Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [106]
“Hôtel Carlton,” I said to the driver. He swivelled around to stare at me, at this crowning instruction to the day’s fare, but for once I couldn’t be bothered coming up with a story.
He took me to the Carlton, accepted my money, and sped off to see what he could salvage of his lunch hour, shaking his head at the mad ways of foreigners.
Had I been in London, my next step would have been to discover who owned the building in which Mme Hughenfort had taken shelter. In this bastion of Gallic officialdom, however, it was a task I thought I would leave to Holmes, who was not only male but spoke better French than I. Instead, I thought I might go back to the woman’s neighborhood and show some photographs.
After the long lunch-time closure.
Besides which, I was growing quite fond of my brasserie’s fare.
Following lunch, with my coat still turned to show honest cloth and the dumpiest of hats on my head, I took out the envelope of family photographs Alistair had given me and began to work my way up one side of the street and down the other. My basic story was that I was a second cousin of Mme Hughenfort, but the embroidery I tacked on to that thin beginning varied with my audience. In the brasserie, where I started my community interrogation, there was an inheritance involved, a solid pile of francs for Mme Hughenfort if she could prove, well, “family concerns” (I let the precise nature of those concerns trail into speculation). To the good mistress of the flower stall there was a reference to a family madman, to the stout pair who ran the needlework shop a tinge of romance and scandal, and to the tobacconist a simple wager that had got complicated. And so it went, in the shops, among the neighbours. What I learnt, both through my deliberate efforts and through fortuitous accident, was most intriguing.
Her missing neighbours returned as darkness was setting in, and they contributed their own pieces to the puzzle.
Finally, as the rich odours of Lyonnais cooking crept into the evening air to mix with the damp from two rivers, I turned my steps back to the Carlton, where I was given, along with my key, the news that my husband had arrived. I held my breath as I inserted the key in the lock, knowing full well that with Holmes, arrival did not necessarily mean presence. But when I flung open the door, he was there, damp from the bath and working to get the cuff-links through his shirt. He looked up in surprise at my abrupt entrance, his thinning hair still tousled from the towel and giving him an absurdly boyish look. I laughed aloud in sheer pleasure: the perfect end to a satisfying day.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Say one thing for Holmes: Pompous he may occasionally be, but he does understand the need for physical expression when high spirits erupt, and he accepted my flinging myself into his arms and whirling around the room in a vigorous waltz with nary a repressive grumble. He even hummed an accompaniment for half a dozen twirls until I released him and subsided into a chair to loose my coat and free my tired feet.
“You have had a successful day, I perceive,” he commented.
“I know all about Madame Hughenfort and young Thomas,” I announced grandly.
“All?” he said, one eyebrow raised.
I waved away his skepticism. “All of importance. But if I begin now we won’t eat until ten o’clock, and considering the length of French meals, we shall still be at table when the café au lait appears on the bars.”
I had read rightly the sign of his crisp clean shirt: He, too, was ready to dine.
“An ascetic priest limits himself to thin soup and a prayer at midday,” he commented. I turned to the dressing-table to do my hair, and met his eyes in the glass.
“Did M Tony follow