A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [38]
When she had gone, he seemed to forget my presence. He started to pace again, smoking furiously and stopping occasionally at the window to stare out into the dark garden. He was thin, a good stone less than when the suit was made (an exquisite suit, in need of cleaning), and something in his nervous hands reminded me of Holmes, and of Holmes’ lovely lost son. The hands of this young man trembled slightly, though, as Holmes’ never did, and the nails were unkempt. The handkerchief he pulled from a pocket was little better. He blew his nose and wiped his watering eyes, lit another cigarette, paced around the room, and ended up at the black window again, where I could see his reflection in the glass. (Sure sign of a disturbed household, I thought irrelevantly: curtains that remained drawn back after darkness has fallen.) He yawned hugely and looked for a long minute at his ghostly face in the glass before his hand came up and covered his eyes. His shoulders drooped, and I could see the moment of helpless capitulation come over him. I rose swiftly and moved two steps to stand, if only briefly, between him and the door, and when he turned around, he saw me and dropped his cigarette in surprise. He bent quickly to retrieve it and rub the sparks from the pile, and when he came up, the terrible brightness was back in place.
“Dreadfully sorry, old thing, you were so quiet—stupid of me, I forgot you were there. Awfully rude, I know. I’m not normally quite such a bounder—”
A bell rang. It cut off his drivel; it delayed my need to acknowledge that I had no right to keep him from his needle. Slow footsteps went down the corridor, the front door opened, and the heavy wood of the library door was pierced by the voice of a man, clear, high, and utterly unmistakable.
“Why, if it isn’t Edmund Marshall. How are you, my good man?”
“Mr—Mr Holmes! Well, I never. It’s been…”
“Thirteen years, yes. Is there a Miss Mary Russell here?”
“Yes, sir. She’s in the library with Mr—with Lieutenant Fitzwarren.”
The object of this sentence was frozen in the attitude of a hound listening for the faint trace of a horn. Or perhaps, rather, the fox at the sound of distant baying.
“Excellent. Here, take my stick, too, Marshall. This door, I believe?”
He was in the doorway, and his eyes immediately took in my position in the room and Miles Fitzwarren’s physical and mental state—as well as the curtains, my hemline, and the chess pieces on the fireside table, knowing him.
He was wearing the dress of the natives, in this case a raven black suit of a slightly old-fashioned but beautifully tailored cut, with a sharp white collar and just the edge of brilliant cuff peeking out at the sleeve. Judging from the indentation in his hair, he had given Marshall a silk top hat. His trouser creases were like razors, his shoes mirrors, and he moved confidently into the opulent library with the politely bored attitude of a potential but unenthusiastic buyer. I subsided into a chair. He shot me an approving glance and strolled nonchalantly over to the chessboard.
“I must have just missed you twice this afternoon, Russell,” he commented, reaching down to move a black knight. “First at your club and then at the home of Miss Beaconsfield, where a riot was just in the process of being quelled by a highly competent young Belgian lady. She told me in her tongue where you had gone.” He pursed his lips and shifted a white bishop three spaces. “Your Miss Beaconsfield appears to have some… interesting friends.” Another pause while he moved the black king to the side, and then he seemed to tire of it. He clasped his hands behind his back and continued around the room, his eyes examining the rows of leather-bound spines. At the window, his gaze dropped to the carpet, and he put out his left hand and began to run one finger slowly along the pleated back of the long maroon leather settee, then under the fringe of the lamp shade, across