“If we’re not needed here,” I said, “we could return to my room on the Cap d’Antibes. Or if we are staying on, I should ask them to send my things.”
No response.
“I suppose the Hon Terry could bring them, if he’s coming back. So, are we staying on, or leaving?” Nothing. “Should I have the Murphys build a camp-fire on the beach with my suitcases? Hello, Holmes?”
His eyes withdrew from the far horizon. “Sorry?”
“Are we accepting dismissal?”
He looked at the Langtry house, and chuckled.
“What a refreshing and salutary experience, to be shown the door so very firmly.”
“Are. We. Leaving. Monaco?”
“Don’t be preposterous.”
Of course not. Sherlock Holmes, taking orders from two old women?
“That’s a relief. So, what do we want to poke into first? The bank? Her house?” But with the last word came a stark image. My heart sank. “Oh, Holmes. The blood. If Mrs Hudson is let out on bail, we can’t let her return home to that. The man was her friend. Bad enough she…”
I found it hard to finish the thought. Bad enough she had to scrub her own son’s blood from the floor-boards in Sussex…“Do you think the police would allow us to have it cleaned?”
“I require a telephone.”
Retracing our steps down the cliff-side escalier left us nearly as weak-kneed as climbing them had. At the bottom, we made for the nearest café and settled in with a large bottle of mineral water and two large glasses of wine.
Neither of us spoke, although the sound of furious thought was almost audible.
After a while, Holmes rose to search out a telephone. With this call, he was marginally more successful than he had been, although not entirely so.
“Jourdain will see me,” he said, resuming his chair, “but not until tomorrow morning, after church. And he confirmed that, short of other evidence to the contrary, Mrs Hudson will probably be released in the afternoon—but into Mrs Langtry’s custody.”
“Did you ask—”
“He has no objection to the house being cleaned. He regards their photographs as sufficient evidence.”
Which was nonsense, but who were we to argue?
“If we are here for the night, then, would you like to go help me scrub a floor?”
“No. Tonight, Russell, we shall return to the Casino.”
TEN DAYS EARLIER
“Well, Lillie, the deed is done.”
“Which one, dear heart?”
“The one involving the paper. He’s taken it off to Paris to hand it to his gentleman there.”
“Oh, how exciting! Aren’t you excited?”
“More relieved, I think. Like when I would have the house to myself for two full days and I could give it a proper tidy, top to bottom. As soon as that thing is really gone, there will be no evidence that Clara Hudson is anything but a law-abiding old woman, retired to a small Mediterranean country for its pleasantly warm climate.”
“Oh, Clarissa, you always could make me laugh. The thought of you as a law-abiding old woman.”
“I am. Or will be. I hope that when Mr Holmes shows up, I can give him a face of bland virtue.”
“Or you could ask Niko to drive him off with a stick.”
“No. I’m actually looking forward to seeing him, once the Count has finished and my hands are clean.”
“Why did you never put a dose of arsenic in the man’s curry, anyway?”
“He was always a sort of challenge, I suppose. Do you remember, Lillie, how freeing it felt, at the end of the day, to take off one’s corset? When one could take a proper breath for the first time in hours?”
“Oh yes! Sheer heaven.”
“And yet, once you’d drawn that first delicious deep breath, there came this creeping sense of uncertainty. A sort of…floppiness about the spine and torso, as if one’s organs were about to spill out onto one’s knees.”
“Who can forget? When fashion finally changed and I gave up whalebone for good, I used to get the most dreadful backaches. A corset kept one upright for hours, with no effort at all. Without it, a chair had no more support than a three-legged stool.”
“And walking about felt as wobbly as a rubber balloon filled with water! And the next day, when the ties pulled in and snugness returned, it was hard to breathe, but it was also familiar and safe. Well, it was a little like that, living under the authority of Mr Holmes. I had fewer choices and decisions. And honestly, Lillie, since most of the choices I’d made didn’t turn out that well, it was something of a relief to have fewer of them to make.”
