The Adventure of the King's Portrait

by Amelia Littlewood

  “You needn’t have such a tone of surprise,” I said. “Unless you have failed to notice my own gender, in which case, Mr. Holmes, you might be in for a nasty shock.”

  “Ah, but have you outsmarted me, Miss Bennet?” Mr. Holmes returned. “You have shown remarkable talent and intellect but forgive me for thinking that I was mentoring you.”

  This was true, and I deflated a little. Mr. Holmes was still more observant than I, and of the two of us I considered him to be the master detective while I was still a bit of an apprentice.

  “Chin up, Miss Bennet,” Mr. Holmes said. “I’m sure that you will come to outwit me in time and perhaps even surpass me altogether, if this incident is any indication. Such a woman,” he added, open admiration in his voice, something I had never before heard from him. “The woman.”

  “Why, Mr. Holmes, I should dare say that you have the more tender feelings for her if I did not know you so well,” I said. “Or perhaps, there is a bit of softness lingering in you yet, that even you have not seen fit to acknowledge until now.”

  “I assure you, Miss Bennet, I have no intention of pining as one of your Gothic heroes or throwing myself into matrimony,” Mr. Holmes replied dryly. “But if it entertains you to think of such an amusing scene then by all means, do not let me keep you from your flights of fancy.”

  I laughed. “Why, you are so offended at the idea of being like ordinary men and women. It is not such a bad thing, or so I hear, to fall in love.”

  “If so then I wonder that you do not go about it yourself,” Mr. Holmes replied. “I am sure that many men would be happy to ask for your hand, if you were to show an interest.”

  The look on my face undoubtedly betrayed my horror of the idea. Only the deepest of loves could compel me into marriage, especially now that I knew there were so many other options before me. Mr. Holmes gave a dry chuckle, and I scowled, knowing that he had successfully turned the tables on me.

  “On a more serious note,” Mr. Holmes said, “Your sister Miss Mary shows an intellect similar to yours and an interest in law and the government.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was thinking it is a shame that she is not a man. Not that she is not as capable as a man, but now she is barred from what she enjoys because no one would surely let her go to the bar or enter into Parliament.”

  “As you so astutely noted, I have just now been shown that I should not underestimate a woman,” Mr. Holmes said. I saw that he held the photograph of Miss Adler fondly, as one would first prize at a fair. “Perhaps we can set her to some tasks. Organizing my collection of information, for one.”

  “It is rather haphazard,” I said, referring to his system of stuffing books around his flat with newspaper clippings and other information on people about London and the greater world. “I think she shall get an education out of it and enjoy creating order out of the chaos.”

  “Perhaps next then she can bring some kind of order to my wall,” Mr. Holmes added.

  I knew that he was referring to his wall plastered with information about Moriarty, for there was no other wall in his flat that held anything of note. “It seems that we are beginning to understand our adversary,” I said. “He is someone who likes power and enjoys manipulating governments, either for some greater end or to line his own pockets or even just for the sake of his own amusement.”

  “Perhaps it is, I think, a combination of all three,” Mr. Holmes said. “One may dominate over the others, but I doubt that one rises to such heights and in such a way as this without having a mixture of motives behind them.”

  “And what are your motives then?” I asked. “You are beginning to rise to prominence yourself, Mr. Holmes. We have had a monarch for a client just this past week, in case you have already forgotten.”

  “A fool of a monarch indeed,” Mr. Holmes said scathingly. “To think at how his behavior has twice, at the least, endangered his country.”

  “What will become of Miss Adler?” I asked, and then corrected myself. “I mean, Mrs. Norton? That is, she has not and is not going to publish the photograph. Will this Moriarty come after her?”

  “Things are done rather differently in America than here in Europe,” Mr. Holmes noted. “I do not think Moriarty’s sway has gone so far as to reach across the Atlantic. And in any case, Mrs. Norton said only that she was paid to threaten the king with the photograph, not to actually print it. I think Moriarty will let her be.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I should hate for her to come under fire, so to speak.”

