The Curse of Christmas (25 page)

Well! Mycroft really was
rattled. It wasn’t like him to admit to failure or express emotion.
“What dilemma?” pursued Dr Watson; who had been keenly watching the
standoff between uncle and niece; it reminded him of the power-play
between big brother and little bother – two complete shits as far
as he was concerned; and he loved them both dearly.

“You’ve read the newspapers. The
Queen has read them too. And the Princess. Everyone in England and
Europe has read them. Bertie risks becoming a permanent laughing
stock. I know he deserves it. But if this matter does not go away
soon the monarchy will be weakened, law and order…”

“Yes, yes,” she cut off crossly,
“we’ve heard it all before, Uncle Mycroft. What do you want us to
do?”

“In matters such as these a
scapegoat needs to be sacrificed. Several noble, honest, brave men
have volunteered to be named as the person in the carriage parked
outside the brothel. One princely fellow has even volunteered to
confess to the killing of Miss Quilligan, knowing full well he
would be hanged, and yet…”

“And yet,” interjected the
Countess abrasively, “they know no one will believe them. Everyone
will see through the brave and noble ploy, especially the
newspapers. They will tear the falsehood to pieces and strew the
tattered carcass of misinformation across the length and breadth of
England, nay, the Commonwealth, and the Empire. It will end in even
more disgrace for the monarchy.”

Mycroft looked pale and
embittered as he placed his hands on the balustrade and gazed
forlornly upon the effigies of noble knights, protectors of the
realm who had changed the course of English history for the better;
the barons who had forced the king to sign the Magna Carta and
ushered in a new world order.

“I’m sorry for summoning you
here this morning. There doesn’t appear to be a solution. I’m sorry
for involving you in the first place. Please accept my sincerest
apologies. Let us not waste any more time on this matter.”

They descended the spiral stairs
and without speaking began making their way to the exit when the
Countess stopped suddenly in her tracks and the two men banked into
her. The conversation during last night’s dinner kept replaying in
her head and much of it was discordant, though she couldn’t quite
put her finger on why it jarred. The General’s smugness? Freddy’s
shrewdness? The fact Moriarty pretended they hadn’t met? The Prince
Regent was a philanderer and a fool but he was not a murderer.
Someone was giving the black velvet man his orders.

“Wait! The newspapers will see
through a brave, noble, honest bunch of princely fellows but what
will they make of a foreign countess?”

Mycroft’s magisterial bushy
brows signalled his interest. “Please continue.”

“Well, I haven’t thought this
through fully, but what if Dr Watson pays a call on his newspaper
chum, Langdale Pike, and lets it slip that I was in the carriage
with Bertie. Once Agrippa writes an article all the other
newspapers will pick up the story and run with it. They won’t
bother checking facts they will simply want to trump one another
with outrageous innuendo.”

Dr Watson, who had detoured to
the door, wheeled round sharply and began shaking his head
convulsively; his ever-moderate tone was stern and forbidding. “No!
You will be compromised. No decent person will have you in their
home. You will be shunned wherever you go. The woman always comes
off badly in these affairs.” He looked earnestly, fearfully,
daringly, at Mycroft. “You cannot give approval to this lunatic
scheme. It will do you no credit. It is not worthy of you.”

At his wit’s end, Mycroft was
torn between lunatic approval and the danger of disapproval. He
understood the repercussions for the Countess. Such a scandal would
follow her to the grave. But she was not a naive debutante come to
London for the season in the hope of snaring a title. She already
had one. She was fiercely intelligent and uncompromisingly
fearless. He could see the enterprising Adler woman in her. And
Sherlock too. His little brother, for all his faults, and there
were many, had never been a coward or a fool.

“What if it wasn’t an illicit
assignation?” she improvised, thinking on her feet.

Dr Watson felt alarmed; a
fatalistic wave of nausea swept over him; it threatened to engulf
him and sweep her out of his life for good. He could no longer deny
how much he enjoyed her companionship, how much he relished
discussing cases and solving crimes, not for their own sake, as
Sherlock did, drawing succour from ratiocination, but for the fact
they gave his life meaning and purpose and a sense of adventure,
yes, adventure, dammit!

