A Soul of Steel (15 page)

“Speak for your own ancestors,” I responded tartly.

“Speaking of ancestors,” she added idly, “do you think, Nell, that the Dr. Watson who tended Mr. Stanhope at the battle of Maiwand could be ‘our’ Dr. Watson?”

My hands flew to my face. “Oh! I had forgotten in all the, the... excitement. I devoutly hope not.”

“What Watson is this?” Godfrey asked.

I sighed. “I saw it last night when Irene looked as satisfied as Lucifer with fresh cream on his whiskers. Your wife cannot resist pursuing the unlikely, Godfrey. A Dr. Watson apparently is an associate of
the
man, but he is certainly not ‘ours.’ I cannot even be sure of ever having seen this person.”

“So you swore not many days ago in another case,” Irene put in wickedly, “and were proven spectacularly wrong.”

“The
man?” Godfrey sounded confused and a trifle worried.

“Sherlock Holmes,” I said grimly.

Irene allowed me to instruct Godfrey on another aspect involving the London detective: that a Dr. Watson was listed in an early-’eighties
Telegraph
agony column along with the address, 221 B Baker Street. That a mortally ill American murderer, Jefferson Hope, held the reins during Irene’s and my first hansom ride together.

After Hope collapsed and regaled us with a tale of perfidy and revenge, he gave Irene a simple wedding band that he had lost and recently reclaimed from this Dr. Watson at the Baker Street address, the residence of Sherlock Holmes.

To this very address, Irene had followed the detective a year and a half earlier before fleeing England with Godfrey.

Godfrey frowned. “The early ’eighties? Surely this Dr. Watson established his own household and practice years ago.

Irene leaped to the defense of her notion. “What of the man who accompanied the disguised detective back to Baker Street from Briony Lodge only eighteen months ago?”

“Have you ever seen Dr. Watson?” Godfrey riposted.

“No, but Nell may have!” They looked expectantly at me, Irene hoping for confirmation, Godfrey, like myself, hoping for discouragement.

I shook my head. “A third man accompanied Sherlock Holmes and the King of Bohemia to Briony Lodge when only I remained behind in the guise of an elderly housekeeper, but he could have been anybody. We have never seen more than his title and surname. I agree with Godfrey. To hunt for a Dr. Watson in England is to pursue a myriad of needles through an island haystack; we shall only prick ourselves. To suspect that the same Dr. Watson who tended Quentin nearly a decade ago in Afghanistan is also a henchman of Sherlock Holmes is utter madness!”

Irene’s fingers mutely, and mutinously, drummed the linen tablecloth. Before she could argue, Sophie returned, still bearing the breakfast tray.

“Monsieur is not in his room.”

“Not in his room?” Irene half rose. “But that is... dangerous.” Sophie’s look of surprise forced her to perform a verbal minuet. “I mean that is dangerous—unwise—for his fragile state of health, of course. He was not to be found in the retiring room?”

“I did not investigate, Madame. I heard no sound above stairs.” Sophie set down her tray on the wooden table with an emphatic dank. There are no people like the French for resenting unrewarded effort.

“The gentleman is absent. See for yourselves.” Sophie’s elaborate intonation of “gentleman” made plain her own judgment of our houseguest.

“Impossible.” I, too, rose from my seat. “Quentin would never depart without the proprieties.”

Godfrey stood last. “Quentin?”

Irene intervened as smoothly as an actress delivering a line. “Apparently the only thing of interest that Nell learned from our guest last night was his preference to be addressed by his middle name. ‘A rose by any other name,’ et cetera. Now we may not have a guest to address by any appellation whatsoever. We had best see for ourselves.”

And so I found myself following my companions upstairs in pursuit of a meeting that I would have given anything to avoid but an hour before.

Sophie had been regrettably correct. The Stanhope bedchamber was empty; so was the bathing room tucked so cozily under the eaves. We returned to his chamber in bewilderment.

“Perhaps he is in the garden—” I went to the window.

