“And as Mrs Langtry said, she had a diamond necklace to sell. That should keep her for a time. In any event, when Mrs Hudson sold Baker Street, she invested the money, and what has she had to spend her income on for the past twenty years?”
He was not, I thought, serious about his misgivings, merely determined to show his diligent pursual of the facts. After a few more protests, he set them aside and returned to the matter of Mrs Hudson’s vulnerability, rather than her guilt.
“She ought to leave this place,” he said. “If Count Vasilev felt her a threat, so might those he worked with.”
“The only two still walking free are Zaharoff and possibly Madame Crovetti. And if Basil Zaharoff decides to come after her, I’m not sure it would help to hide in Patagonia. In fact, she might even be safer here, where he can see what she’s doing.”
“I will speak to Jourdain. He may feel that he owes me a favour.”
“I have another idea.”
“Russell, I forbid—I strongly prefer that you not go near Basil Zaharoff.”
“The old man liked me,” I pointed out, and told him what I proposed.
He disapproved. Mightily. “That ‘old man’ will eat you alive. If you insist on speaking with him again, you and I will go together.”
“Holmes, your presence would only escalate matters. And in any event, what’s he going to do? Shoot an unarmed woman in his own room? No, if I wander into the old lion’s den, he won’t take me seriously. At first.”
He scowled, but thought about it for a time before, reluctantly, his mouth quirked. “The more fool him.”
I had sailed away from Venice on the first day of July, I thought, as I stood between the pots of healthy flowers, waiting for the response to my knock. Today was the last day. With any luck, August would start matters afresh.
I heard footsteps approach down the hallway, and she opened the door that I had first stepped through with such trepidation, five days before.
“Mary, come in. I’ve just put the kettle on.”
“Thank you, Mrs Hudson, I won’t stay now. But perhaps I might come by, afterwards?”
“My door is open to you any time.”
“Do you have them?”
She took the box from her apron pocket, but held on to it. “Are you sure about this?”
“I think so.”
“That is not very encouraging.”
“Well, if I fail, you’ll be no worse off than you are now.”
“I won’t be—but you?”
I stretched out my hand. Reluctantly, she set the box into my palm.
This time, I had made an appointment with the monster. This time, the door was not standing open. A different large thug with a gun under his jacket opened to my knock.
I half expected this bodyguard to demand that I lift my arms to be felt all over for weapons, but apparently he’d been instructed otherwise, and merely shot me a warning scowl before letting me in.
And this time, Basil Zaharoff did not have a gun in his hand.
He did wear the same affable expression. We would see how long that lasted.
I sat in the chair across the desk from him. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Young lady, you have caught my interest in a way few people manage to do.” But behind the smile, in the back of the eyes, the end of that sentence lay clear: …and live.
I could not quite control the shudder of reaction, but in hopes that motion would hide the depth of my fear and revulsion, I shifted to take the little box from my pocket. I laid it on the edge of the desk, pushing it across the polished surface with one finger.
He eyed it for a moment, then picked it up and opened it. “One of these earrings appears to be missing.”
“A reminder,” I told him. “Or insurance. As you prefer.”
“Of?”
As I could not hide my shudder, nor could I force myself to make a blunt accusation. Instead, I shaped it into a story. “Those earrings were given to a friend of mine by one of her long-time admirers. He had received them from a colleague—let us call him Monsieur Eugene—who wished to show his appreciation for some favours my friend’s admirer had done. A few introductions, some quiet arrangements. The use of a rather fine yacht. That sort of thing.
“In recent months, Monsieur Eugene recovered a quantity of valuables that had been left far away. In Athens, perhaps, although that is not where they were from originally. I imagine that Monsieur Eugene, when he looked over these retrieved valuables, judged a few of them far too pretty to be crushed and melted down. So he gave a few of the lovelier pieces to the man who had done him the favours. That man, in turn, made a gift of one pair of earrings to the woman he had long admired. I imagine he felt a certain…residual fondness for her, that lingered even after he married.”
No sound from the old man; no motion, although I could feel the icy gaze drilling in on me.
I focused on the single earring, choosing my words with great care. “My friend’s admirer is a man who wields considerable power. Were he to turn against my friend—this lady who had once captured his affections—he could make life extremely difficult for her. Even, I fear, make life somewhat shorter.”
I took a breath, then raised my eyes to his.
“I wish to return that earring to my friend’s admirer, as a reminder. That the lady may appear vulnerable, but in fact, she is not without friends. Friends who wish to see her happy, here in her new home. Friends who have the means to watch over her, and to ensure her welfare. Friends whose cards can be found, were you—or he—ever to require them, in the bottom of that box.”
I waited to see if he would go looking, but he made no move. I nodded, but before I could rise, he began to talk, musing aloud.
“I met your friend—I met both women, come to think of it—at a ball.” His hand came out to turn the box around on the glossy surface. “It was the spring of 1877, in a London house filled with dancing and diamonds, and those two girls put the rest of the beauties to shame. One wore black, the other peach-coloured silk, and between them, a man felt as if the angels had come to earth.
