a geographical tour of Indian frontier settlements.” I still could not bring myself to more than glance at my sole remembrance of Quentin: the disreputable Montmartre portrait Irene had bought.

  “I am sorry, Nell,” he said so meekly that I immediately regretted my petulance. “Yet I found an astounding fact among the papers: an account of a cobra that had gotten into a patient’s cot at Peshawar. The snake was found before it could strike, but an overzealous guard drew his sword to kill the creature—and accidentally stabbed the patient in the leg.”

  I did pause in my French knotting at that juncture. “Dr. Watson? Wounded again?”

  Godfrey nodded. “Is that not odd? He was still incoherent with fever at the time, and likely did not even recall it, but I should say that our old friend Tiger was having another lethal go at the much-tried doctor. It certainly proves that Colonel Moran had resorted to cobras before.”

  “Imagine being stabbed in the leg by a clumsy defender!” I shuddered despite the warm day. “At least we have managed to protect Dr. Watson.”

  “Assuredly,” he told me quickly.

  “So Quentin achieved what he wished,” I mused, setting down my work and staring into the distant poplars shivering silver in the breeze.

  “Yes, he did. He saved another man’s life—perhaps many more—by ridding the world of a predator like Moran.”

  I regarded Godfrey. “No doubt that thought is supposed to be comforting, but I do not find it so.”

  “My dear Nell,” Godfrey began, reaching for my hand at a moment that was edging perilously close to treacle....

  The wooden kitchen door banged shut, a sound that turned us both like vigilant watchdogs. Only Irene was impetuous enough to leave the cottage in such a loudly advertised manner.

  She came quickly toward us, walking on the flagstones only when their artfully meandering path crossed her direct one. “Look at what has come! The post.”

  I understood her excitement. As exiles from our own land and strangers in France, we seldom received mail, except the overscented invitations of that Bernhardt woman. Irene in the presence of an unopened missive was like a child handed a surprise present: curious, excited and greedy all at once.

  “Look.” She sat between us, her buoyant mood altering our more somber one by mere proximity. “From Grosvenor Square for you, Nell! If it is from that delightful child Allegra, tell her, yes, of course, she must visit. It would do us all good.”

  “You mean me,” I said, struggling to slit the heavy parchment paper with my only implement at hand, a crochet hook. Naturally Irene had not thought to bring a letter opener with her.

  “I mean us all,” she iterated. “Nell, we too are devastated by the loss of... of one who meant a great deal to us all. Well, is it from Allegra? Does she want to come?”

  “No.” My eyes could hardly read the script, despite my pince-nez. I removed the spectacles the better to see through a glaze of sudden tears. “It is from Mrs. Turnpenny. Mrs. Stanhope has died.”

  Silence held for a few moments, while Casanova juggled consonants and vowels in his cage, mingling phrases and producing a model for Mr. Carroll’s jabberwocky.

  Irene’s hand closed around mine. “I am so dreadfully sorry, Nell. I had hoped for better news.” She patted my hand as her voice reached a more cheerful, albeit forced, tone. “But see, this package is for you as well. You must open it.”

  I held it on my lap as if it contained a cobra. “There is no law that I must.”

  “If you will not, I will!” She reached for it.

  “It is addressed to me.”

  “Then open it!”

  “I do not recognize the hand,” I said, “and even without my spectacles, I can tell that the paper and string employed are quite coarse and common, even cheap.”

  Irene sighed dramatically. “Heavens to Hecuba! You are not Sherlock Holmes, Nell. It is a simple package. You will not know what it contains, or who sent it, until you open it. Perhaps it is a present from Allegra. She seemed quite taken with you.”

  I finally found my curved little embroidery scissors. Irene watched stormily while I methodically cut the string and carefully unfolded the brown paper wrapping back from what appeared to be... “a cardboard box,” I said in disappointment.

  I had spent enough time in Irene’s vicinity to know that nothing very valuable ever came in a hard-paper box.

