The Curse Of The Diogenes Club

by Anna Lord

  “Irishmen?” Moriarty’s tone betrayed intense surprise.

  Nash picked up on the underlying note of quiet excitement. “Exactly – so how far would Blague go to ensure membership of the Diogenes Club? How far would Damery go? It is my impression he’s had his Irish nose out of joint for years.”

  Indignation flared and Moriarty gave thanks for the lack of moonlight – easy to talk about noses out of joint when you were born a titled Englishman in England. “If you invite Blague you will have to invite his daughter.”

  “I wasn’t aware he had one?”

  “Miss Mona Blague is a true Southern belle. You’re in for a treat. She was so cut up about Freddy Cazenove skipping off to the Transvaal she couldn’t muster the wherewithal to get out of bed for the costume ball. Daddy tried to coax her with a new tiara from Old Bond Street but the mere thought of Freddy suffering a flesh wound was too much for her sensitive nature.”

  Nash pictured Freddy taking an Enfield bullet and smiled in the dark; the beautiful and accomplished Violet de Merville was too good for that reckless prig; no earldom would compensate being married to a profligate gambler, womanizer and bully. “Just one daughter?”

  “One and only – and on the market for a poor sap with a title. If anyone could make her forget Lieutenant Cazenove it could be a young baronet with a Tudor barn. Watch your back.”

  “I gather she looks like a dog?”

  Moriarty shook his head. “Wrong – try blonde, petite, pretty, with a ripe set of tits and enough money to buy up half of Kent should you wish to add acreage to your long-fields. And don’t ever compare a woman to a dog. I like dogs.”

  “So what’s the drawback?”

  “I’ll leave you to figure it out for yourself.”

  That meant there was one. “I’ll add the Blagues to the list of guests. That will make eleven all up.”

  “How many bedrooms in the barn?”

  “A connecting master-mistress suite, four principal bedrooms, six secondary bedrooms, four minor bedrooms, and a nursery wing – all recently refurbished in the style suited to the period – and a separate servants’ wing.”

  The Irishman was impressed. “Whew! All you need to do is convince Mycroft Holmes to go along with your daft scheme.”

  “I’ve convinced you, haven’t I?”

  Moriarty laughed throatily and began to stride away. “Let’s check out the photographer’s studio while we’re here.”

  “The pavilion has been boarded up.”

  “So?”

  Nash smiled wryly as he caught up to the colonel and they began striding in step; it was like old times when they were young and brash and whole world was theirs to conquer. “I’m gagging for a cigarette.”

  “I’ve been gagging for the last ten minutes.”

  “So you thought there was someone in the wood as well?” Nash was referring to the fact neither of them dared light up a cigarette for fear of alerting the watcher in the dark to their presence.

  “I’ve never known a fox to crash through the undergrowth like he’s wearing hobnail boots. Someone trailed one of us all right. Let’s light up as we head up to the pavilion. We’ll soon find out if he’s still out there.”

  8

  Man with a Lamp

  Grand architectural pediments above the double doors of the new coronial offices on the High Street hinted at a Town Hall, Royal Academy, Museum or Public Library so as not to alarm nearby residents by drawing attention to the morgue at the rear which could be entered separately through a side lane.

  The flash of an official government card had the night-watchman politely waving him through the wrought-iron gate that led to a darkened courtyard where several black ambulances were parked. The foul stench from a broken pipe in the yards-man’s WC assailed his sensitive nostrils as he crossed the bluestone cobbles and entered an unlocked door at the rear.

  Inside, all was cold and sterile. It matched his mood. The stench of raw effluent was replaced by the sharp smell of disinfectant. He didn’t know which was worse as he by-passed the washroom and the post mortem rooms and ignored the sleepy mortuary attendant dozing at his desk where a gas lamp burned dimly, lighting the way. He knew where the bodies were stored and wasted no time.