“Two weeks later, at a dinner party, the two introduced me to a Swedish industrialist named Nordenfelt, who was looking to expand from railroads to guns. My life began on that night.”
As I realised what he was saying, a flush of dismay rose through me—but no. English society was tiny, and had no need of one casual introduction to bring together a Swedish manufacturer with the young monster who would end up squeezing the blood of the world out of his fist. They would have met anyway. Mrs Hudson could not be held responsible for a half-century of devastation.
Still, I found that I had got to my feet. “Thank you, Sir Basil. Meeting you has been…educational.”
He, too, rose. Then, slowly, he extended a hand over the desk. “I can in all honesty say the same about you, Mrs Russell.”
I shook the monster’s hand, in recognition of an agreement sealed, and left him in his room with the spectacular view. Left him to open the box and find the cards of not only Mary Russell, but of Sherlock Holmes—brother of that power behind the British government, Mycroft Holmes. Left him to make my way downstairs to the Hermitage lobby, to reassure Holmes that I’d made it out alive.
I’d done all I could to keep Mrs Hudson safe, and happy.
And if that meant she would never return home to Sussex, well, I should simply have to live with that.
In any event, Monaco was not all that distant. The Train Bleu made travel here a breeze.
That night, I dressed for the cold, from boots to knit cap. That night, I had extra batteries for the torch.
And that night, I went alone—dressed in black, as invisible as a person could be.
I had lied to my husband, in coming here. He thought I was on the Cap d’Antibes, bringing comfort to Sara Murphy. He would meet
me in Nice tomorrow, to board a train for Roumania and what he persisted in claiming was a problem with vampires.
But I was not going to Antibes tonight. And I was not comforting Sara Murphy.
Despite the hour, a light burned upstairs in the Crovetti house. But then, if a woman—any woman, even if she was also a partner—had just learned that her husband and son were standing trial in a distant land, I imagined she would find sleep elusive.
I was concerned that the converted warehouse might have been left guarded, awaiting a police search of Matteo Crovetti’s home, but there was no constable outside, and no light within. I pulled out the key that we had purloined and crossed the lane, letting myself in with only the faintest whisper of sound.
I stood motionless for a long minute, listening for a rustle of clothing or a stifled breath before trading the key for my shaded torch. As before, I went through the rooms to check that they were empty of people. To my interest, they showed clear signs of a thorough search, followed by the beginnings of an even more thorough cleaning job.
In clearing up after the police intrusion, Madame Crovetti had been forced to acknowledge her son’s absence, at last.
The rooms where Niko Cassavetes had lived showed a more extreme transformation: his spices and pans were gone, the bed stripped to its mattress, even the tapestry-like coverings pulled down from the outer wall. All his clothing was gone.
I ran my light along the hidden door. No sign of forced entry. No indication that burly constables had carried out the crates of smugglers’ booty.
But then, if Jourdain and his men had noticed the same worn trigger-spot that Holmes had seen, they wouldn’t have needed a pry-bar. And they might have decided to leave a guard inside the cave, to catch whomever came to check on its contents.
Gingerly, I pressed the spot that loosed the mechanism, and eased the door open. No reaction, and no uniformed gentleman waiting to pounce. I stepped through and followed my light along the narrow passage into the cave itself.
No guard waited. The crates of smuggled goods did not appear to have been touched.
I exhaled at last, went back to close the door in case of late intruders, then turned to my task.
Where would Mrs Hudson hide something precious? She had lived around Sherlock Holmes long enough to pick up all the basic skills, as demonstrated by the brass peep-hole in her front door and the surreptitiously loosened fastenings in the back exit. She, of all people, knew the vulnerabilities of the usual hiding places—sock drawer, tea caddy, a potted aspidistra, a loose board in the bedroom floor. And the old shoes in her wardrobe showed that she had been here, stepping in that damp puddle where the planks were rotted through. Whether she had known of the smugglers’ cave beforehand, or learned of it after taking up residence, she had been here. And a cave close but unattached to her own dwelling would be the natural place to hide treasure—either from a thief, or from the all-seeing eyes of Sherlock Holmes.
“Though it would help to know what I’m looking for,” I muttered aloud. A drip was the only response.
It was not in the crates, since we’d have found it. In fact, anywhere too close to those illicit goods risked accidental discovery—by men she knew to be criminals. And though Mrs Hudson had delivered any number of surprises recently, I could not believe she would fall under the spell of a rogue homme à tout faire because of his compelling green eyes.
That meant her hidden goods would be up in the further depths of the cavern.
But first, I played my torch into the forest of stalactites, particularly those that had been broken recently enough to have sharp edges. My neck went stiff, and I fell twice, but I found no place that could hide any object larger than a thumb-nail. Which did not leave out gemstones, but it did leave out a sixty-nine-year-old woman clambering up to hide them, without so much sign as gouges from a ladder.
Along the main cavern, into the subsequent one, up the slippery footholds. I spent a long time at the odd, bottle-shaped stalagmite that grew beside the informal bench, but I could find no way of moving, shifting, or opening it. And there was little point in smashing it to pieces.
