The Detective and the Woman (4 page)

‘He requested a private discussion with me. I intend to lose one of my gloves here and discover the loss once we reach the house. I will require a gentleman to walk me back, but you will be engaged elsewhere.’ Holmes nodded once as Tootie’s voice cut into our tête-à-tête.

‘My goodness, look at those lovebirds. It’s no wonder, since they’ve been separated.’ Her blonde head bobbed in delight.

‘Please excuse my enthusiasm, Mrs Edison,’ said Holmes with a gallant near-bow. ‘I fear my wife’s return and your husband’s grand machine have made me quite giddy.’ I smiled sheepishly, clinging to his hand.

Mina smiled indulgently. ‘I’m sure we’re all delighted to have met your charming wife, Mr James.’ The guests nodded as one, and I felt a pang of genuine pleasure.

The party’s return to the house was almost festive, but dread lay at the bottom of my stomach like a lead weight. Whatever Ambrose McGregor had to say, I highly doubted it was anything I would be overly excited to hear.

When we reached the piano room, Burroughs began to declare his intention of leaving, and Murphy looked ready to follow suit. Before Mina could begin her polite farewells, I made a show of looking down at my hands and finding one gloved and the other bare. At the same moment, Holmes asked Tootie about her favourite topic—her chronically ill son Bradford. He stopped mid-sentence when I lamented, ‘Oh no, I’ve been terribly clumsy. I seem to have lost my glove on the way back.’

‘Don’t worry, dear, Tom can go and retrieve it,’ said Mina kindly, putting a hand on my arm.

‘Nonsense,’ I answered, ‘your husband has been far too kind already this evening. Perhaps my husband—,’ but Bernard James looked down at Tootie with the crestfallen expression of a man disappointed at being unable to hear the words ready to fall from her lips. Bless her, she took the bait.

‘Ambrose, you can take her,’ she said brightly. ‘I was just about to tell Mr James about Bradford’s ailment.’ Her husband nodded wordlessly and proffered his arm to me, using the other to pick up the lantern from the shelf where Edison had placed it.

‘Thank you so much!’ I said, trying to project artlessly breathless gratitude. Tootie fairly beamed upon me, and I fancied she had decided to take me on as a sort of protégé.

We were halfway between the house and the laboratory before Ambrose spoke. ‘Mrs James,’ he said quietly, ‘I hope you don’t think me impertinent. I wish to say at the outset that I mean you no harm.’

‘I was sure of it, Mr McGregor,’ I rejoined, supposing it to be the sort of thing Lavinia might say, though it was a blatant lie in the mouth of Irene Adler.

‘The truth is—,’ we reached the door of the laboratory building, and he opened it, shining the lantern inside. I walked quickly toward the side of the room where I had placed my glove. ‘The truth is, Mrs James, that I believe you may be in grave danger.’

‘Excuse me?’ I said, turning around to face the man, his plain face hardly visible in the shadows the lantern cast against the dark walls.

‘This is hard to say,’ he continued in a slow, stuttering voice, ‘but I have reason to believe your husband is not who he claims to be.’ I froze. Of all the possibilities I had considered, this contingency had never crossed even the furthest recess of my mind.

‘Whatever do you mean, Sir?’ I asked in my most husband-defending tone, moving back outside where the moonlight cast less garish light. Ambrose’s expression was filled with pained concern.

‘I have reason to believe that the gentleman who claims to be Bernard James is actually an English detective by the name of Sherlock Holmes.’ I nearly laughed. Only by the immediate application of a pinch to my forearm was I able to keep from making noise. I thought quickly. Holmes and I had not discussed this situation. I was sure that the detective, with his seemingly omniscient mind, must have considered it, but he had most likely dismissed it as a near-impossibility.

Ambrose continued in the midst of my silence. ‘There is a man who lives in town by the name of Sanchez, and he—well, he is more acquainted with the ways of this person than I am. I first met your husband at this house during a large party a week ago, and Sanchez was also a guest. He took me aside that night and told me he had spotted Holmes, who, I gather, is somehow affiliated with the police. At the time, Sanchez voiced his opinion that the ruse was most likely harmless. After all, the man’s reputation is as a champion of good. I could not, however, fail to speak when I realised that you, his wife, seem unaware of his true identity. I am sorry if I have caused you distress, but I could not bear to stand by and watch a lady as fine as yourself be taken in.’

