Chronicles of the Lost Years (The Sherlock Holmes Series) Page 10

  Tayisha smiled at Elizabeth. “This way, please.”

  Their rooms, all seven of them, were richly furnished in silks and carpets and the vast terraced windows looked out over the straits. The deep terrace and intricately carved latticing was designed to catch any stray cooling breezes, yet still maintain privacy. Tayisha explained the working of the amenities and clapped her hands. A woman in harem trousers and halter stepped forward and made obeisance to Tayisha. The girl explained that this was her mother’s servant and Elizabeth was to consider the servant her own while under Sullah’s roof.

  Then both withdrew, allowing them privacy.

  Holmes threw himself on a wide, low divan, lit a cigarette and lay on his back, smoking.

  Elizabeth checked the view from the windows, then carefully explored the extent of the room before turning back to Holmes.

  “How much of what Sullah told us do you believe?” she asked.

  Holmes smiled. “All of it, once you have interpreted it properly.”

  “He very carefully didn’t say what he was doing in the square,” Elizabeth pointed out.

  “Neither did we,” Holmes replied. He turned his head to look at her. “Which is why we are guests in his household. We are at this moment engaged in a game of bluff. He knows we know that he is not telling the precise truth. He knows that we know that he knows we are not telling the exact truth, either. Who’s truth eventuates as the least harmless will be the injured party.”

  “Do you mean that literally?”

  “Not quite. He will not harm a hair on your head. He owes you the life debt. My head can be more easily disposed of.” He shrugged. “Once he realizes you made a mistake of identity and I was merely dealing with the third to finish the affair, he will be satisfied…I hope.”

  Elizabeth shivered. “Eastern people are never what they appear,” she said softly.

  “No-one is.” Holmes smoked for a few moments in silence. “But I like him,” he said to himself, sounding surprised.

  •ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï•

  Dinner was a formal affair suited to the best dining rooms in England. The serving girl, whom Elizabeth discovered was whimsically called Sheba, arrived nearly two hours before the appointed dinner hour and took Elizabeth off to prepare her for the occasion. Elizabeth was bathed, dried and pampered with an exotic hot oil massage before dressing in one of three evening gowns presented for her inspection. Her hair was dressed skillfully by Sheba, who explained she had learnt from her Mistress who was “English like madam.” Elizabeth assumed she meant Sullah’s head wife.

  Feeling gloriously feminine after weeks of rough living, Elizabeth entered the room to which she was shown, to find a small group of guests had gathered. She was somewhat taken aback for she had not been expecting a party. She sought for Holmes amongst the strangers and was relieved when he appeared by her side.

  “I know,” he said in answer to her expression. “It appears Sullah is entertaining his western business associates tonight. We’ll just have to make the best of it.”

  “Holmes, I can’t,” Elizabeth breathed quietly. “I have never been to a dinner party before.” The confession made her blush a little.

  Holmes looked at her panicky face. “Never?” he repeated.

  She tried to explain swiftly. “I’ve no family or friends who would invite me to such an occasion.” She touched his arm and her own trembled. “You know what my life has consisted of.”

  Holmes looked at her blankly, astonished. He abhorred social functions and expended a great deal of effort to avoid them. His was not an unfounded dislike for he had, in his opinion, attended far too many social affairs of one sort or another.

  Elizabeth had attended none. Not one. She was probably more terrified now than she had been during any of the dangerous adventures in which he had embroiled her.

  Holmes was amazed to hear himself saying gently; “Just be yourself, Elizabeth, and you’ll charm everyone here.” He smiled reassuringly. “I will stay by you.”

  Sullah moved toward them, a European woman on his arm. Dressed in a quite normal evening suit, he could have passed as a well-tanned Englishman. He welcomed Elizabeth and introduced his wife.

  Mary smiled at Elizabeth. “I thought one of those dresses would fit you,” she said, drawing her to one side. Holmes was led away by Sullah, to be introduced to the other guests in the room.