  “So we are in agreement then?” Mr. Holmes said. “That we shall have Miss Mary as our secretary, of a sort, and help us to compile information about this Moriarty?”

  “I suppose,” I said. “But I do wish you would be careful to continue to take cases so that you do not slip into obsession. You did worry me a few days ago, Mr. Holmes, as much as I know you hate it when anyone fusses over you.”

  Mr. Holmes grumbled but I saw that he had a sort of fond look in his eyes. Though he rarely said anything out loud, it was those looks that reminded me that he did indeed see me as a friend and his complaints about me and my ‘fussing’ were merely for show.

  I left Mr. Holmes at his flat in Baker Street, bid a goodnight to Mrs. Hudson, and then made my way home. And so the whole matter of Irene Adler was concluded, at least as far as openly discussing it. But I saw, before I left, that Mr. Holmes was staring most adamantly at her portrait with a look of contemplation that I have rarely seen upon him.

  For all of my teasing my friend, I am serious when I share with the reader the fact that Miss Adler, now Mrs. Norton, holds a special place in the annals of history. Her picture was placed upon the mantelpiece, a rare place of honor, in the area formerly occupied by the skull—which I had secretly dubbed Clarence, for those who might have been wondering.

  Mr. Holmes had, at times, liked to joke about the cleverness of women. While he felt them capable of intelligence and he certainly never underestimated me, I think that as a whole he was unimpressed by them. He found them flighty and that the average woman was incapable of keeping her head in a crisis. Since Miss Adler proved him wrong, I have not heard him jest in such a manner.

  In a bit of behavior that some may not find so odd given Mr. Holmes’s many unusual habits, Miss Adler is the one person that he does not call by name. No, she is special enough to be given a title. To Mr. Holmes she is always ‘the woman.’ Whenever he refers to her, or even to her picture, it is by that title.

  In the years that have past, I have seldom heard him refer to her by any other name. In his eyes she eclipsed and predominated the whole of her sex. I have sincere doubts that Mr. Holmes even remembered that I am a woman as well. To him I have always been his associate, his pupil, and my being a man or a woman was neither here nor there to him. But Irene Adler is the woman. She was a representative, I think, to his mind of all that women could be.

  As Mr. Holmes had pointed out to me when I teased him, it was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for her. Those tender emotions, and that of romantic love in particular, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. Mr. Holmes was a brilliant man, and one that I admired and considered a friend, but I have to confess that when I pictured him as a lover I only pictured him failing. When he did tend to speak of love it was generally to make a joke of it. They were interesting to observe in others, but he did not care for it.

  And yet, there was but one woman to him.

  Oh, yes, there was one more thing of note in the adventure of the king’s portrait. Many readers might yet be wondering if I managed to maintain my friendship with Mrs. Norton, nee Adler, as she had said she hoped we might upon her return. That was not for some time, but when she eventually made her way back to England, yes, we did strike up a dear and close friendship.

  In the meantime it was not long before I received my first letter from her and I was able to respond in kind. I found it heartening that I could have a frie
ndship with someone who was not only my intellectual equal, as Mr. Holmes was, but also a woman, someone with whom I could discuss the warmer things that Mr. Holmes always sneered at.

  But the most amusing and interesting thing, Mrs. Norton’s last laugh, so to speak, was waiting for me when I arrived back at the Bingley home that evening.

  “There is a present for you, Lizzie!” Jane said. She was without the baby for a time, and looked positively radiant. She was not getting much sleep as a new mother but the sheer joy in her face made up for any tiredness about her eyes. I have never seen a woman so in love with her child and her lot in life as a mother as was my Jane.

  “A present?” I scoured my mind, trying to think who would have sent such a thing and why. It was not at all near to my birthday, nor could I think of anything I had done that would have earned me a showing of gratitude. Nor did I have any suitors who would leave something for me as a token of affection. Perhaps… “Is it from Aunt Gardner?”

  “No, although she did call this morning, she asks that you repay her in kind tomorrow, she misses you,” Jane replied. She produced from behind her back a package, wrapped beautifully, with a little ribbon and a small note attached. “It was delivered by a messenger this afternoon while you were out. He said that it was from a friend of yours and to handle it with care.”