I looked up into the kind, concerned face of Ambrose McGregor, and I made a decision. I am generally a good judge of character. Barring the blinders that caused me to marry a monster, I am rarely ever wrong. I wondered briefly what Holmes would wish me to do, but I was in a bind, pinned to the wall like a lab specimen. I had the choice of trying to come up with some wildly elaborate ruse to fool a seemingly reasonable man, or else come out with the truth and trust his judgement and good will. I chose the latter.

‘Mr McGregor,’ I said, standing close to him in the lantern light, ‘I will be quick, or the others will wonder what is keeping us. The things you say are true, and if you will call on us tomorrow at Mrs Stillwell’s boardinghouse, we will explain them to you. I ask you, as a personal favour, to please trust me and keep silent about this until then.’ The pleading look I gave him was unfeigned.

‘You’re quite a woman, Mrs James,’ was all he said as he turned back toward the house.

Chapter 6: Holmes

The moment Irene entered the house on the arm of Ambrose McGregor, Holmes could tell something had seriously rattled her, which he hadn’t expected. With sudden horror, he wondered if the older man had bothered her in some personal way. The detective’s eyes searched her keenly, but Irene’s smile and enthusiastic thanks seemed to convince the others, at least, that all was well. Mercifully, goodbyes were soon said, and within minutes he had his companion settled into a hired runabout. It was hardly elegant, but carriages were hard to come by in Fort Myers. As soon as he had handed Irene up, he retrieved a blanket from the floor behind, tucking it around her knees like a solicitous husband might.

‘I’m quite warm enough, Bernard,’ she said calmly, though none of the others were around to hear. Holmes hopped up beside her and studied her face, trying to ascertain her state of mind, punishing himself mentally for allowing her to go unaccompanied into danger, but she remained quiet, and her face remained impassive until they reached Mrs Stillwell’s house.

Holmes willed his hands to be especially gentle as he helped Irene down from the carriage. She was small, he realised. He had never considered it, not properly, not as anything more than a statistical fact. The prints her feet made in the dirt pathway to the back door were tiny, practically a child’s prints. Why, oh why, had he been foolish enough to send her off alone with the man? His mind, the fallible organ to which he attached such trust, had painted a picture of The Woman as a force, a tower of strength. He now realised that she was both more and less than that, and he cursed himself inwardly for his lack of concern.

As they mounted the stairs to his room at Mrs Stillwell’s, Holmes’s hand hovered in the vicinity of Irene’s elbow in case she should lose her footing. He did not touch her. She still remained speechless, and he wondered if he would have to employ some unusual method to cause her to explain the encounter. He knew that wronged women were often loathe to speak of their experiences for days or even weeks, and some, he had heard, even refused to speak at all. He could not afford for her to be one of those.

The proprietress of the house was prodigiously proud of having electricity and of living so near the inventor of the lightbulb himself, as she had eagerly told Holmes upon his arrival, and she charged dearly for both. The detective turned on the prized electric light as soon as he and Irene had entered the worn upstairs room, and he watched his companion remove her hat and wash her hands in the basin. Having finished, she turned and looked him full in the face.

‘My goodness, Holmes, you look as if you’ve seen a spectre.’ The detective sat down in the lone wooden chair and watched her, puzzled. ‘Since you have not asked me the content of my conversation with Ambrose McGregor, I can only assume you thought it as prudent as I did to wait until we were privately secluded.’ As she spoke, Irene sat down on the edge of the uncomfortable bed and unpinned her chestnut hair, letting it fall in waves down her back. Holmes supposed that she felt no shame in this, since, after all, the man before her had once seen her dressed as a young man.

‘I hope very much that you will not blame me, Holmes.’ Her eyes pleaded with him, though he saw no evidence of personal injury or offense and began to conclude that his original assessment of her distress had been mistakenly reasoned. ‘McGregor’s aim and purpose was to save me from the unfortunate fate of a deceived woman. In short, Holmes, he went through all that trouble to tell me that my husband was none other than the famed English detective Sherlock Holmes.’

At this, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, consulting detective to queen and country, threw back his head and laughed, but The Woman did not join him. ‘Believe me, Holmes,’ she continued when he had subsided, ‘my initial inclination was the same as yours, but the knowledge of Ambrose’s source distressed me more than his disclosure amused me. Alberto Sanchez somehow recognised you last week.’ Holmes nodded, not entirely surprised. Sanchez was the only one with a likely connection. The detective did not yet know exactly what it was or to what it tended, but it would have been almost insupportably coincidental for any person wholly unconnected to the case to have recognised him. Barnett had been more thorough than even Holmes had expected.

