Dreaming Spies

by Laurie R. King

  Not that counting had led to much sleep. However, the day’s lesson with Miss Sato was to be delayed, as she wished to go ashore with her admirers during our half-day in port. I intended to take advantage of her absence, and the motionless decks, to sleep.

  Once, that is, the tumult had died down. While the Colombo-bound passengers and day-trippers jostled noisily down one set of gangways and the coal and coconuts streamed up another, I retired to a deck-chair with my book. Holmes glowered down at the teeming dock-side below. I pointedly kept my eyes on the pages.

  “What do you make of her, Russell?”

  He was not asking about Lady Darley. “Miss Sato? She seems both intelligent and competent.”

  “Yes.” He drew out the word. I was not surprised when it was followed by the sound of his cigarette case clicking open.

  I sighed, and let the book fall. There are drawbacks to having a husband with a restless mind. “Too competent, you think?”

  “Your initial impulse was suspicion,” he reminded me. “Your instincts have been well honed.”

  “ ‘Instinct’ is hardly the word. More like ‘reflex.’ I see nothing in Miss Sato to make me doubt that she is what she said, unlikely as it sounds.”

  “The daughter of an acrobatic dynasty, sent for education to an American university.”

  “No more dubious than half the people we come across. What are you—” I stopped. Oh, for heaven’s sake: were blackmailers not sufficient challenge for a simple sea voyage? Now we had to add espionage to the mix? “You think Miss Sato is a Japanese spy? Or do you mean she’s working for Mycroft?” It was true that if anyone could envision Haruki Sato as a secret agent, it would be Mycroft Holmes. My brother-in-law’s complex, imaginative, and apparently ubiquitous information-gathering machinery left the official Intelligence of any nation in the dust. If Japan’s secret police were up to that level of creativity, I was prepared to be impressed.

  “Why would one of my brother’s agents not have identified herself?”

  “Because it’s your brother.”

  “Hmm. And if she’s not his?”

  “Who else—oh. Your blackmailer?” I felt a headache coming on. “Because she came aboard just after he and his wife did?”

  “Because two unusual events are often linked.”

  “Oh, Holmes. Do you have any reason whatsoever to suspect that the Earl of Darley is a crook? Any evidence that he ever was, for that matter? Or that Haruki Sato is not what she appears?”

  “None,” he replied serenely.

  I rested my head back against the deck-chair and closed my eyes. I was well accustomed to my husband’s need to manufacture work for himself, but doing so two days into what might be considered a holiday did not bode well for the coming weeks. “Do you want to stop the lessons?”

  “I see no reason to do so,” he said. “She is a more effective teacher than the stoker.”

  “And lessons with her won’t leave you black with coal dust.”

  Neither of us needed to add the additional reason: keeping her close kept her under observation.

  I attempted to push the conversation past this random assortment of criminal suspicions. “Do you think we’ll have enough of the language to stumble through on our own?”

  “I imagine we shall find schoolboys in every village, following us about, eager to practise their English.”

  “Yes, I don’t suppose there’s much point in trying to go incognito.”

  “Not unless you’re willing to act the hunchback day in and day out.” He and I would have to lose six or eight inches to pass for even a tall Japanese—to say nothing of arduous makeup. “I’m too young to begin a lifetime of back problems, thank you. We’ll have to resign ourselves to attracting attention wherever we go.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “You have an alternative? Other than amputating our legs?”

  “We will be conspicuous no matter what. The trick is to be easily dismissed thereafter.” He had something in mind: I waited for it. “Russell, I propose we become Buddhist pilgrims.”

  I snorted at the picture of Sherlock Holmes in pilgrim garb, chanting his rosary.

  “You believe me uninterested in Nirvana?” he asked.

  “I was thinking more about the Buddhist tenet that all things are illusion.”

  “That is one doctrine I might have difficulty espousing,” he admitted.

  “Surely we’d stand out even more in those white pilgrim robes? Do they wear robes?”

  “A short jacket and trousers, white, plus a hat and staff. In which we would no doubt attract notice. But once the locals had marvelled over us, their minds would be at rest.”

  “English Buddhists?”

  “Mad Westerners are all over.”

  With that, I had to agree. And having just left India, where to be a foreigner is to become a magnet for every beggar, cab-driver, and tout for miles, I had no wish to repeat the rôle. “If we don’t want to go as ordinary tourists, I’d guess pilgrim is worth a try. Surely it won’t be difficult to memorise a few prayers and hymns.”

  “There is a group of touring American Buddhists down in Third Class, robes and all.”

  “Third Class?”

  “Practicing humility, one supposes.”

  Inwardly, I sighed. Outwardly, I put on an attempt at enthusiasm. “Oh, good.”

  Abruptly, he stepped away from the railing and made for the companionway. “You’re going down now?” I asked him in surprise.

  “Miss Sato has just left the ship. The Darleys went twelve minutes ago.”

  Oh, dear. I called out at his back, “Holmes, there may be servants.”

  “I enquired. The earl, his wife, and his son are all doing without on this voyage.”

  “Really?”

  “So I am told.”

  “Well, would you like me to stand by with another vase of flowers?”

