Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [121]
His description went on, the only references to her identity or appearance so obscured by infatuation as to be useless. She was green-eyed and tall, and strong enough to lift a grown man into the ambulance, but everything else was poetry and song. One could not even be certain that Hélène was her given name and not a lover’s affectionate substitute for an unbearably ordinary, even ugly, true name.
Finding the VAD driver behind “the face that launched a thousand ships” (the young man’s rather hackneyed phrase which had made me suspicious of the woman’s true name) was going to take some doing. I thought I might know where to begin, however, and as Holmes glanced at his watch and made to go, I proposed, “Shall I take Hélène, and you the major?”
“As usual, Russell, you speak the very words on my tongue. And Simpson’s at eight to compare notes?”
I glanced down at my travel-worn dress and the gloves that badly wanted cleaning. “If we must, but I shall have to go by my flat to retrieve some clothes.”
“Give my regards to the Qs” was all he said. He, after all, should have to make a detour to one of his bolt-holes to exchange his own clothing, so I could not complain.
We took our seats on the train and spent the trip with the Hughenfort diary on our knees, but made few notes. We arrived in London, claimed the bags we’d left there, and went our separate ways.
My taxi deposited me in front of the modernistic block of flats in Bloomsbury in which I had taken a furnished suite of rooms several years before, and somehow never bothered to replace with a more permanent pied-à-terre. Or a more comfortable one—I always forgot, when I’d been away for a while, how awful the place actually was, all chrome tubes and glass. It had matched perfectly the persona I was assuming at the time of the original let, but was, I realised suddenly, a ridiculous place to maintain on the off chance I might need to act the social butterfly in the future. Too, the furniture the actual owners had chosen was beginning to look decidedly out of date. Time for a change, I thought, and dropped my bags on the floor.
A gentle knock followed by the rattle of a key in the lock told me the doorman had informed my housekeeping couple of my arrival. I greeted the Quimbys, husband and wife, and apologised for not warning them of my arrival.
“In fact,” I said, “I asked the doorman to let you be. I’m only here for a change of clothing; no need to turn up the radiators and buy milk for that.”
But Mrs Q was already unloading a picnic hamper to make tea, and I submitted to her sense of propriety.
There was hot water for a bath, and the clothes hanging in the large and ornate bedroom were free of moth and must. I sorted through them, mildly grumbling at the change in hem-lengths over the past two years, and noticed that they had been recently gone over with brush and iron. Mrs Q had to be bored, caring for a household of ghosts, but I did not know that I could do much to change that, not with this place. I couldn’t even ask how they spent their days, since both would be offended at my concern. It simply Wasn’t Done.
The next time I passed through the kitchen I put my head around the corner into the portion given over to a butler’s pantry. Q shot to his feet, a polishing cloth in one hand and one of my shoes in the other.
“Does your wife’s cousin Freddy Bell still keep his finger on London properties?” I asked him.
“Well, yes, I believe he does, mum.”
“Good. I’d like to get out of this place, set up an establishment of my own.