  Mary kept Elizabeth by her side with idle and frivolous chat, the other women joining in. Elizabeth withstood it for only a few minutes before panic overtook her completely. She excused herself abruptly, picked up her train and crossed the floor to where the men stood by the fireplace. Holmes made room for her in the circle he stood in.

  “My soul for a brandy,” she said in an undertone.

  “Try sherry,” Holmes suggested, handing her his glass.

  She sipped and saw the women watching her and whispering amongst themselves.

  Holmes picked up another full glass of sherry from the tray on the sideboard. “You seem to have stopped the conversation on this side of the room.”

  “Sigerson, is this beauty your wife?” The question was directed from Elizabeth’s right, the tones hale and hearty country English.

  “Elizabeth, may I introduce you to Lord Barrington Edgewater. My wife Elizabeth, Lord Edgewater.”

  Elizabeth held out her hand politely toward the dewlapped, portly lord. Edgewater, after the minutest of pauses, took it in his own podgy hand and shook firmly. “May I call you Elizabeth?” he asked, extracting his hand and mopping his gleaming face and shining, hairless head.

  “I would prefer it,” she replied pleasantly.

  “So, you have actually traveled on foot all the way from France?”

  “Yes.”

  “A remarkable feat,” Edgewater replied, studying her from top to toe.

  “For a woman?” Elizabeth finished coolly, sensing his unspoken qualification.

  Edgewater’s brows rose. “You’re not one of these damned suffragettes, are you?”

  “Why? Does it make a difference?” Elizabeth asked with genuine puzzlement. She perceived she was falling foul of various unspoken etiquette rules.

  “I should imagine it would,” another man said to her left. His accent was vaguely Italian. “At least to Edgewater here. He has been fighting them off for the ten years he has been in the House.” He smiled at Elizabeth. “Carlo Ricco, at your service.”

  “Elizabeth Sigerson.” She felt her hand being shaken.

  “I wouldn’t be offended by Edgewater,” he continued. “He is a bit sensitive in that area. Your husband has been telling me about your journey here. It sounds like a good adventure. Did you have much trouble over the Alps? Some of the passes there are difficult, even in summer.”

  “We came via the coast,” Elizabeth lied cautiously, maintaining the fictitious origins of their journey as Holmes and she had concocted weeks previously. “Through Monte Carlo.”

  “Ah! Monaco. That is a fascinating place. I am from Turin myself, but I have spent a lot of time up that way. Did you visit Grasse while you were there?”

  Elizabeth cast about for an answer, lost.

  Holmes turned to him. “You’re on a commission for the Royal Family, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Carpets, for the palace in Monaco…which is why I am here.”

  “It is why we’re all here,” Edgewater replied. “Except you, Sigerson, I believe. At least, I’ve never heard your name around the traps. I thought I knew all the importers in England.”

  Elizabeth found herself relaxing a little. Holmes had deflected the conversation neatly from her and onto himself.

  As promised, he stayed nearby, parrying all conversational openings directed toward her, giving her time to restore her confidence. She listened as he told the most outrageous lies with a perfectly sincere face.

  He was deep into a discussion on the more intricate aspects of elephant herding in Africa—a subject Elizabeth knew for a fact he h
ad no practical experience with—when she saw him cast a quick glance in her direction. There was a message in that glance, but it took her some time to interpret it, for Holmes had been spinning tale after scandalous tale since she had arrived. Elephant herding seemed no more or less extraordinary than any other conversation he had held.

  But then she focused on Lord Edgewater and suppressed a smile as Holmes’ message became clear. He was twisting their tails. He was dismantling their bombastic manners before her very eyes, and taking the essence of their insipid attitudes and throwing it back at them in hugely exaggerated proportions. He was telling her; here, this is their substance. It is nothing.

  The humor was in their blindness. They accepted all Holmes said without a quiver.

  Elizabeth finished her glass of sherry, accepted another from Holmes, then engaged in conversation with a young, nervous-looking youth to practice her own abilities at tail-twisting before looking for more fertile ground.