Pressing on, into the recesses, over slick chalk surfaces. Would she have managed this? Mrs Hudson was physically active for a woman of her years, but without hob-nailed boots—of which there were no traces in the chalky floor—I did not like to imagine the attempt.
I slowly traced my path back to the first cavern, inspecting every inch of what lay within arm’s reach along the way. No valuable paintings on the wall, no Shakespeare folios or copies of the Magna Carta. No patched holes into which a diamond or roll of high-denomination banknotes could have been tucked.
I changed the batteries in my torch once, and those replacements were failing when I made it back to the narrow corridor entrance. I replaced them, too, and used the fresh light to search the entry, thinking that this would be the ideal place to hide…something.
I found nothing.
I went over the hidden doorway, prodding the frame, the hinges, the trigger mechanism, knowing that an overlooked area like this—at the very threshold of a smugglers’ cave—was where a truly clever person would hide a thing…
But it was not.
I stepped out, shut the hidden door, automatically checking the floorboards for any betraying smears off my shoes. I eased my back, looking over the former quarters of Niko Cassavetes. I supposed it would make as much sense to hide something in this room as it would to use the concealed doorway. Even if Niko knew his neighbour had concealed something, would he think to search for it inside his own quarters? There was always the risk of accidental discoveries—by Niko, or Madame Crovetti, or by the room’s next resident. But if Mrs Hudson had been able to solve the eternal problem of where to hide something in plain sight, then it would at least—
(Plain sight…)
—mean that she could…
Wait. I frowned, listening to the faint echo of the phrase in my mind.
Plain sight.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a purloined letter left blatantly out in the open by a man who knew that the police would focus their search on ingenious hiding places. We see what we expect, and overlook what we know to be unimportant.
How to show a man whose eyes see everything just what he expects to see? If he suspects that a person is hiding a thing, shouldn’t one give him a place to search for it?
If that man expects cleverness, will stupidity be invisible?
If a person is known to be experienced, can naïveté be a bluff?
At the word bluff, I laughed aloud.
When is a bluff a double bluff?
I still had no idea what I was looking for—but I knew where I would find it.
As I crossed Matteo Crovetti’s half-tidy quarters next door, I was astonished to see dim light through the shutters. A glance at my watch confirmed that it was nearly sunrise.
That simplified matters. Mrs Hudson always rose early—at least, she had in Sussex. Did the same habits apply to Miss Hudson of Monaco? I gave a quick glance at the street outside before stepping out, then locked the former warehouse and eyed the neat little house next door. Was that light coming through from the morning room?
I decided I didn’t care, and walked up the pristine steps to rap on her door.
Sounds confirmed that I had not woken her. I raised my face to the little brass view-hole, and spoke when her eye appeared behind the grille.
“Hello, Mrs Hudson. Sorry to disturb you so early but—” The peep-hole shut and the door opened, my resolve sagging at the sight of her comfortable figure in dressing gown and slippers. Couldn’t I just…?
No, I could not. “Sorry to knock so early,” I said, “but there’s something I need to know.”
“Come in, dear, I just made tea; there’s plenty for two. I’ll fetch you a cup—make yourself comfortable.”
The left-hand door, the one that led to the formal parlour where Niko had died, was as firmly shut as it had been when I first saw it. I wondered if she’d been in there at all since she’d returned home. But the right-hand door to the cheerful morning room stood wide open, and while she went back to the kitchen, I walked through her pleasant retreat to unlatch the shutters and throw them open to the morning.
I stood in the brightness, aware of the expression my face wore. A smile, but a complicated one: pleasure from having solved a tangled problem—and delight from having got there before Holmes—was tempered by discomfort at the upcoming confrontation and the knowledge that I was going to hurt someone I loved. There was sadness, since my triumph meant her defeat. Beyond that, there was uncertainty, from the dilemma of what to tell Holmes.
It was an expression I had seen Holmes wear, when a case came to an end that was intellectually satisfying but emotionally painful.
It was also an expression that Mrs Hudson could not miss, when she walked in with another cup and a plate of buttered toast.
Her step faltered, then continued. She poured the tea with steady hands, arranging the milk and the toast within my reach, then resumed her seat and her own cup—but she would not meet my eyes, and her face had gone suddenly old.
“What is it you want to know, Mary?”
“Mrs Hudson, I don’t really want to know any of it. But I’m afraid I need to. So tell me: the colours in this room. Were they deliberately chosen, or was the decorating unconscious?” Her look of bewilderment was all the reply I needed. “I will take it, then, that the greys and touches of green were inadvertent?”
“Well, I did choose them,” she said. “They seemed pleasantly cool. This can be a warm climate.”
“I see.” I laid aside my cup and walked over to the little painting on the wall, that storm-filled sky above the undulating green hillside of Beachy Head. “The colours just happen to reflect the most important item in the room.”
I waited for her to laugh, to tell me that naturally, the painting was dear to her—that I had given it to her, that she treasured it…But she said nothing. I loved her for that, and yet I reached to take the painting from its hook, ignoring her tiny sound of protest.
Riviera Gold Page 30