“How do you suppose Mr Holmes would like being compared to a set of stays?”
“Hah! It’s been many a year since I’ve seen the man blush, but that might do it.”
At the thought of returning to the Casino, a place that had sucked my will down to a dry nubbin, I dug in my heels, but Holmes insisted. Eventually I gave in, though not to take any active part. “I’ll sit with the other female companions and watch, Holmes, but I won’t put my money down on that damnable wheel again.”
“Perfect. Far easier for you to keep an eye on the room if you’re not being mesmerised by the spin.”
We returned to the Hermitage and put on our evening wear, with me clipping on the jewelled decorations that were a modern woman’s substitute for hair long enough to pin up. We ate first, Holmes allowing the sommelier to talk him into a bottle of wine older than I was, then strolled arm in arm along the lamp-lit pavements to the Casino de Monte Carlo.
The place came alive at night. During the day, the Casino was a building that worked too hard to impress, but with the velvet sky overhead and the spill of chandelier light down the steps, with the sweep of silken gowns and sparkle of jewels, any shabbiness vanished and its fairy-land grace and intimacy came to the fore.
I still had no intention of falling under its spell. Instead, I settled in among the accompanying wives and friends. The women studied my cursory hair-do and bluestocking spectacles, trying to weigh such gaucheries against the undeniable expense of my dress and the brilliance of my emeralds. Apparently, I passed muster, because when I gave the most blatantly pampered of them a polite smile, she graciously inclined her head. All around me, feathers settled with this sign of acceptance, and the women turned their attention to the tables again.
I, however, studied the room in a way I had not done before. The real gambling, those high-stakes games that saw racing stables and country estates change ownership in a night, took place in the salles privés upstairs, a sort of gentlemen’s club well removed from the rattle of ivory balls and the squeaks of excited ladies. For the people down at this more public level, the mere sensation of exclusivity was quite enough.
Slowly, I began to notice patterns. The nervous gestures of the addicts, the taut faces of those whose luck was gone, the widened shoulders of men who felt the Fates shining upon them and knew they could do no wrong. The careful note-taking of those who believed that the odds favoured not the house, but the one with a System. The dedicated drinking of a man who would be slinking home in disgrace—if he went home at all.
And then I saw, across the room, what I realised Holmes had been waiting for: Lillie Langtry, on the arm of a tall, distinguished man some fifteen years her junior. A man with a white streak in his hair, a precisely trimmed beard, and a beautifully fitted evening suit.
Holmes saw them a moment later. He went still, tracking their progress across the floor, making note of their every movement. Lady de Bathe’s arm was lightly looped through that of Count Vasilev, long ebony gloves setting off the brilliance of diamonds around her wrist. Her head was inclined towards his, to hear something he was saying, although her gaze remained outwards to the room. Interested, but not intimate.
Then I saw her change, in some subtle but unde
niable way. Her pace hesitated, her posture straightened, her glove pulled back until only the fingertips were making contact with the Count’s forearm. Then he, too, noticed whatever had caught her eye, and stopped. Mrs Langtry’s arm fell away as she took a small step to the side.
The Count’s reaction to the person coming at them, who was still out of view to me, was less ambiguous. He smiled. At the same time, his head and shoulders went slightly back, turning him from a man displaying a handsome woman on his arm to a subaltern facing a friendly but vastly superior officer.
When the person appeared, I heard Holmes make a sound. This was a man of Mrs Langtry’s age, a rotund figure with brilliant white hair, moustaches, and goatee. He stopped before the two. Lillie Langtry put out her hand. He grasped her fingers and made a brief bow over them, then turned to the Count, shook his hand, then gave a regal nod. She stepped back so he could proceed without having to change his course in the slightest. They watched him move off, then turned, to continue their way, disappearing from view.
I was not surprised when Holmes finished his hand and gathered up his plaques. But I was taken aback when, instead of following the Jersey Lily and her companion, he steered me towards the exit.