  Sometime later she found herself discussing hunting with Edgewater. By now, she had discovered that if she adopted a knowledgeable air she could say just about anything without being revoked.

  “So, do you join in at the kill?” Edgewater asked.

  “No, for I do not agree with letting the dogs have their way. It would be much simpler to slit the poor animal’s throat,” she replied unthinkingly.

  “Oh, really,” Edgewater replied, pouncing on her. “I suppose you would want the master of the hunt to dispatch the quarry. That’s the way with you woman that scream for equality. You want the best of both worlds, but will happily leave all the dirty work to the men.”

  Elizabeth looked quickly about her, for his voice had carried and the salon became quiet. She caught Holmes’ eye. He was standing alone by the fireplace, watching her, his eyes narrowed slits of concentration. But there was a half-smile on his face and she felt he had been watching her for a while, appreciating her performance. Over his shoulder she could see the woman grouped in a small, awed audience.

  She smiled at Edgewater. “You really shouldn’t assume so much, Lord Edgewater. I wouldn’t be so silly as to become involved in politics. There are far more interesting things to do. And I do happen to believe that woman are quite as capable as men of dirty work. Why, for all you know, I could have been out slitting throats before lunch today.”

  There was a shocked collective drawing of breath from the women and a nervous twitter of laughter from the men. Then Edgewater let out a hearty bellow of laughter and thumped her on the shoulder. “Oh, I like you,” he said loudly. “I say, that’s a grand notion, that. Here, have a sherry.”

  Elizabeth accepted the glass with a smile and a secretly drawn shaky breath of relief and looked about for Holmes. He was still standing at the ornately carved fireplace, his elbow resting on the mantle. He was quite alone and had been waiting for her eyes to fall on him, for he lifted his glass in a mock salute and communicated his approval with a barely noticeable nod of his head.

  Elizabeth’s smile broadened.

  •ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï•

  Holmes found her sitting on the divan, watching the moon over the sea and the distant twinkle of stars. It was almost completely dark in the room and the moonlight picked up the sequins on her dress as her breath rose and fell. She was listening to the oddly modulated and weirdly attractive wailing songs floating up to the window from the many mosques about the city.

  “Sullah said you had retired. Are you feeling unwell?”

  She smiled reassuringly as he sat on the opposite side of the broad divan, facing her. “I couldn’t stand the women’s chatter—not after the fun of the salon. They treated me like a pariah…not that I minded that so much.”

  “So you did have fun, after all,” Holmes said quietly. “I thought you enjoyed deflating Lord Edgewater.”

  “Thanks to you. You showed me how. I was quite in awe of them all until you pointed their superficiality out to me.”

  “That sort of people always find themselves pricked when they come up against ruthless realists.”

  “Am I ruthless?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Reality is by definition ruthless. It cannot be anything else. Tonight both you and I discovered how far along that trail we have traveled. Whatever doubts I have about the future now, they are all fundamental doubts which nothing but time can answer.”

  “They seem quite blinded by their triviality,” Elizabeth said sadly.

  “Except Sullah. He was very impressed by you. I believe he would like to marry you if you were not already married…a fact I was greatly relieved to point out to him.”

  Elizabeth looked up at his face quickly, but could distinguish nothing but his usual watchfulness.

  “And you call me ruthless,” she replied lightly.

  “You are. You have carved your way into my heart with the efficiency of a master swordsman and without a single drop of blood spilt.” His voice was casual, but the words caused Elizabeth to become quite motionless, her bosom rising and falling rapidly as her heart pounded.

  Holmes reached up to pull at the pins holding her hair and his hands trembled just a little. “You really are quite beautiful tonight. But I prefer your hair loose, like this.” He removed the last pin and let the locks cascade down about her shoulders. “Then I can do this.” His long fingers slid into the copper locks and Elizabeth shivered again.

  “Holmes….” she whispered.

