A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [68]
The morning paper I bought outside the station had a small notice about Veronica’s accident on a back page. I sat reading my way towards the front, noting the reports from the hunting field (the Prince of Wales had been out with the Warwickshire, and they’d taken three foxes. Brought from a zoo and loosed that morning, I thought sourly). A “Jurywomen’s First Murder Trial” would see those good pioneers in the judicial world locked up for the night, alongside the male jurors, in an hotel in Aylesbury. Someone was using a live relic of the Boer War as a doorstop. The drawing of a light frock with an unlikely hat was entitled “Tailor-made for the Riviera.” I had passed on to the ever-cryptic and often sinister messages of the agony column before a heavy and unpleasantly odorous body dropped beside me. I shook the paper in indignation and slid away, burying my face more deeply into its pages.
“You’re back sooner than you thought, Holmes. Why aren’t you in Marseilles?”
“Even I cannot productively interview dead men, Russell. Someone reached the three witnesses before I did.”
I tried to look at him around my newspaper, which was fluttering uncontrollably in the breeze. I shook it upright in irritation.
“Is this subterfuge necessary, Holmes? I feel a fool. Next thing, we’ll be establishing passwords.”
“Perhaps it is not, but earlier there was a watcher at the hospital. He followed Miles Fitzwarren’s taxi—don’t drop the paper, for pity’s sake!—so we shall have to move him, as well.” Holmes’ voice was slurred—from wearing a set of toothcaps, no doubt—and then became more so as he bit into a sandwich (bacon, from the smell of it—how could he chew bacon with false teeth?). “Miss Beaconsfield will be safe for a few days, but Fitzwarren and I shall go to her parents and convince them that she needs to be put into private care. That ought to clear the decks for action.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Go back to the Temple. The answer is there.”
“What about the police?”
“What about them?”
“Shouldn’t they be notified?”
“What an admirable citizen you can be,” remarked the filthy, unshaven man beside me, around a mouthful of sandwich. “By all means, do go visit your friend Inspector Lestrade. He’d be terribly interested.”
“For goodness sake, Holmes, be serious.”
“You may be right,” he said, to my astonishment. “Miss Beaconsfield cannot be moved for at least three or four days, and Watson will be wearing a bit thin by then. May as well put the official force at her bedside. One could only wish the Met weren’t so confoundedly possessive about their crimes. They’ll be very uncooperative when we refuse to divulge where we’ve spirited her away to. Still, it’s no crime to aid a victim or investigate a church, not yet.”
“What about Miles—” I started to ask, but was interrupted by a loud, meaty voice standing over us.
“Awlright, you,” said the constable, “these benches aren’t put here for you to eat your breakfast on. If you’re not goin’ in to buy a ticket, move along.” Holmes obediently dropped the remainder of his sandwich into an unspeakable pocket, turned and lifted his hat to me (although I was still wearing my mud-encrusted walking gear), and shambled off to his cart. The PC turned his attention on me, and I hastily folded my newspaper around the thick envelope Holmes had slipped onto the bench, put it into my pocket, and joined the queue of early-morning workgoers to buy my ticket.
* * *
THIRTEEN
Friday, 14 January
Women have in themselves a tickling and study of vainglory.
—John Chrysostom
« ^ »
At the cost of an apologetic smile and some feeble explanations, I achieved a room at the Vicissitude, and immediately the door was locked behind me, I took out the envelope Holmes had slipped me and spread it out