A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [105]
“She was injecting herself, you say?” said Holmes sharply.
“In the library, I seen her, with this band wrapped around her arm, holding the end of it in her teeth. I didn’t know what she was doin’ at first,” he said righteously. “Shameless, she was.”
“The band around one arm and the hypodermic needle in the other?” Holmes enquired.
“Well, a’course. How else could she do it?”
Wordlessly, Holmes took my arm and unfastened the button of my left cuff. He pushed up the sleeve, tucked it so it stayed up, and turned my arm for the two men to examine. It looked worse than ever, nearly fifty puncture marks, several of them infected, the whole arm bruised and angry for a hand’s breadth around it. The inspector looked repelled; Bigley looked smug. Holmes then took my right wrist and ran that sleeve up on an unblemished arm. He caught and held the inspector’s eyes.
“Miss Russell is left-handed,” he said with emphasis. “It is quite impossible for her to have repeatedly injected her own vein—a delicate operation, you will admit—using her right hand.” He turned my left arm slightly and pointed to a greenish smudge which had not been there five minutes earlier. “However, these fading bruises on her arm are perfectly consistent with having her arm held down—which, knowing Miss Russell, I can say would have required several strong men, and may indeed have something to do with the marks of teeth on Mr. Bigley’s hand—while her arm was then injected for her. Against her will,” he added, in case the good inspector had missed the point. He had not, and I could almost see him beginning to bristle at the hapless thug. Inspector Dakins had perhaps been raised on tales of white slavers, I thought to myself, and rolled down my sleeves.
“You will wish a statement, Inspector Dakins?”
“Indeed,” he said, and spoke to the uniformed PC. “Take Bigley into the next room. I’ll finish with him in a minute.”
I dictated my statement, giving but the briefest details of my captivity and leading him completely astray when it came to the effects of the drug on my system. Yes, it was seven or eight hours now since Bigley’s boss had last injected me. No, I did not think I was addicted to the heroin, although that clearly was the intent. No, I had no idea why I had been subjected to the treatment. (The look of disbelief in the inspector’s eyes drove into me, but I met it with equanimity. With Holmes there, and with the accent he heard coming from me, he did not press.) No, I was not feeling any ill effects, although, I admitted, I was quite exhausted and disorientated, perhaps from lack of adequate food, sleep, and sunshine. Holmes took the cue and stood up.
“I shall remove Miss Russell now, Inspector. She has had a trying time, and I have no doubt her doctor will require that she have some days of quiet. You may telephone her on Monday if you have further questions. Good day, and I wish you the best of luck with finding the other two men. Come, Russell.”
To my astonishment, Q was outside with the car. The punctilious correctness with which he greeted me positively vibrated with relief and affection. The temporary strength I had gained from the needle was fading rapidly, though, and I allowed him to tuck a rug around me. Before Holmes could get into the car himself, though, there was a call from behind us. He straightened up to confer with the uniformed constable, then put his head back in, told me he would return in a minute, and went with the constable back towards the house. Q paused before closing the door and spoke in the general direction of my feet.
“He’s been right frantic, miss. No sleep and next to no food. The wife thought he’d drop.” He shut the door before I could summon an answer, then went back to his place behind the wheel. Holmes appeared a minute later, dropping into the seat beside me. He did look nearly as dead as I felt, I noted dispassionately.
“Dakins decided he needed my own telephone numbers as well, although I must have given them him at least five times,” he explained. He looked at the side of my face and after a minute