  “We’ve talked enough,” he said, drawing her to him.

  • Chapter Seven •

  _________________________

  •ï¡÷¡ï•

  ELIZABETH WAS STANDING at the fireplace when she reached this point in her narrative. It had taken two days to relate the tale and I had graduated to the sofa, pulled up close to the hearth.

  I had maps and atlases spread about me, for I had begun tracing their route through the East, supplementing my own dim memories of the area from my minimal contribution to the Afghan Campaign. But the maps had fallen from my lap and my fingers played with the long golden knife that had spent nearly three years strapped to Elizabeth’s forearm, whilst she spun her tale of life under a foreign sky.

  She was a very good story teller, for I could quite clearly see the cosmopolitan city that, for them, became their city. Constantinople with its conflicts and exotic contrasts, suited them perfectly.

  Elizabeth fell silent, studying my face. Then she smiled. “As you see, I threw myself at him,” she added, reminding me of my guess. But after such a tale of the extremities of human kind, from murder to love, I could no longer feel embarrassment.

  I held up the knife. “There are two gems missing,” I pointed out.

  Elizabeth laughed. “You have been fingering that knife for two days, Watson, and you have only just noticed?”

  “I believe I only really grew interested in it when I realized just what this knife represented,” I told her.

  “You have a gruesome turn of mind. The gems are not missing, John.”

  “Then where are they?”

  “If you think logically, you will know where they are.” Despite more questions she refused to tell me where they were. Instead she asked Mrs. Hudson for a pot of coffee and set about making me more comfortable. The knife was hidden away again, and she picked up all the maps and neatened them.

  “You’re not going to leave me there, are you?” I asked.

  Elizabeth studied me, her head to one side. “Haven’t you had your fill of death and blood yet?”

  “There is more?”

  “Oh, yes, there is more. You do not travel around the remoter parts of Asia without it.” She stood, the maps in her hand and surveyed my face. “You’re not trying to turn me into Scheherazade, are you?”

  I am afraid I had to ask her what her reference was and she told me the ancient Arabian story of the princess who kept herself alive by enthralling the king with stories, which every night she would leave unfinished until the morrow. Then Elizabeth added: “I thoug
ht I had given you your answer.”

  I was quick to assure her that she had and that I had well satisfied my curiosity. “It’s just that…he is not at all the man I thought he was.” And then I added, “And looking at you standing there, it is hard to see you in a burnoose….”

  Mrs. Hudson chose that moment to appear with the coffee pot and I fell silent, waiting for her to go. When she had left, Elizabeth poured a coffee and handed me the cup.

  She sat on the hassock in front of me. “I suspected that was it. Well, John, you are right. He has changed. Fundamentally he is barely the same man you once knew. Just as I am not the woman that you remember from Switzerland. If we keep the same appearances and characteristics it is merely habit and the comfort of not showing weaknesses.” Her eyes lost their focus for a minute. “You cannot kill a man—or two men—and not remain unchanged.”

  Then she smiled at me. “Had you been in Mashhad when we arrived, you would not have recognized him. The further east we traveled the more he seemed to cast aside his cloak of remoteness and unfold. He was spreading his wings, John, just as he always wanted to. And he was tasting a life that just might possibly hold the answers he was looking for.”

  •ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï• •ï¡÷¡ï•

  They remained in Constantinople for ten more days and those were days of revelations for them both.

  Sullah had quickly discarded all English affectations after the dinner party. “I have entertained my clients and received much money from them. Goods were exchanged. I am much like you–their adherence to the forms to the exclusion of original thinking irritates me.” He laughed. “You both have courage. You have it in here—” and he thumped his chest. “I thought to begin, well yes, it is very nice, the English Ma’am can kill. But what is really in her mind when she kills?”

  Elizabeth writhed under this frank discussion, but Holmes answered off-handedly, “That’s the last thing you have to worry about, Sullah. You merely need be thankful that she can and did when you required it.”