A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [92]
—John Knox
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Most of the passengers left the train in Reading. We sat for a few minutes in the station, carriage doors opening and closing several times, and then the train gave a shudder and we started up. I settled back with my book, eyelids heavy, although I was aware of a not-unpleasant blend of anticipation and apprehension as Friday’s public presentation approached.
Ever since I had met Margery Childe, I had been torn, mentally and physically, and above all spiritually, between the London that she shared with Holmes and my own comfortable Oxford. For nearly four weeks, I seemed to have shuttled back and forth, in my mind and on this train, increasingly aware that a choice was being prepared for me to make. Now, however, whether because of the assertiveness I had shown to Holmes or the irritation I had felt with Margery, I felt considerably distanced from the problems the two of them represented. As the miles clicked by, I even began to reflect that, actually, one could almost look on the entire period since Christmas as a sort of holiday, an interesting and piquant interlude, possessed of an intellectual challenge, picturesque natives, a murder for spice, and the whole business tied up neatly before it threatened to trespass onto real life. I had renewed an old friendship and now cherished the addition of Margery Childe to my circle of acquaintances. Even the prickly state of affairs with Holmes had shown signs that the prickles were losing their more threatening points. Given time, and perhaps distance, that friendship might yet be maintained.
However, it was finished now—intoxicating feminists, doers of Good Deeds, and tutors with disturbingly male characteristics—an episode to be pulled out and remembered with fond amusement in the distant future. But now, Friday: a clear goal, known obstacles, all opponents out in the open, a hard challenge, but one I had been preparing myself for since I entered Oxford at the age of seventeen. Margery Childe, Veronica Beaconsfield, Miles Fitzwarren, and Sherlock Holmes were in a box labelled LONDON, and this short train journey should serve to close the top on it and place it, albeit temporarily, on a shelf.
Truly, honestly, I must never think these things. .
Hubris was shattered without warning when my compartment door was calmly opened by a medium-sized man wearing a tweed ulster and an obviously false black beard, a disguise that effectively concealed the lower half of his face but could not hide the eyes. I did not need the gun barrel pointed at my chest to tell me what the man was, for I had seen such eyes before: This was a killer. Worse, there was intelligence there, as well as a distinct gleam of liquid pleasure. I sat very still. He closed the door behind him.
“Miss Russell,” he said, very businesslike. “You have two choices: I can shoot you here and now, or you can swallow a mixture I have with me and become my prisoner for a few days. Obviously, the fact that I have not already used my gun indicates that I prefer the latter; bullets are unimaginative and do distressing things to human flesh, and the noise they make increases my personal risk of capture. That may appeal to you, but I assure you that you will be in no condition to feel satisfaction at my arrest. I suggest you choose the sleeping draught.”
The unreality of his entrance and the melodrama of his words robbed me of speech. I sat gaping at him for a long minute before I found my tongue.
“Who are you?”
“If I told you that, Miss Russell, I could hardly let you free again.”
“Free me? I should drink your poison quietly and save you the trouble?”
“You choose the bullet, then? So very final, that choice. No chance of escape, of subverting or overcoming your gaolers, of changing my mind.” He cocked the gun.
“No. Wait.” It is very difficult to think with the end of a revolver in one’s face. He was, quite clearly, a thug, with a heavy veneer