A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [27]
“Come now, Holmes, your rheumatism only bothers you when it’s convenient. Besides, you hadn’t been there all that long.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked, a spark of amusement in his grey eyes.
“The coat was damp, but the water was on the surface,” I answered him unnecessarily. “If you had been in the doorway for very long, the water would not have shaken out so easily.” He twitched his lips in appreciation and approval, and it occurred to me that since the term began, I had been either absent or preoccupied. Had he missed our exchanges, too? It was not something I could ask. I smiled back at him. “You might have saved your bones the discomfort by ringing the bell and asking the watchman to give me a message.”
“And risk disturbing you at a case?” He sounded shocked, which meant he was making a mild jest.
“There’s no case here—I’m sorry to disappoint you, Holmes. Nothing but my own peculiar interest in things theological. And yet, if you can set aside your instinctive response to these irrational matters, I should like your reaction.”
“That is what you were coming to see me about?”
“In part, yes.”
“Very well, let me get my pipe and I shall prepare myself to listen.” To my amusement, in this place, his pipes were kept in a pipe rack, his tobacco not in a Persian slipper or a biscuit tin or beneath the nonexistent roots of an artificial aspidistra, but in a pouch, and his matches in a silver matchbox. What-ever would Watson say—or Mrs Hudson?
“I shall begin with Veronica Beaconsfield, rather than Margery Childe, not only because she led me into contact with Miss Childe but because she can be taken as the foundation upon which Miss Childe’s movement is being built. Without Ronnie, and women like her, there would be no Margery Childe.”
I went over my day, beginning with seeing Veronica’s face through the steamed-up window and ending with being let out into the rain by the night watchman, with considerable attention to detail, seeking to clarify my own thoughts as well as present the history of the matter to Holmes. I told him about Veronica’s charitable deeds and her lost lover, about Margery Childe’s magnetic speaking persona and her interaction with the women who came to her for comfort and strength. I was honest about my own response to the woman, both the attraction and the unthinking, almost visceral aversion to the control she held over her listeners, a reaction which had, in turn, prompted her finally to drop the pretence and give to me, a stranger, what was to all appearances her honest, unadorned self.
It was an indication of the similarity of our minds, or perhaps of the extent to which he had trained me in his techniques, that he did not interrupt me for clarifications during the hour I spoke. He refilled his pipe once and our glasses three times, but he made no remark aside from the occasional grunt and the noises of his pipe. When I finished and glanced at my watch, I was amazed to see that it was after 3:00 a.m.
“You are tired perhaps, Russell?” he asked, his eyes closed.
“Not really. I slept most of the day. Perhaps I’ll have a brief nap before meeting Veronica for lunch.”
“What is it you want of me, Russell? I agree this is all very interesting, from the point of view of the human mind, but why bring it to me?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I thought that telling it to you might help me to clarify it in my own mind. It’s all so— Why are you laughing?”
“At myself, Russell, at a voice from the past.” He chuckled. “I used to say the same thing to Watson.”
“Oh. Well, the parallel is not exact, because I truly do want your opinion, as a judge