  The order had gone out. There would be no post mortem. Tomorrow the body would be temporarily interred in a secluded birchwood in a corner of the arboretum belonging to the Earl of Winchester until such time as Prince Sergei returned to his homeland and the body would be sufficiently decomposed to travel with him for burial in the family crypt in Minsk. It was the only solution; Slavs did not believe in cremation.

  He found a box of candles on a shelf and lighted one. It flickered faintly, enough for him to see the outlines of things. He located the trolley and lifted back the cold grey sheet. Gently, he stroked the lifeless cheek, as cold as ice, as hard as stone, as white as death. Pain squeezed the organ beating in his chest and tears pricked his limpid owlish eyes; his throat constricted and he found it hard to swallow or breathe.

  Wavering bluish candlelight washed around him and he felt like he was drowning. Emotions threatened to engulf him and drag him down to some watery abyss. The sensation was strange, unfathomable, and the experience unlike anything he could comprehend or explain. He wondered if he was dying.

  Some men feared death, others feared life.

  He had no fear of either.

  He did not believe in heaven or hell.

  He was not ruled by existential terrors.

  He tried blinking back the tears but they flowed like a warm stream down his hot cheeks and he felt ashamed. He felt ashamed for giving into emotion. He felt ashamed for being weak. He felt ashamed for betraying his philosophy. He felt ashamed for being like everyone else.

  He fell across the lifeless body of the princess and wept quietly.

  He wept for something he had lost. He wept for something he would never have. He wept because he couldn’t help it. He wept because he was human.

  When a door slammed somewhere at the far end of a corridor and a cold draught blew the candle out, he drew comfort from the darkness. Light was a greatly overrated thing. Harsh. Severe. Unforgiving. Darkness was softer. A man could embrace the darkness. Without darkness there would be no dreams, no desires, no moon, no stars, no secrets...

  “Who the hell are you?” It was the sleepy attendant now wide awake, holding a lantern that sprayed blinding light enough to wake the dead.

  Mycroft pulled himself together. “Never you mind!”

  With his lachrymose emotions once more in stoic check, he walked briskly back out into the world that would always now be one shade colder, blacker and emptier.

  Major Nash and Colonel Moriarty pried away a loose board that had been nailed slipshod across a shattered French window and climbed inside the pavilion. The acrid smell of charred timbers and burnt fabrics mingled with ghostly puffs of smoke and ash and wraiths of plaster dust that drifted like phantoms stirred to life by cross-currents of cold air and human visitation. Fine, white, chalky powder coated their clothes and skin, pervading their nostrils, forcing them to draw shallow breaths. Gaps in the boards invited motes of moonlight, enough to guide the way to the second level where the studio sat above the octagonal foyer, or what was left of it.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” whispered Nash; boots crunching bits of broken glass that started life as a crystal chandelier, and chunks of ornamental plaster cornicing that lay scattered in the aftermath of shredded curtains, a torn backdrop of the Brighton Pavilion, and a camera still attached to its tripod stand lying flat on the ground.

  Picking his way gingerly across creaking timbers that had withstood the blast but now threatened to give way under the weight of him, Moriarty shrugged. “I don’t know. Rolls of film. Photographic plates. A link between this photographer and the one who was roaming around. Were they working in tandem? Did they know each other?”

  Carefully they sifted through bomb debris looking for clues until Nash
threw back the painted backdrop and felt his breath catch.

  “This is interesting,” he said with remarkable understatement.

  Moriarty turned to look and felt his breath catch too.

  The photographer who had been working in the studio was lying dead. He had been strangled with a goodly length of the hem of a petticoat. It was still wrapped tightly around the neck. The body was stiff and stone cold. The remnant of broderie anglais (donated by some grand dame for the staunching of wounds) indicated the victim had been murdered well after the bombs had been detonated, possibly when he returned to the studio to salvage what he could of his expensive equipment. The murderer had probably casually picked up the frill and later used it to strangle him. Strangling required brute strength - the killer was a man.

  Those same thoughts ran through the minds of both Nash and Moriarty and required no clarification. Other points needed thrashing out.

  “Why kill him after the event?” posed Moriarty in a neutral tone.