“No one will believe it to be
anything but a big fat lie. What are you suggesting? A midnight
tête a tête? A philosophical debate? A political discussion? In
Southwark! Inside a carriage! Never! You will never pull it off! I
will not be party to any part of it! In fact, I will denounce it! I
will expose it!”

“What if you tell Langdale
-”

“I said NO!” thundered Dr
Watson, oblivious to the way his voice reverberated in the
sepulchral mausoleum which acted as an auditorium for his anger,
his terror, his turmoil.

“Listen to me, that’s all I ask,
just listen!” Her free-thinking brain was now fully engaged and she
could see the smaller details inside the bigger picture. “What if
you tell Langdale Pike I arranged for the Prince Regent to meet
Miss Quilligan subsequent to the violence at the rally? There is an
existing connection between me, Miss Quilligan and the Prince
Regent. She was the secretary of the Southwark Suffragettes. What
would be more natural than meeting in Southwark? What if you say
she saw the man who threw the fire crackers and she would only tell
it to the Prince Regent because she feared for her life. It hints
the man may be someone high up in government. The newspapers will
lap that up; it will distract them no end trying to discover the
identity. We can say we were meeting in the carriage because the
Prince Regent feared it might be part of a plan to entrap him and
he might need to make a quick escape. But Miss Quilligan never
appeared. We waited and waited…”

Mycroft, the omnipotent,
omniscient, omnibenevolent, first knight of the realm, began
nodding, slowly at first then faster and faster as he processed the
pros and cons, and the fantastic improbability of it all began
looking less lunatic; in fact, the more fantastically improbable
the scheme the higher its chance of success. Anything too simple,
too pat, would be dismissed at once, but something audaciously
insane might just work.

“It might just work. It explains
why the Prince Regent was in Southwark at an ungodly hour. It does
not ignore the death of Miss Quilligan. It gives the Prince Regent
a solid alibi – he is in the carriage with you. It draws attention
away from Bertie to the fire cracker man. And you will not be
compromised. Yes, I think it will work. By golly! I think it will
work! The only person to contradict you would be Miss Quilligan and
she is dead. By the way, where were you on the night? If you were
at home there will be far too many witnesses among the servants.
The whole story blows up in our faces.”

“I was in Southwark dressed as a
vagrant. I was with Dr Watson and my manservant.”

Mycroft’s prominent owlish eyes
appeared electrified. “Perfect!” Primus baro turned solemnly to the
doctor, drawing him into the chivalrous circle, appealing to his
principled nature, his willingness to sacrifice all, and his soft,
sentimental, heroic heart. “What do you think? Will it work?”

Feeling hot and half-sick, Dr
Watson ran an uneasy finger around the inner circumference of his
shirt collar to help him draw another bewildered breath. “I don’t
know if I can pull it off, that’s all. I don’t know how to lead
into it. Langdale will smell a rat.”

“First up, you need to look
worried,” advised the Countess, positioning herself in the luminous
heart of the circular Temple. “You have a grave secret. It is
weighing heavily on your conscience. Pretend to be reluctant. Let
him wheedle it out of you. He will interpret it as
you
trying to protect
me
. He actually liked Miss Quilligan. He
will probably paint her as a heroine. Mrs Aspen told me Lucy
did
see the man who threw the fire crackers. She will back
up the story. Miss Pike will confirm I have been concerned for Miss
Quilligan and am doing all in my power to track down her killer. My
association with the Southwark Suffragettes will be confirmed by
the redoubtable Miss de Merville. There’s just one proviso.”

Mycroft’s sanguine face fell.
“What is it?”

“The Prince of Wales needs to
make a huge donation to the cause of enfranchisement and show
active support by word and deed. Otherwise, I will deny
everything.”

“Done!” laughed Mycroft.

Full of grave misgivings, Dr
Watson turned his back on the pair of conspirators wondering what
he had got himself into. Needing to clear his head, he was about to
take a short cut through Temple Gardens to the river when the
Countess invited him to see her new real estate purchase. It was
directly across from Temple – a tall, narrow, stone building stuck
on the end of the Library like a huge pimple. He was not surprised
it had stood unoccupied for a decade or more. The layout was
prohibitive; small cramped rooms stacked one on top of the other,
dark winding staircases and no gas lighting. The smell of years of
neglect lingered despite the beeswax polish. But after a brief tour
he could see the potential for a secret bolt hole.