  He did not reply. As the top of his head vanished down the steps, I muttered under my breath, “Please don’t get caught.”

  He did not get caught breaking into the cabins—not quite. His search of the Darley staterooms was briefer than he’d have liked, since the cleaners were working their inexorable way down the line of rooms, but he managed to overturn all the relevant parts of the suite. However, he found nothing to support his suspicions. When it came to the Darleys, the most incriminating evidence he discovered was the earl’s collection of outré books and photographs, and even those would have been legal in some of the countries we put into. Lady Darley’s shelves testified to an intense interest in Oriental art, including two what he termed “sprightly” volumes of erotica. Her clothing was expensive, her jewellery extensive, and she appeared to spend an inordinate amount of time before her dressing table mirror.

  Miss Sato’s rooms were the very opposite: her clothing and personal goods were sparse enough to cause speculation. Were the First-Class accommodations a gift from someone with greater means? When I pointed out that her hasty arrival might have prevented her trunks from joining her, and that in any event, the few clothes she did have were far from cheap, Holmes reluctantly agreed that even the pyjamas he had seen beneath her pillow were made of heavy silk.

  “There’s your answer,” I told him. “Even if her trunks did make it on, she has the sense to limit what she exposes to the trials of sea travel.” Between smuts, sticky salt air, and the occasional burning ember from the stacks, the experienced traveller locked away the bulk of her wardrobe.

  His search left Holmes, as one might expect, unconvinced.

  The day-trippers began to trickle back as lunch was being cleared. When Miss Sato had refreshed herself and washed away the grime of the city, we met for a brief language tutorial. As she was writing down the words we were to commit to memory before the next day, the purser came in to ask if she still wished for the salon that afternoon, considering the lateness of the hour.

  “Not if it is inconvenient,” she told him. “Or if you like, we could take afternoon tea alon
g with conversation. Japanese tea as well as the English? I bought some in Colombo, for the purpose,” she added.

  “What about those special cups?” he asked. “They might be harder to duplicate.”

  “Western tea-cups would do nicely.”

  After a few more questions, and after Miss Sato’s polite but firm reminder that he had agreed to welcome those of her countrymen who were in Second Class, he retreated.

  Her eyes lingered on the empty doorway. “He is very helpful, considering the extra work.”

  “A purser’s job is to keep people happy,” I replied mildly. Indeed, the man was probably overjoyed to be given the means of entertaining those passengers who could be even more of a handful than energetic young males—namely, wealthy older women. Yes, he’d been reluctant to encourage the mixing of the classes, but he could see that bringing up a few more Japanese passengers—guest lecturers, as it were—would more than compensate for any complaints from their excluded Caucasian fellows.

  The afternoon’s demonstration of o-cha—honourable tea—included comments on the taste, the equipment, and the ceremonial aspects of both Japanese and English tea. The more or less captive audience guaranteed that curiosity was roused for the remainder of the voyage. As the days went on, the informal lecture series expanded to include food, flower arranging, calligraphy, furniture (or the lack thereof), games, the disinclination of Japanese to shake hands and the subtleties of the bow (and especially the matter of how to perform the tricky simultaneous bow-handshake with a Japanese businessman without cracking into his skull), and the best methods of stepping out of shoes and into slippers. I doubted that most of the assembled would remember to give and to take with both hands, and I could not imagine any of them would replace their handkerchiefs with slips of Japanese tissue; however, the salon was packed to the windows with the eagerly attentive on the days given over to those two all-important questions the young men had first requested: communal bathing, and what a geisha was for.

  But all that came later.

  Colombo marked the beginning of the greater voyage. The temporary residents of the Thomas Carlyle disembarked, with new passengers bound for Manila, Hong Kong, Kobe, and beyond. Seating at dinner and on the decks was re-shuffled, groups re-formed, conversations were repeated, new friendships begun. And old friendships re-kindled.

  In the salon that night before dinner, amidst a mixture of evening wear (the continuing passengers) and not (the freshly boarded and therefore un-ironed), all eyes surveyed the room for the new and interesting. Having lost the professor of botany, our table was so sparsely populated that we risked being assigned random passengers by the purser. Rather than face that danger, Holmes and I were watching for one or two likely replacements. I had proposed an old lady with a wicked gleam to her eyes, a tall man with weathered skin and the scar of frostbite on one ear, and a duo of lesbians. Holmes had countered with a nervous-looking scientific woman with acid stains on her fingers, a too-smooth man with the manners of a gigolo, and two stocky individuals who could only be a criminal and his bodyguard.

  Our debate over these options was interrupted by a loud drawl coming from the scrum behind me.

  “By God, is that Pike-Elton? Monty, old man, what are you doing in these parts?”

  Everyone there who was not completely deaf turned to watch Thomas Darley make his way to the entrance and exchange handshakes with a slim young fellow with sharp-looking teeth and sleek black hair.

  “Tommy, my good chap, I could ask the same of you!”

  The talk rose around us again as people turned back to their interrupted conversations. Holmes and I kept one eye on the pair now making their way towards the cluster of the viscount’s particular friends, which included, unlikely as that seemed, Haruki Sato.