  “If he was going to be interviewed by Scotland Yard he might give too much away,” suggested Nash. “If we suspected the roaming photographer, it wouldn’t take long for the Yard to do the same.”

  “Or he might have been able to identify the roaming photographer,” offered the colonel.

  “He might even have guessed the other wasn’t a proper photographer at all but a stooge with an empty folding box – especially if he picked it up and put it under the stairs.”

  “He might have seen something suspicious which didn’t mean anything at the time but later seemed out of place. Not necessarily something the other photographer did, but perhaps one of the guests.”

  “He might have overheard someone talking about the bombs while he was preoccupied behind the backdrop and only later did the speaker realize the photographer heard every word.”

  “We could probably find a dozen more reasons. Check his pockets. Does he have a business card with an address on it?”

  Nash poked around in the pockets of the frock coat. “Here’s a card.” He struck a lucifer and his eyes skimmed the fine print before the match barbecued his fingers. “Mr Aubrey Ambrose, 44 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.”

  “That’s just across the river. The Battersea Bridge will have us there in no time.”

  “Posh address,” noted the Major. “He must have been one of those society photographers popular with the ladies. Let’s go. We’ll rendezvous on the bridge.”

  “Rendezvous?”

  “Shut up!”

  Sherlock didn’t return to Baker Street with Dr Watson. He explained he had a few things to take care of and his old friend knew what that meant. There was no point pressing the matter. Sherlock would explain in his own good time.

  The consulting detective felt a frisson of the old excitement as he returned to Clarges Hotel where he had earlier in the day checked in. The lobby was dead quiet as he collected his key from the night porter and went to his room on the second floor, staying just long enough to snatch up a kerosene switch-marker lantern with a Bangor blue lens that diffused the light and was not too glary. Without ado, he stole up the servants’ stairs to the third level. The Russian maid was sleeping in a room at the end of the hall. He could hear her snores as he tip-toed along the corridor and slipped into the main bedroom.

  He was intrigued as to what a Matryoshka doll looked like and he hoped there might be more nesting dolls stored in boxes in the dressing room. If the princess had one doll she was likely to have others to hand out to loyal friends of Mother Russia.

  He also wanted to familiarize himself with the layout of the rooms so that he could return during the day and make a detailed search for any clues as to who the lover was. His brother was behaving peculiarly and it worried him. He didn’t seriously believe Mycroft killed the princess but if he knew who did kill her and was thinking of taking his revenge that was different.

  The maid had started to pack up the princess’s personal possessions, probably at the instigation of the prince. That actually made the search easier. It also meant that if things were disturbed it would not be as noticeable. He worked quickly and methodically using the blue tinted lamp to direct the light to where it was needed.

  There were no nesting dolls to be had in the dressing room so he moved into the bedroom and found something even better. A solid gold cufflink was lying under the dressing table. It was engraved with a capital ‘J’.

  James, Josiah, Jim, Jonathan, Jantzen, John…

  Sir James Damery.

  General Josiah de Merville.

  Jim Moriarty.

  Inigo Belvedere Fortescue Nash son of Jonathan Nash and Gabriella Jantzen.

  John Hamish Watson.

  Sherlock dismissed that last name and breathed a sigh of relief that he was not looking at a cufflink engraved with a capital M or H.

  Major Nash and Colonel Moriarty were standing in the shadow of a towering oak tree in Cheyne Walk on the embankment side looking through a translucent grey veil of mist at a large sash window on the second level of number 44 where the flame from a lantern flickered erratically as it moved hither and thither behind a drawn blind.

  “Someone beat us to it,” said Nash bitterly, feeling the damp settle into his clothes. “Someone’s searching the premises and it’s not Scotland Yard unless they’ve decided to start working round the clock.”

  “What do you think they’re looking for?”

  “Same as us – something that links the studio photographer to the photographer roaming around with the folding camera which must have housed the third bomb.”

  “Since we’re here, let’s find out who it is.”

