A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [58]
“Not an infatuated gentleman admirer?”
Extraordinary, how sensitive I was to the nuances of his suggestion. Or was he laying it on heavily for some reason?
“If so, he’s very retiring. I’ve heard no rumours of her love life, aside from a gentleman in France.”
“Yet she does not sound exactly aescetic.”
“Hardly.”
“Do you wish me to set Mycroft on the lady?”
“I think not yet,” I decided after a moment of reflection. “Perhaps later, after the twenty-eighth.”
“Ah yes, your great presentation. How does it progress?”
“Stunningly. Though poor Duncan is having cats because it seems a—what’s the collective noun for a group of academics—a gaggle? an argument?—of American theologians are sweeping through on their way to a conference in Berlin and have announced that they will attend and have asked him to find them accommodation.”
“It sounds as though you’re being taken seriously.” As usual, Holmes unerringly picked out the central issue.
“It’s tremendously gratifying, and a great honour personally. I only hope that I feel the same when the sun comes up on the twenty-ninth.”
“What about your plans until then? Are you finished with your coffee, by the way? Shall we walk? Along the Embankment? Or do you need to be back?”
“No, a walk would be lovely.” After the business of putting on coats and the rest, we resumed outside, where the mist was creating cones beneath the streetlights.
“I can’t very well go to Sussex; I’d freeze to death and either fret about how little the builders are doing or find I could not work because of their unending racket. No, the Vicissitude has a quiet reading room with three seldom-used desks. Not as good as Oxford, but I promised Duncan I’d go up every few days to placate him.”
“Why stay in London? Margery Childe?”
“Well, yes, I shall see something of her. Why the interest in my plans, Holmes?”
“I fear I shall not be available as a consultant for a few days as you wished. I had a second telegram this afternoon in addition to yours. Mycroft wants me to go to Paris for a day or two and then Marseilles. Winkling out information from some none-too-willing witnesses in a large dope-smuggling case. Have you ever noticed,” he added, “how Mycroft’s metaphors tend to concern themselves with food?”
“You wanted me to go?” I was immensely pleased, although tentative about rebuffing his offer.
“I had thought you might enjoy it.”
“I would, very much. But I can’t. I’m not going farther from Oxford than London until after the twenty-eighth. If there’s a blizzard or a rail strike, I can still walk there in time. It couldn’t wait, I suppose?”
“I fear not. Another time, then,” he said. He seemed untroubled, but was, I thought, disappointed.
“Another time, and soon. How long did you say you were to be away?”
“I shall leave Wednesday and return the following Thursday, possibly later if it gets complicated.”
“Ah,” I said, aware of a feeling of disappointment myself. “Well, perhaps I shall have something interesting for you upon your return.”
He walked me to the door of the Vicissitude, and I wondered if I had imagined the faintly wistful turn of his wrist as he tipped his hat in farewell.
The next days went according to the schedule I had given Holmes: Tuesday in London, the morning at the British Museum with an expert in Palestinian and Babylonian antiquities, the afternoon with Margery, the evening at my club; Wednesday in Oxford; Thursday morning at the Bodleian, then back to London for an early-afternoon appointment with Mr Arbuthnot, my solicitor, followed by a fitting with the elves, from which I came away laden with dressmakers’ boxes. I took them to the Vicissitude, where I found a parcel waiting for me, three books I had ordered for Margery. That I carried with me