  (Our table picks, by the way, were Holmes’ nervous lady scientist and my mountain-climber. As it turned out, his was by far the more interesting choice—but there is a story for another time.)

  After dinner Holmes and I divided forces: he to the smoking room where the men gathered over cards, and me to the cocktail lounge with the Young Things. I settled with my lurid drink into a seat between two middle-aged owners of Ceylonese tea plantations. They looked at me in surprise, but I gave them a bright and slightly tipsy smile and asked them how things were in Ceylon. That took care of conversation for the next half hour. I pretended to sip and feigned interest, but my ears and brain were entirely taken up with the conversation going on behind my shoulders.

  “Sorry to see your time among the Babus has ruined your palate, old man.” Thomas Darley’s drawl, answered by Monty Pike-Elton’s nasal honk.

  “What’s wrong with gin, you snob?”

  “Mother’s ruin.”

  “It does the job. But speaking of mothers, that new one you’ve picked up—good work, man!”

  “What, the Pater’s wife? Not bad.”

  “A toasty crumpet, my man. How’d the old codger—”

  “Monty, for God’s sake, can’t you at least pretend at civilised manners?”

  “Touchy, eh? When’d they get hitched?”

  “Last summer. They’ve known each other for yonks—she was married to some bloke the Pater knew in the War. After Mamá died, he said the house felt empty, and when they came across each other at some tedious party, she was at something of a loose end as well. They hit it off.”

  “So, what, this is their honeymoon?”

  “More like a world tour. They both have old friends, here and there.”

  “And they brought Tommy-the-Lad on the honeymoon?” Monty’s laugh was goose-like.

  “Not sure she was all that keen on it, but I guess she wanted to show that she didn’t intend to push him around. Fitting in with the family, you know?”

  “I’d be happy to fit in, too, if there’s room.” His meaning was so unmistakeable, even Lady Darley’s unwilling stepson had to object.

  His drawl became more marked. “Monty, have some respect, she is the Pater’s wife. She’s … well, she’s not a bad sort, really. Had a tough time of it, for a while.”

  “What, your old man married an adventuress?”

  “Monty, in another minute I’m going to have to stand up and hit you.”

  “Ah, you know I’m just digging at you. Seriously, chap, I’m happy for your Pa. Nice enough bloke.”

  “Thank you. How’s your family?”

  “Don’t think Ceylon is doing what they’d hoped for the family fortunes. Father’s drinking himself to death. The Mother has herself a poodle-faker she drags around to garden parties.” I snorted into my mauve liquid, startling my tea-planters into silence. When I had them going again, my ears swivelled back to the two men behind me. They were talking about cards, a technical and complicit conversation that had me making a mental note: warn Holmes against playing with these two.

  Madness and love are

  The playwright’s favourite themes.

  Are they so different?

  Once we had left Colombo and set out across the Bay of Bengal, the hard-driving tutorials—courses whose absence I had so happily anticipated—descended in force. My chief pleasure in the program, apart from the benefits of knowledge, was to see Holmes forced to labour beside me rather than wielding the whip.

  Our initial intention, to abandon ship at the earliest opportunity, was rendered less urgent by this unexpected series of challenges. Holmes, happy enough to cram a new language into his brain, was even happier to be given a second chance at a perceived villain he had let slip through his fingers. I, for my part, found an investigation of my own: that of Miss Sato herself.

  Invariably, we were thrown together outside of our actual lesson times. This was true for pretty much every First-Class passenger, but when one shared an interest in books and a lack of interest in other onboard amusements, certain conversations were inevitable.

  A few mornings into the trip, I came onto my preferred section of deck (the furthest from the shuffleboard courts) and found Miss Sato tucked i
nto one of the deck-chairs, a book in her hand and a charming frown-line between her eyebrows. She glanced up, we exchanged greetings, and then both of us settled to our reading.

  She was still working her way through the Shakespeare plays, although her book-mark had not made much progress. She was taking notes. A lot of notes.

  So I wasn’t particularly surprised when, after I let my own library book fall shut (Sinclair Lewis: I should have chosen the Mary Roberts Rinehart), she stirred.

  “Mrs Russell?”

  I stopped rubbing my eyes and replaced my spectacles. “Yes, Miss Sato, what can I do for you?”

  “Do you understand Shakespeare?”

  Did Shakespeare understand Shakespeare? “Not entirely. What are you reading?”

  “Henry Four.”

  “You know,” I said, “the plays really need to be read aloud. Just following the words on the page, one loses a lot.” The rhythm of the language, the passion behind it. The meaning. There was a reason the Rabbis insisted that the Torah be read in full voice, that the whole body might participate in the learning.

  “This one I did see, in New York. And I think I follow all the war and revolting things.” I stifled a smile at her English. “But Falstaff, him I do not understand. Why is he there?”

  Greater literary minds than mine have wrestled with that question. Why, indeed, keep breaking into the drama of war with the continuous buffoonery of Prince Henry’s sotted companion? And why give that future King such an inappropriate companion in the first place? “I know. They might as well be called Falstaff Parts One and Two.”