The casement was ajar; birds peeped contentedly under the eaves. The garden radiated no mysterious, misty aura in broad daylight. It seemed cold and aloof, the usual Gallic grid of walks and flower beds. How I longed for the friendly tangle of an English garden—for a vista that was not foreign!

“No.” Irene sounded quite definite, and utterly serious. “He understood the danger of exposing himself.”

“Then why would he leave?” I demanded, whirling on her.

“You must tell me.”

“I?”

“You were the last to see him.”

I stared at her, then at Godfrey’s innocently puzzled face, his silver-gray eyes darkened to charcoal in the chamber’s dimness. I spun again to face the garden. Spears of hyacinth bowed in the breeze. Purple, orange and blue shades of heliotrope, lily, and what we English call bachelor’s button ran together like flooded watercolors before my eyes. I could not see clearly, and could not say why.

“My dear Nell—” I heard the firm forward step of Godfrey’s shoe.

“Godfrey, please! Stay back.”

“Let us examine the chamber,” Irene put in hastily, and I blessed her for that.

Behind me came the squeak of wardrobe hinges, the rustle of bedclothes. I almost laughed to think of Irene hunting under the bed for her quarry. Yet laughter seemed an alien response when all 1 could see were the blurred flowers melting into a potpourri of waxen blots.

“Here are my clothes,” Godfrey announced from the direction of the wardrobe. “He has taken nothing.”

“Only the odd garb he wore when we found him,” Irene added. “And here—look!”

I almost turned but did not dare.

“In this dish upon the bureau. His medal.”

Godfrey went over to examine it. “He must have forgotten it.”

“Forgotten it?” Irene demanded skeptically. “With even the bedclothes straightened? No, our visitor has left this room too tidy to have overlooked anything. His military training has not forsaken him. Perhaps he left the medal as a token.”

I could sense her face and voice turning to me.

Their talk, the matter at hand, drifted toward me through layers of muffling curtains. At this window less than twelve hours before I had stood with our departed guest. At this window not twelve hours before—

“Nell.” Irene’s clear stage voice penetrated my mental miasma. “What do
you
think? What possible reason would Stan have to vanish like this, without a word?”

“I would not presume to say, as I would not presume to still call him ‘Stan.’ “

“Mr. Stanhope, then,” Irene said impatiently. “Something has caused him to bolt. What?”

I whirled on her, goaded beyond the wisdom to resist facing them, and facing the empty room. “Not I!”

Godfrey stepped forward, looking grave and concerned as well as puzzled. I could never resist Godfrey when he insisted on being sincere. I backed away, into the window.

“My dear Nell,” Godfrey said, “what is the matter?”

“Mr. Stanhope,” Irene interjected before I could answer, “expressed a small tenderness toward her last night.”

Godfrey stopped moving. “What kind of small tenderness?”

“Er, in the nature of a kiss.”

“Nature of a kiss?”

I could stand this speculation no more. “Godfrey, must you repeat everything Irene says? If I had wanted two parrots I would have acquired another.”

“Is what Irene says true? He took a liberty?”

“Yes—and no! It does not matter. It was nothing. Obviously such a trifle would have naught to do with his disappearance. Perhaps he has been—kidnapped.”

“Without a struggle?” Irene’s skepticism was gentle but unavoidable. “Leaving his borrowed clothing neatly hung and his bedclothes drawn up? A commendably cooperative kidnapping victim. No, I am sorry, Nell. Stan has left of his own free will, and you are the only person who can possibly tell us why.”

“Must you call him that?”

“He asked us to,” she reminded me. “Why do you object to the nickname so much?”

“It... denies his past, his place. It is something rude soldiers would use.”

“He was a soldier,” Godfrey put in.

“An officer,” I corrected, “and a gentleman. I am the only one here who knows that for a certainty.”

“You hold him to more than he claims for himself,” Irene pointed out. “Is that why he left?”

“It has nothing to do with me!”