  “I wonder what it could be,” I said, equal parts nervous and excited. Could Father have, perhaps, sent me a special book as a surprise? Could Jane herself have arranged this and was pretending not to know anything of it? Or perhaps it was from Charlotte, who was always so thoughtful and sweet?

  First, I picked up the note. When I opened it, I gasped and nearly dropped the parcel in shock. “What is it?” Jane asked. “Oh, is it something distressing? You look quite pale, Lizzie.”

  “It is nothing,” I said, “Only that I now know who it is from.”

  Indeed, I recognized the handwriting at once. I had read another letter written by this person no more than an hour or two ago, left behind on a table with her portrait which now sat on the mantle in Mr. Holmes’s flat.

  This note had only three words on it: open in private.

  “I’ll open this in my room,” I said. “It’s from Mr. Holmes for a case, and I have to keep our client private—they’re very prominent in society and they’ve made us promise to be as discreet as possible.”

  “Oh, of course,” Jane replied, and I felt a bit of guilt at lying to her, but that would be nothing compared to the shriek she would undoubtedly let out if she saw what was inside this package. That is, if what was inside the wrapping was what I thought it was. “Dinner will be soon, and then Lydia and Kitty are going to the balls for the night, I presume that you can chaperone them? Charles has agreed if you cannot, but I think he would not have a good time of it—he would have to watch them dancing and you know it’s terribly unfair of him to watch when he can’t indulge in it himself since I am not there.”

  “I can chaperone them,” I said. “It’s of no trouble. But if you’ll excuse me, I need to…”

  I disappeared up the stairs before I could even finish the sentence, so eager was I to see if I was right in what this package contained.

  Once I was in the safety of my room, with the door locked to be certain, I carefully unwrapped the paper wrapping to reveal what was inside.

  It was a photograph, in a cabinet frame, with a piece of brown butcher paper carefully placed to cover the undoubtedly scandalous image it contained. There was also another note, done in the same handwriting, upon which was written for Miss Bennet.

  The first thing I did was find a suitable place to hide the photograph. I did not have a specially made hidden compartment for it, as Miss Adler had, but I was able to successfully hide it by wrapping it inside of a dressing gown that I hardly ever wore and then placing that underneath my intimates. I should find a better hiding place for it later. I had several ideas.

  The note I read with eagerness once the picture was securely hidden away.

  Dear Miss Bennet,

  I hope you won’t think it too forward of me to hide this with you. I think it will be enough for our friend the monarch to simply believe that I have the picture in my possession. I could not risk traveling with it, for if it was lost with my luggage, it would cause a scandal indeed—and while I did happily take the money from the gentleman I previously mentioned, which allowed me to afford this voyage to the Americas in exchange for threatening our blundering king—I do not actually wish my name to be dragged about through the papers in such a fashion.

  I believe—or perhaps it is that I choose to believe—that you were in earnest in seeking my friendship. I greatly enjoyed our afternoon of discussion and I am grateful for your standing in as a witness at my wedding. I shall write to you shortly when I have a proper address, so that you may respond in kind.

  Do what you like with the portrait. Burn it, or keep it as insurance, or whichever you see is best. I trust your judgment.

  Yours sincerely,

  Irene

  What could I do to that but laugh? She had managed to surprise me yet again. I did not know what surprised me more: that she should still trust me enough to entrust me this powerful token, or that she should think of the idea of sending it to me in the first place.

  What I did with the picture, I shall not say. I think readers can have a guess at it themselves. But the thought that Irene trusted me still even after my abuse of said trust, and the cleverness and joke of her sending the picture to me—it was enough to keep me smiling all throughout the rest of the evening, including while I chaperoned my sisters.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Amelia works as a librarian and lives in an idyllic Cotswold village in England with Darcy, her Persian cat. She has been a Jane Austen fan since childhood but only in later life did she discover the glory and gory of a cozy mystery book. She has drafted many different cases for Holmes and Bennet to solve together.

  Visit www.amelialittlewood.com for more details