‘Ambrose said Sanchez called your deception harmless.’

‘Interesting,’ said Holmes, pulling a well-worn notebook and pen from his black leather travelling case. ‘Let us evaluate where this places us. First, I believe we may almost certainly rule out the idea that Ambrose McGregor is lying.’

‘The thought had occurred to me,’ murmured Irene, ‘but I could not think of a reasonable motive, and he gave no appearance of it.’

‘Well, we may keep the possibility as a remote contingency to fall back on if no other roads lead us to fruitful enquiry, but I doubt it will be needed. Second, we know that Sanchez knows my appearance and is aware that I am alive. This leads to the question: Was Sanchez warned of my continuing existence before and told to be on the lookout for my presence, or was his recognition of me an accident? If the first, then we may suppose a network of people is aware that I am alive; if the second, Sanchez may know of me by some other means, such as a photo of me with someone else whom he has been taught to recognise. I have had few photos taken, but unfortunately some do exist at the cajoling of Watson and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Third, where does your solicitor, Barnett, fit into the equation? If he is aware that I am alive, why has he not had me tailed? I can say with certainty that I have not been followed since my arrival in America. As improbable as it may seem, I begin to lean toward the possibility that Sanchez may have recognised me by near-chance. There is one particular photo that appeared in the
London Times
some years ago, after I had helped a certain peer regain a necklace stolen from his wife by a famous jewel thief. My work resulted in the man being caught and imprisoned, not only for the theft in question, but also for several other previously unsolved cases. The picture was notable because it contained the likenesses of several officers of Scotland Yard, Dr Watson, myself, and, most unusually, my brother Mycroft, who had been persuaded to pose for it by the prime minister, who wished the government to receive positive publicity from the incident. The photo’s presence in a prominent newspaper means that numerous reproductions of it were produced, and any number of individuals might have procured it easily.’

Holmes leaned forward and gazed intently into The Woman’s attentive face. ‘I wonder, Irene, what part Mycroft was intended to play in all of this. As I told you, the letter from Barnett to Sanchez came to him with almost serendipitous chance. I wonder now, more than ever, if my brother was meant to be involved. Perhaps the mastermind, whether Barnett, Sanchez, or someone else, misjudged his character and believed that he would take up where his younger brother had left off—with the same sort of investigation. Perhaps Sanchez was taught to expect to see the face of the elder brother, but instead found himself surprisingly face-to-face with the younger.’

‘But for what purpose could he possibly need to know your brother’s face?’

‘That is what we must find out. I am afraid, Irene, that this will be our last taste of fine accommodations for some time. Tonight, Bernard and Lavinia James will receive urgent news that calls them back home to England. Tomorrow, you and I will emerge as merchants to set up shop among the migrant day labourers, our faces different enough to fool even those we met this evening if necessary. We may safely hope that our roles will not be tested too acutely right away, for I intend us to mix with a segment of local society that families like the Edisons are hardly likely to meet on a regular basis.’

Holmes noted that Irene’s eyes held excitement rather than fear and trust rather than suspicion. Her beautiful face was alive with the prospect of adventure. ‘Tell me what you wish me to do, and I will help in any way I can.’

‘First,’ he said quietly, ‘I must thank you for your cool head this evening. Without you, I would be in grave danger with no idea of my own peril. Second, it is obvious that both of us take a great risk by remaining here. I now believe, much more than at any previous point in this case, that the key to the mystery may be found here, but that very fact means harm is not far away. If you wish to extricate yourself, I will not deter you.’

Irene put out a small hand and lightly touched the detective’s long fingers as they rested on his knee. ‘I agreed to help you,’ she said softly, ‘and I will continue to do so as long as I may be useful. I assure you, I am not afraid.’ Just then, out of nowhere, she smiled—a rare, wide, bracing smile. Holmes returned it with one of his own. They spent the rest of the night preparing to take on new characters.

