A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [120]
“Gone to earth, by God. I thought she’d walk to Dover,” muttered Holmes. “You stay here. Follow if she reappears. Drop crumbs or something. I’ll place Billy on the corner back there, in case of a back door.” He faded into the background.
A conscientious bobby can be one of the most irritating things on the face of London. One such found me after less than five minutes, took a look at my young man’s clothing and long henna hair, and began to give me a hard time. I took my eye off the street, fixed him with a condescending stare, and spoke down my nose in my most imperious of plummy tones.
“My good man, I should inform you that you are speaking to Margaret Farthingale Hall. Lady Margaret Hall. What you see before you is the tail end of a long and not terribly amusing party that Jeffie Norton—the American film star?—held yesterday night. A costume party, as you can see. I suppose I ought to be gratified that you find my costume so intriguing, but I am beginning to find the game just the least bit tedious, and I fear the costume is proving less exotic than I had anticipated. My escort for the evening, when last I saw him, had the more interesting costume, a nineties number with feathers and sequins—too, too Folies Bergère, don’t you know? You haven’t seen him, I don’t suppose? No, that’s too much to hope for. Knowing him, he is waiting around the corner until you leave. He’s a dear boy, but so conservative without champagne to keep up his nerve. So, if you’ll just run along, I shall see if I can coax him out of the woodwork.” I turned a dismissive back.
An older constable might well have persisted, but I had intimidated this one into believing the voice and the attitude rather than the clothing, and after issuing a stern warning, he left me to my vigil.
After ten minutes, I was beginning to wonder how long my constable’s rounds took him. After fifteen, Holmes’ head appeared unexpectedly, protruding from the doorway into which Margery had gone. I hurried forward and slipped inside.
There was a body just inside the door, bound and gagged.
“The only guard?” I whispered.
“There was another at the back. Help me carry this one out of the way.”
I picked up his feet, then nearly dropped him as I saw his features.
“Holmes, this was the other man from the house in Essex.”
“Good,” was his only remark; but he showed no gentleness when we dumped the body in an adjoining office room.
“She’s upstairs,” Holmes whispered. “Second floor, by the sound of it. The place seems almost deserted.”
“Perhaps they’ve all gone to church.”
The building was a warehouse, which seemed to contain little but great coils of rope and bales of rag. Two lorries stood near the gates, but as a business, it seemed none too prosperous. There were voices coming from upstairs, wordless but angry. As we went carefully up, they sorted themselves out into a man’s rumble and a woman’s shrill, and closer still, I knew them both. The woman was Margery, although I’d never heard her sound like this. The male voice was that of Claude Franklin: my captor; Margery’s husband.
I flushed, hearing him, and felt abruptly how very ill and tired I was. I must have sagged slightly, because Holmes’ hand was on my elbow.
“Take the revolver,” he said, holding the thing out to me. I reached for it automatically, then pushed it back into his hand.
“You keep it, Holmes,” I whispered. “I’d shoot my own foot.”
He slid it back under his belt and we began to creep up the stairs until we were on a level with the arguing voices. They didn’t hear any of the creaks the old stairs made, and there seemed to be no other people in the building.
“—could you possibly think I wouldn’t find out, Claude?” Margery was saying. “I suppose I’ve been incredibly stupid, but when I heard Friday that Mary was held captive, and then her will— That’s why you’ve been away, all this time, isn’t it? Were you planning on… Would you actually have killed her? For her money?” Her voice rose with incredulity.