We paused to cash in his plaques and jetons, enough to buy him several bottles of that stupendously expensive wine. I wondered if he had cheated, made a note to ask him how, and then we were outside in the balmy night air.
“Who was that man?”
“None other than Basil Zaharoff.”
“Good Lord.”
“Indeed.”
It felt a bit like hearing that a casual passer-by had been Vlad the Impaler. Hardly surprising I had not known Basil Zaharoff by sight—his photograph appeared in the newspapers even less than his name did, and the name was mostly spoken in whispers and in back rooms.
I followed Holmes down the Casino steps and around to the coast-side promenade. At the railings, Holmes dug his tobacco out of his inner pocket. When the stimulant was burning, he squinted across the breakwater below.
“Lady de Bathe moves in some troubling circles,” he remarked.
“Well, as Mrs Hudson pointed out, it is a small city.”
A glance with a cocked eyebrow put me in my place, but I persisted. “I know, and I most certainly wouldn’t want Basil Zaharoff kissing my hand. However, I get the impression that anyone of stature who spends more than a brief time in Monaco has to choose between shaking a distasteful hand and making a deliberate, and possibly dangerous, social offence. Am I wrong?”
“The woman showed no sign of distaste.”
“That wasn’t what I saw.”
“She smiled at the man. She initiated a handshake. She was still smiling when she and Count Vasilev walked away.”
Slowly, I shook my head. “Holmes, I think you’re wrong. Oh, I’d agree that the Count respects Mr Zaharoff, and would like to ingratiate himself rather more thoroughly, but Mrs Langtry’s immediate impulse on seeing Zaharoff was to stop dead. She did not, quite, though her hand had come nearly free from the Count’s arm before she realised it, and moved to stay with him. And yes, her face was polite throughout, but she’d braced her shoulders, to fight the impulse to flee. And the moment Zaharoff shifted, intending to continue walking, she made haste to step away, so as not to come into any further contact with him.”
“I saw nothing of the sort.”
I thought about mentioning the other thing I had noticed, but I could not swear to it. The Count had obscured my view, but I’d seen the beginning of a motion my own hand recognised: Mrs Langtry had given a quick and unconscious swipe of her right palm down the side of her gown.
The retort was on the tip of my tongue—Holmes, you see but you do not observe—but I stifled it, and turned, to put my back against the railing. “Holmes, I am among the least vulnerable of women, physically or financially. Yet even I understand a woman’s retreat from confrontation. How we use polite masks as covert resistance.”
Even to our husbands.
“Lillie Langtry is no stray chicken surrounded by foxes,” he protested.
“My dear man, every woman has felt herself surrounded by foxes at one time or another. If not by wolves.”
It was an uncomfortable confession, coming from a modern woman who proclaims her autonomous state. However, though he be a man, Holmes was nonetheless a fair one. My admission gave him something to meditate upon, while we walked along the terrace gardens and back to our rooms at the Hermitage.
“How long do you suppose it takes to clean a floor, Holmes?” I asked him the next morning.
“It never seemed to take Mrs Hudson long,” he replied. But then, if she’d worked all day on her knees, would he have noticed?
“I imagine it will take me most of the morning.”
“You should arrange with Madame Crovetti to have it cleaned.”
“If Mrs Hudson weren’t being freed this afternoon, I might. But this being Sunday, I think the only way to be sure it gets done is to do it myself.”
“I could help,” he said, as reluctant as I’d ever heard him. “When I have spoken with the elusive Inspector Jourdain.”
“I’ll clean. You go talk to him.”
“Leave a message for me here, if you wish me to join you.”
We drained our coffee cups and went our separate ways.
* * *
—
Again I climbed, up roads so steep that they might as well have been stairways. When the house at the cliff base came into view, I began to consider how best to get inside. Also, to catch my breath and peel my sodden clothing away from my skin, wishing the evening breeze would start up early.
