Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [104]
I was already on my feet and dropping my table napkin on my chair. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel,” I told him, and slipped out of the door while the trio was still crossing the street.
My own three-star luncheon was a baguette and some cheese in a park, feeding the crumbs to the pigeons. I then went into a few shops to add to my meagre possessions. Back in the hotel, with nothing at hand but the Testament, I had just reached the Book of Romans, and was struggling with Paul’s arguments concerning justification by faith, when a key scraped in the lock of the next room. I lowered my book and waited. Holmes popped through the shared door.
“On your feet, Russell. The lady’s decided that she was indiscreet, that the wicked English, being capable of anything, could have stooped to subverting the priesthood to prise her address out of her. She and the boy will take the train today; the good monsieur, about whom I know only that he calls himself Tony, will turn the tables and lie in wait for the priest, in order to follow him to Lyons on the afternoon train tomorrow.”
I burst into laughter at the convoluted plot. “He didn’t suspect the priest of being anything but?”
“Apparently not. Nor has it entered their heads that a person in a cassock may smile and smile and be a woman. Their innocence is, I have to say, both charming and encouraging.”
“What time is the train?”
He glanced at his pocket-watch. “You have twenty-three minutes to reach the station.”
I handed him the Testament and began throwing off one set of clothing and pulling on another, pinning my hair to support my new hat, dabbing on powder, colouring my lips, and generally changing into another woman. The cassock, men’s shoes, heavy spectacles, and the rest of that persona were already in the valise I had brought here. My other clothing, English and French, went into my newly purchased leather suit-case. I turned my overcoat so the plain cloth was inside and the fur without, and dropped it nonchalantly over my shoulders. Holmes copied the address Terèse Hughenfort had given him and slipped it into my handbag along with a city map he’d picked up somewhere.
“Where shall I meet you?” I asked him.
“Take a room at the Hôtel Carlton. I’ll find you there. And as an alternate, at noon in the new basilica. Now, be off.”
I had no trouble getting a ticket to Lyons, taking my seat in first class, and gazing out of the windows until Mme Hughenfort appeared, struggling with luggage and a foot-dragging son. Neither, I would guess, was happy to have their Parisian holiday cut short.
They sat in the second-class cars. Which was fine with me; all I intended to do was follow them, with luck to the address I had in my bag, and watch to see where they went next. I suspected they would merely gather a few things and retreat to a friend’s house until Monsieur Tony caught them up, but it would be best if we did not lose them until we were certain.
When we were under way, I unfolded the map of Lyons that Holmes had put into my bag and located the address, then that of the hotel, and finally the tourist landmarks thoughtfully noted by the mapmaker. Would she believe the two priests intended to be on the next day’s train? Or would she go straight to a safe place? I decided she would go home first. Else why go to Lyons at all, if outright disappearance was the goal? I did not think she was suspicious enough to panic, merely not to be at home when the two priests rang her bell. She would, no doubt, count on the ungentlemanly Tony to follow the scoundrels to their own lair and put the fear of a vengeful God into them. My mind’s eye was taken up for a moment by the scene of Holmes in soutane and clouded spectacles blithely picking his way across the bustling gare while the prosperous and swarthy Monsieur Tony tip-toed along behind the pillars to keep him in view, taking up a hard third-class bench and settling in behind a newspaper so as never to take his eye off the dubious priest.
The vision faded, and I bent over the cartography of Lyons.
At the gare in Lyons,