“Yet you two spoke last night, and there passed between you more than ordinary chitchat, however vague you are about the particulars. Something you said, that happened, must have persuaded him to leave—quickly, without farewell. I agree with you, Nell, your Mr. Stanhope is a gentleman still. He would never have departed without expressing his gratitude unless he felt compelled. Perhaps to save us—you— from himself,” she speculated. “You must tell us what you said.”

“I said very little! He prattled on, about the garden, about my representing England to him. And then he said that he had always expected me to be minding some charge, to be a governess. And when I explained how I had become a typewriter-girl, he behaved as if this were a kind of achievement and said that I had shown him that his memories of home had been mistaken. That we all had changed, though, of course, I had not.... He must have been feverish, though the moonlight from the window was as cool as ice water. He did ask if I judged him, which I never do. ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’ And the last thing he said, the very last thing was so odd. I told him that he did not have my ill opinion. He said that then there was no one he could not face—but surely I am of no consequence to him! Why would he say such a thing? Why would he
do
such a thing?”

“What thing, Nell?” Godfrey asked.

I paused, tangled in conflicting thoughts and emotions. And then I did the unforgivable. I lied. Baldly. “Why... leave without a word. It is most impolite.”

“A soldier cannot always be expected to be polite,” Irene said with a smile. “And it is obvious that matters deeper than mere death threats trouble Mr. Stanhope.”

A sudden wave of guilt engulfed me. “I—I must have behaved badly. I drove him to flee. What I said... I do not even remember what I said.”

The strain of the long, wakeful night, of sitting up in a linen closet, of explaining what to me was still inexplicable, caught up with me in a gallop. I put a hand to my surprised mouth too late to smother a hiccough, or a sob. I was horrified to find my demeanor melting like wax, and hid my face in my hands before anyone should see it cracking.

A silence held, during which I heard the snap of Godfrey’s long stride toward me. Then a hand was patting my shoulder and another stroking my hair and I was held close against his maroon satin shoulder as he murmured, “There, there.”

I felt as I had at some long-forgotten childhood crisis, when I’d sought refuge in my father’s gentle embrace, and heard those heartbroken sobs echoing and felt the saltwater leaking through the tight barrier of my fingers.

“We will find him, Nell,” Godfrey promised in tones that thundered with resolve. “We will find him and demand an explanation, and if it does not satisfy me, I will thrash the bounder within an inch of his life.”

“Should he still possess a life,” Irene broke in coolly, “after facing assassin’s bullets and lethal hatpins. Yes, we will find him. He must at the least explain his shocking lack of manners in the face of hospitality. And he has managed to intrigue me.

“There!” Godfrey bent toward me with a smile. “Woe to the man who intrigues Irene and runs away. She is a merciless hound on the trail and will not stop until she has her answers.”

I blinked through my sopping eyelashes at my two friends. How could I tell them that learning anything more of Quentin Stanhope and his astonishing affairs was the last thing on earth that I wished?!

Chapter Twelve

SAVING SARAH’S ASP

We began
our search where the man had fallen at our very feet but two days before, in the ponderous shadow of Notre Dame.

Irene visited the surrounding cafés, the greengrocers’ stands, the fruit dispensers at their carts, her fluid French cascading with descriptions of the
“Monsieur Exotique”
and the Turkish trousers and loose jacket he wore.
“Très basane et très brunet,”
she would say, passing her hands over her face to indicate his bronzed aspect and his beard. Godfrey, presumably, was performing the same mimes in his designated territory, the Left Bank.

I was a mute witness, fascinated by Irene’s endless energy. Each waiter and street sweeper was pounced upon as if he commanded the source of the Lost Chord. At every repetition, the description expanded, requiring more gestures, more discussion.
“Costume Egyptien,”
she would say.
“Nationalité, Anglais.”

At this last attribution, I endeavored to look totally indifferent to the inquiry. The French already displayed ample
hauteur
toward the English; I had no wish to encourage their unfounded prejudices by claiming this outré person Irene described as one of my own kind.