No luck.
However, my ill fortune in climatic issues was repaid by ease of access: Madame Crovetti was standing on Mrs Hudson’s front steps, emptying a watering can into the pots on either side of the door. Her clothing suggested she was just home from church.
“Bonjour, Madame,” I greeted her. She returned the greeting, and asked if I had found the Lady of the Bath. I said I had, told her that Mrs Hudson was to be released, agreed with her that this was most excellent news—and then sadly pointed out that the floors would be a shock to that good lady.
“However, Madame, it seems that the police have no objection to my cleaning up. So as to save her the distress.”
“Truly?”
“Absolutely. L’inspecteur himself gave us permission. I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a key?”
At the question, she reached into her pocket and took out a ring bristling with keys, fitting one into the latch. I thanked her and slipped around her, bracing myself against what I was going to find inside.
A hallway led down the centre of the house, with two pairs of doors. Of the nearer pair, the one on the right was open, its mate on the left closed, while the two at the end of the hallway were both slightly ajar. Shutters had kept the house cool in comparison to the street outside, but the first thing I did was go through the open right-hand doorway to throw open the windows and shutters: the body had not lain in the house long enough to putrefy, but the air smelled of decay.
It had not happened in this space, a sort of morning-room retreat for the lady of the house, rather than for visitors—especially any visitors requiring the services of “Miss Hudson,” the fixer and smoother-of-ways. I stood in the wash of sunlight, studying the view—a surprisingly generous stretch of the Mediterranean, considering the cliffs all around, through the gap at the end and above the low buildings beyond.
I had never known Mrs Hudson with a home of her own. For more than two decades, her quarters had been a portion of Holmes’ Sussex villa. Before that, 221b Baker Street was a house she had owned outright, but it, too, came to her through Holmes.
What would it mean to a person, to go from those Sussex rooms to this? From closed-in and subordinate, li
ving in rooms entered through a kitchen and whose view was a small, enclosed garden, to a place with doors she could lock when she wished, walls that kept others out, and a view that stretched over the endless sea?
Had there been a single morning since she moved here in June that she had not flung open her shutters with joy?
The house was hers, of that I had no doubt. Spotless, spare, and with none of a Victorian’s fuss and formality. I looked over the room, enjoying its colours, and though she’d left Sussex in a hurry, with the barest of possessions, I saw a number of familiar objects. A favourite shawl, tossed over the back of the settee for cool evenings. An ancient, hand-made child’s dolly, grey with love and even limper than I remembered, slumped atop a book-shelf. And on the wall nearby…
It was a small watercolour of the Beachy Head cliffs on a stormy day: a sweep of green hillside, the sharp white chalk bluffs, and a tumultuous sky over seething waves. I’d bought it in Eastbourne a month after I’d first met her, when I’d learned that the next day was her birthday. And though it had been a hasty purchase, of a local landmark so widely depicted as to be cliché and cheap enough for my limited purse, I realised as I studied the piece that it was actually fairly well done. I could understand why she had found a corner in her suitcase for it.
Not that I had noticed it missing from her rooms in Sussex. I had not even spotted the frame she must have left behind rather than risk a valise full of broken glass. The frame it wore now was much nicer—and, I noticed, the room itself suited it beautifully, with shades of that same green in the cushions, echoes of the grey-and-white sky in the tiny, subtle print of the wallpaper…
The cushions were new, the paint fresh, the wallpaper, too. Those echoes were no happy accident: they were deliberate.
I was amused, and touched, as I thought about that birthday, and about her other birthdays, and about meeting her in the first place and all the hours we’d spent together, and only slowly became aware that I was standing there trying to work up my courage. The air itself was less troubling, but I could not remain in this innocent room. I took a steadying breath and walked back into the hallway, only then noticing the red-brown smudges on the floor. I took care to step around them, and reached for the door-knob leading to the other front room, the one suitable for guests and potential clients.
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