  Like most Georgian terraces, those in Cheyne Walk were constructed with a basement kitchen which had a window below ground level that could be accessed from the street by leaping over a hand-rail into a light-well. This particular basement window had been obligingly pried open. It was a simple case of slipping inside and creeping up the stairs; revolvers drawn and cocked, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

  The two men hugged the wall and kept to the shadows, thankful for the skylight that filtered moonlight through opaque glass. They reached the landing where the stairs turned when one of the oak boards creaked and whoever was upstairs in the front parlour immediately extinguished the light, alerted to the fact someone else had entered the house.

  There was no going back so they pressed on, breaths drawn. They reached the top landing and moved to separate doors, both ajar; hearts pounding in expectation of danger. There was no sound anywhere except for the ticking of the longcase clock at the turn of the stairs. As they stepped simultaneously through the twin doorways there came a ton of pain and then the world went black.

  An unknown shortness of time later, with skulls throbbing and a dull pain between the eyes, they returned to the land of the living to find a huge black giant standing over them wielding a nasty looking cosh, and behind the giant there appeared a dreamy vision bathed in golden lamplight that resembled the Countess holding a large wooden candlestick.

  “Good evening, gentlemen, I apologise for the headache you may have tomorrow, but it was a necessary precaution in case you turned out to be someone undesirable.”

  “Bloody hell!” muttered Major Nash as he rubbed the back of his head and tried not to wince.

  Colonel Moriarty didn’t bother suppressing a loud groan. “Did your manservant just transform himself into a black devil or am I still seeing things?”

  “This is Mr Steve Dixie,” she said, replacing the wooden candlestick on a chiffonier and re-lighting the lantern. “He has lately joined my employ. Fedir is with the landau parked in Cheyne Row. I presume we are all here for the same reason. Mr Aubrey Ambrose has not returned to number 44 since the costume ball. I had several people watching his house yesterday. I don’t suppose you happen to know his whereabouts?”

  “Yes,” said Moriarty without hesitation, deciding they were on the same side and there was no point prevaricating. “He’s lying in the pavili
on with a strip of broderie anglais wrapped around his neck.”

  “Dead?”

  “I thought I made that clear; he was strangled.”

  She moved to the window and peered through a gap in the blind to check the street below to make sure no one else was about to show up uninvited. “What about the second photographer – the one wandering about with the Kodak camera who hasn’t been seen since the bombs went off?”

  Major Nash pushed abruptly to his feet and tried to steady his swimmy head. “We wondered if there might be a clue here. Sherlock presumed Mr Ambrose moved the camera with the bomb but what if the two photographers were working in tandem.”

  “Unlikely,” she said. “I made enquiries. Mr Ambrose worked alone apart from two junior assistants who are totally stunned that their employer has not been seen since the costume ball. They reported for work here early this morning ready to develop as many photographs as possible as stipulated by their employer. This was their most lucrative assignment to date and Mr Ambrose was hoping it would be an entrée into royal patronage. He is hardly likely to jeopardise that by teaming up with a bomb man.”

  “If you already knew he wasn’t the bomb man,” reasoned Major Nash, “why did you bother to come here tonight?”

  “I wanted to ascertain if Mr Ambrose had gone into hiding. It would have suggested he saw something or knew something and was frightened for his life. It looks as if that was the case and the killer didn’t hesitate to silence him. If you knew he was already dead, why did you come here tonight?”

  Moriarty straightened up and gave another unabashed groan. “If the two photographers were both in the same line of work it’s possible they knew each other and perhaps even exchanged business cards. Have you searched his study?”

  She shook her head. “According to Mr Dixie, who made a quick survey of the premises when we arrived, there’s an office in the attic. The next level up is a bedroom, bathroom and dressing room. At the rear of this level is a studio. Colonel Moriarty, you take the office. Major Nash you can check the bedroom and dressing room. Mr Dixie can check the kitchen and pantry just in case there are dust coats or jackets with cards in the pockets. I’ll check the studio, which is where I was heading when I was interrupted.”