A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [32]
“What else did he say? Mr Fitzwarren, that is.”
“Major. Just that she’d been killed and that his wife—Miles and Iris’s mother—was under heavy sedation and wanted Miles. They had only the two,” she added, and sighed into her untouched salad.
“Nothing else?”
“No. I told him I’d call later today, but he said I ought to telephone first, to see how Mrs Fitzwarren was feeling.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I dressed and went to the Temple. I thought Margery ought to know, and I… I suppose I hoped she might tell me what to do. I wasn’t thinking very clearly.”
“Did she?”
“She wasn’t in when I first arrived, so I went into the chapel for some quiet. She came in after a while, and I told her. She listened in that marvellous way of hers, and she told me to pray while she made some telephone calls. She brought together the Inner Circle, most of them, and reached a friend of hers at the Clarion, who gave her the news about where and when Iris had been found and how she’d been killed.”
I interrupted briskly before the graphic remembrance could hit her. “Do you want to telephone the Fitzwarrens now and ask if they want to see you?”
“Yes, perhaps I ought to now. I get on well with Mrs Fitzwarren. I think she might like me to come.”
She went off to Tonio’s telephone while I paid the bill. When she returned, she was pale but composed.
“Yes, I’ll go there now.”
“Any sign of Miles?”
“None.”
“How long has he been missing? Do you know?”
“Two or three days, I think. The major is furious.”
Furious rather than worried, I noted, but I did not point it out. She had quite enough on her plate without that.
Tonio ushered us out the door and personally whistled up a cab. Veronica gave the driver the address and got in, and I leant on the door.
“I’ll send you those clothes I borrowed,” I suggested.
“The clothes? Oh, yes, those. There’s no hurry; they’re just part of the whatnot I keep for people to use. My families, you know.”
“When are you seeing Margery Childe again?” I asked.
“Tonight or tomorrow, I suppose. It depends on the Fitzwarrens. Oh, that reminds me—she said to tell you she’d like to talk with you again, when you’re free.”
“Tell her I’ll look forward to it.”
“If you’re still in town in a day or two, would you ring me?” She shuffled through her bag for a pencil and wrote two numbers on the back of a receipt from an antiquarian booksellers’. “I’ll either be at home—the top number—or at the Fitzwarrens. Or at the Temple.” She wrote down a third number, then gave me the paper.
“Good-bye for now, Mary. Thank you for everything.”
“I’ll see you soon, Ronnie. I hope it goes well. Oh, and Ronnie? Sorry.” This last was to the taxi driver, who had slid the engine into gear and had to halt again. “Don’t say anything about my friendship with Mr Holmes, please. It’s a bother when people want to know all about him, so I don’t tell them at first. All right? Thanks. ’Bye now.”
I stepped back and slapped the roof, and the cab immediately slithered its way into the traffic. Veronica’s chin was up, and I could not help but wonder how the Fitzwarrens would feel if they realised that they had just joined the ranks of the downtrodden unfortunates to whom Lady Veronica Beaconsfield ministered.
As I stood on the pavement, unaware of the rain, unconscious of the flow of people—faceless figures with dull, sodden coats, dark hats, and dripping black umbrellas—and the dingy buildings that hunched their shoulders over the noisy street, a second cab swerved dangerously across the wet road to halt at my feet. I obediently climbed in and sat, meditating on the oddity that Veronica had asked my help for an impossible task, that of breaking her lover’s addiction, but not for the relatively straightforward problem of finding him, until the driver turned a face of exaggerated patience to me through the glass.
“Paddington,” I mouthed automatically. Dear God, I must get away from this city before I suffocated from her complexities. Even before this latest blow, I had felt