The next morning, Gloria Stillwell rose to find on her front hall table a generous sum of money and a note explaining that Mr and Mrs Bernard James had been forced to return to England at their earliest possible convenience to care for a sick friend. Meanwhile, a tall man and a short man dressed in cheap clothing visited the poorest section of Fort Myers and hired an elderly horse and nearly-defunct wagon, which they filled with tattered raiment and low-quality goods. Their afternoon enquiry into the rental of a tiny, empty shop with a dilapidated sign that had once read ‘Sloane’s General Store’ proved rewarding, and a few more cartfuls of goods meant that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler were in business by evening, proud occupants of a small, square building with sandy floors, empty shelves, and nothing to recommend it except its location and the miniscule flat above it.

The following morning, Holmes dressed himself after a long sleepless night spent in one of the spindly chairs the previous occupants had seen fit to leave in the tattered flat, his pipe forming a pleasant accompaniment to the slight coolness in the evening breeze. Irene had slept soundly, no doubt exhausted from the previous night’s sleeplessness and the previous day’s transactions. One day was hardly long enough to rent and stock a general store, but that name was generous in this case, and Holmes meant it to be. Forced to be unrecognisable in high society, he intended to work from within another strata of the infrastructure that kept the city moving, that of the migrant day labourers, of whom Alberto Sanchez employed three hundred in his citrus grove on the outskirts of town. If Holmes could not get at the man directly, he would work through his organization. The stakes were higher now. If Sanchez knew his face and knew that he lived, Holmes could not afford to rest.

Once dressed in coarse brown slacks and a slightly ill-fitting grey shirt, Holmes darkened his skin and altered his face, making himself appear weathered and inelegant. He added wrinkles and rounded his sharp features. The cracked mirror on one of the walls revealed him as a middle-aged workman, which was exactly what he desired. He intended that that anyone entering the store should think him a manual labourer whose ambitions had acquired him a dingy store of his own.

After finishing his own toilette, he woke Irene with a gentle shake to the shoulder before leaving the room to give her time to dress. She had been dressed as a male the previous day, but from now on she would portray the lady of the establishment, a woman slightly nearer gentility than her husband, but still coarse and weatherbeaten. Holmes re-entered the room upon hearing a light tap from inside the door. Irene wore a plain yellow cotton dress, worn from its previous owner’s use, but she was still stunningly beautiful. Wordlessly, Holmes placed the rickety chair in front of the basin and began to work on his still-sleepy companion, using makeup to create lines of exhaustion and worry where there were none and slight asymmetry in near-perfect features. At last, he took her hair and mussed it slightly, arranging it as sloppily as he could without arriving at a completely inappropriate conclusion. He took care to commit every step to memory so that he would be able to replicate the results as many times as needed.

Irene walked over to the broken mirror and stared at her reflection. ‘I’m afraid I can’t completely eradicate your beauty without more extensive work,’ murmured Holmes behind her, in a tone laced with irony.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, whirling on him. ‘Godfrey couldn’t manage it either, no matter how hard he tried.’

The tall detective stepped back as if he’d been slapped, but regained his composure after a moment. ‘I’ve found us a place to eat breakfast before we open.’ He spoke as if nothing had happened, but Irene wouldn’t look at him. Without speaking further, he led the way downstairs and into the morning half-light of the dusty road.

Barcroft’s wasn’t the sort of place Lavinia and Bernard James would visit, but it was every bit the kind of place Jane and Tom Perkins, junk and supply store owners, would certainly frequent. Holmes and Irene were ushered into the cramped establishment and seated at a round table in a tiny, dubiously-kept corner, away from the few groups of working-class men who had come in for a very early-morning breakfast and, for some, liquid fortification. The other patrons’ initial glances at the newcomers gave way to disinterest, so the detective was assured that their disguises were at least marginally effective. Holmes took a sip of the indifferent coffee the waitress brought and declared it vile with a disgusted expression. Irene looked up and met his gaze, then dropped her eyes quickly. ‘This will not do,’ he murmured, whether to himself or to her he was unsure. It had been a great deal of time since he’d had such protracted contact with a female of any sort, and he was beginning to recall the pitfalls that invariably complicated such associations. Watson had his days, of course, but a glass of scotch and a good pork pie set him to rights without difficulty. One couldn’t ply Irene Adler with a pork pie and expect the same result, more was the pity. The detective’s mind extended to the furthest bounds of male existence, but where females were concerned, there had always been certain blanks. The current problem was that communication, which was vital during a case, required the cooperation of two, and one of those two was persisting in her silence.