  Even the ever-optimistic Irene drew back. Godfrey was frowning behind her, wearing a look that said that Cruel Circumstance must not deal me another blow or he would know the reason why.... Dear Godfrey and Irene, they were so helpless in the face of real adversity.

  Then I opened the box. A trinket shone there, a small gold brooch.

  “Nell.” Irene’s voice sounded very strange. “I believe that you had better don your pince-nez to examine this very... rare... gift.”

  I put my fingers to the hollows impressed on the bridge of my nose; one notices the price of modern aids only when one ceases using them. Then I snapped the spectacles onto my face again and lifted up the box and its contents.

  I would have dropped it had Irene’s hands not been fanned beneath mine, ready for just such an event.

  “Irene! Godfrey! It is Quentin’s medal.”

  “Yessss,” Irene hissed under her breath, her glowing eyes resting on it with a nameless emotion. “Is there a message?”

  I turned over the medal, and moved the cotton fabric upon which it rested. “Nothing. Who has sent it?”

  Irene was already scrambling for the wrapping paper, which had slipped off my lap in the excitement. “How provident that you were so agonizingly cautious about opening the parcel, Nell. Ah! As I feared. It has been posted from Marseilles.”

  “What is wrong with being posted from Marseilles?” Godfrey inquired.

  “Only that it is a port city,” she retorted. “The person who sent this could be on his way... anywhere.”

  “The person?” I asked.

  “Oh, Nell, don’t you see? It must have been Quentin!”

  I stared again at the humble package in my lap, at the bright bit of brass, as he had named it, and shook my head. “There must be another explanation. You found no trace of him in London. Perhaps this was recovered at his lodgings and—”

  “And the landlady immediately knew to mail it to you at Neuilly. Ridiculous! Besides, I believe that he kept it upon his person after I returned it to him. There was no medal among his effects. Nell, do not be such a dedicated dolt! Of course Quentin sent it. Who else knew where we lived?”

  “Irene,” Godfrey began in a warning tone, putting his hands on her shou
lders.

  “Of course it is Quentin,” she repeated to me, her beautiful face even lovelier, abrim with the hope she meant to give me. “There is no other answer.”

  “Irene,” Godfrey said, turning her to face him. “There is another.”

  She stared at him for a confused moment, she who so delighted in out-thinking everyone, who was so adept at it unless concern for another clouded her judgment.

  “Who else would care to send Nell—us—a message that he still lived?” she demanded.

  I looked gratefully at Godfrey for sparing me unfounded hope. “Colonel Sebastian Moran might, Irene,” I said. “He might wish to tell us that he still lived and that Quentin did not.”

  Irene twisted back to face me.

  “Oh, no... Nell. No.” She sighed as Godfrey released her, and cruel inescapable reason returned.

  “Yes,” she said, “Colonel Moran, if he survived, could have. He could have wrested the medal from Quentin’s... form. He did know we lived at Neuilly since he shot at Quentin here, but he is not the kind of man to tease his game in such a way. His message would come on a bullet, or the fang of a serpent.”

  “Perhaps it already did—” I nodded to Messy’s lean brown form; the mongoose was pattering along the flagstones making for her cage “—and was stopped.”

  Godfrey spoke suddenly. “I congratulate you, Nell, on your gruesome turn of mind. You outdo Irene. But in this case I think Mrs. Norton is right, however overhasty she may have been. Moran would go for Holmes, not us. We are incidental to his downfall, at least as far as he knows.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  Irene lifted the box. “Quentin left the medal here before, only I returned it. I thought then that he sought to elude his past, and the glory due him. I was wrong. Quentin left the medal for you even then. Now he has survived this duel with Moran and sends the medal to announce his triumph, and to acknowledge yours.”

  “Which is?” I demanded incredulously.

  “You are an admirably adventuresome woman, Miss Huxleigh.” Irene pinned the token to my shirtwaist below my left shoulder. “If not for you, Quentin Stanhope would have never gone home and Dr. Watson would be dead.”