“You won’t be able to retain
many servants,” he said when they returned to their carriage
waiting on the Strand.

“I shall only need one; a
caretaker or live-in char so that people know the place is habited.
A man or a woman – I have not yet decided. Let’s have lunch at
Rules. My treat, though I can’t eat too much. I’m dining with the
Vanderlindens tonight. But first a quick visit to St Saviour
Church.”

Fedir was waiting in the usual
pew. “Mims is dead,” he said without preamble. “The girls say she
saw fetch at top of landing, fell down the stairs and broke neck.
That was last night. Sukie overhear Madame Kronski say it no great
loss – their special visitor not be returning. Pennyrose cannot
stop shaking and crying. She fears she next to meet with fetch.
Funeral for Mims is tomorrow. Black velvet man not seen since the
death of Miss Quilligan. Sukie is scared. She begs me not come back
to brothel.”

The gamey menu at Rules appealed
to Dr Watson’s taste buds. He ordered game broth, steak and kidney
suet pie, and to finish, a sticky toffee pudding. They drank Black
Velvets.

“What do you make of the death
of Mims?” he asked.

“Mims and Pennyrose are
liabilities now that the Prince of Wales will not be making a visit
any time soon. They know too much. That fetch is a convenient ruse.
I would dearly love to nab her. I will definitely be at the funeral
tomorrow. Will you have time to accompany me?”

He nodded between mouthfuls of
hearty gamey broth. “My Christmas shopping is just about done. I
bought Mrs H an eggcup this year; she likes a boiled egg for her
breakfast.”

“An egg cup?”

“Don’t say it like that,” he
reprimanded. “It’s genuine Minton blue willow-ware. Next year I
will buy her a matching bread plate.”

“A gift that grows. Good
thinking. I’m giving her a winter bonnet with bluebells on it. I
bought a stack of them from Madame La Bonne the other day.”

“You better send it round
tonight before you go to the Vanderlindens. She’s leaving tomorrow
morning for the Cotswolds. She’s taking a cottage with her sister
until Epiphany. I’m going away too; a short trip to the
countryside. I plan to leave on the twenty-fourth. If we haven’t
wrapped things up by then you will have to solve them on your
own.”

She felt crestfallen. “You won’t
be in London for Christmas?”

“No, it’s always bleak; no snow,
just sleet. What about you?”

“I shall be throwing a huge
Christmas Eve bash,” she lied. “A shame you will miss it. Christmas
Day will be spent at the Vanderlindens.” More lies.

“Oh,” he said flatly. “That
sounds jolly nice.”

Still feeling crestfallen, the
Countess returned to Mayfair Mews to find an unmarked but
prestigious carriage with black curtains waiting for her. The
coachman announced he had been sent by Mr Holmes to pick her up but
refused to say where he would be taking her. He handed her up and
whipped the four black horses into a gallop. She was the sole
occupant.

They crossed the Thames and
entered Battersea Park. A second carriage with black curtains was
waiting for them in the shelter of a stand of stately oaks. The
Countess was ushered from one carriage to the other. Inside, sat a
clean-shaven gentleman in his fifties, wearing a dark frock coat,
lavender cravat, pearl tie pin and lavender spats over polished
shoes. He introduced himself as Colonel Damery.

“The Prince of Wales wishes me
to let you know he has been made cognizant of your scheme to lay
claim to being in the royal carriage in Southwark. As soon this
meeting is over, with your approval, Countess Volodymyrovna, the
Queen and the Princess will be made aware of the ‘facts’ as you
have expressed them to Mr Mycroft Holmes. It is my understanding Mr
John Watson is at this very moment expressing the same ‘facts’ to
Mr Langdale Pike at the St James Street Club. If you have any
hesitations about the success of the scheme it would be wise to
express them now. Once you leave this carriage things will be set
in motion and there will be no going back.”

Colonel Damery spoke in a calm,
mellow, pleasant voice that had a touch of Irish in the accent. He
gave her a moment to think about the repercussions but all she
could think about was his grey Irish eyes and his Irish lilt.