Watson's Choice (3 page)

‘That was to get you flying round here. I meant what I said, though. But, first of all, just listen to this! This is to be me at this Sherlock Holmes party. I could massacre Sir Bohun, the ill-natured old miser!’

‘Is he old?’

‘He’s nearly fifty. I suppose that isn’t old for a man.’

‘If he’s a miser he won’t cough up for Toby or you or anybody, so don’t you count on it.’

‘He’s my godfather.’

‘Nonsense! You’re thirty-one!’

‘All right, don’t shout. Listen to this, and tell me whether it’s intended to be funny or insulting.’

‘Get up, then, and let me sit down.’

Mrs Dance obliged, and, when he was sprawled in the chair, she draped herself comfortably over him, stuck an elbow in his chest so as to be able to support her book more easily, and read, in an agreeable voice, Doctor Watson’s description of the self-deceived, myopic heroine of
A Case of Identity
.

‘“Well, she had a slate-coloured, broad-brimmed straw hat, with a feather of a brickish red. Her jacket was black, with black beads sewn upon it, and a fringe of little black jet ornaments. Her dress was brown, rather darker than coffee-colour, with a little purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her gloves were greyish, and were worn through at the right forefinger. Her boots I didn’t observe. She had small, round, hanging, gold ear-rings, and a general air of being fairly well to do, in a vulgar, comfortable, easy-going way.”’

‘He’s determined to teach you where you get off,’ commented Mr de Philippe unkindly. ‘Serve you right for creeping and crawling to miserly, rich old men when you might be week-ending in a civilized fashion with me.’

‘How do I come by such an outfit, do you suppose? – Oh, he
might
have let me be Irene Adler, the mean old moke!’

‘You’ll have to have a lot made, and a pretty penny it’ll cost you, and a dead loss it will be, for it won’t even do for a fancy-dress dance on board ship if we go to the West Indies next spring. Ha! ha!’

‘Ha, ha, to you, and see how you like it! And if you want another good laugh, here it is: I have to be prepared to join in competitions to show my knowledge of the Sherlock Holmes stories! Come and read one to me while I have my bath. Sir Bohun is the type who might give a prize of a thousand pounds. He’s perfectly stinkingly wealthy.’

‘Prizes of that sort give rise to wangles,’ said the experienced Mr de Philippe. ‘The thousand will stay in the family. “Kissing goes by favour” isn’t a proverb; it’s a truism.’

‘There isn’t any family, except Manoel and two little nephews and a sort of niece or something, and the niece’s mother, a kind of cousin. I suppose they’ll be coming.’ She consulted Sir Bohun’s letter, which was inside the dust-jacket of the book. ‘Yes, they are. Celia Godley – that’s the niece – will represent Mrs Watson. Mrs Watson? Oh, yes, Doctor Watson got married, didn’t he? That will make Celia poor old Toby’s opposite number. He
will
be pleased! She’s only just left school or college or whatever it is, and is training to be a secretary.’

‘Less of the “poor old Toby”. I don’t like it.’

‘Nonsense! I shall call him what I want to call him. And he
is
poor old Toby, look at it how you will.’

Mr de Philippe, who thought that the divorce was a certainty, emptied her out of his lap, stood up, held her at arms’ length, then kissed her.

‘So he is. Poor old Toby,’ he said. ‘And I wish him joy of little Celia.’

Little Celia, at that moment, was mixing herself a gin and French in her bedroom, and was thinking about Manoel Lupez. She had not met him, but she had seen him; seen him, moreover, under such fascinating and exciting circumstances that she felt she could scarcely wait for the date of her uncle’s (or, more accurately, her second cousin’s) dinner-party before actually being introduced and so putting herself in the position of being able to say charmingly but slightly offhandedly: ‘Oh, yes? … Señor Lupez? Didn’t I see you at the
corrida
in Seville last year? I thought your Half Veronica was very pretty, but perhaps your opening gambit could have been – well, I mustn’t say a little more dignified, but could we say that it might have been, with advantage, a little more like Manolete’s, do you think?’

This would serve the double purpose of proving that she was a true
aficionada
of the bull-ring, and of putting him in his place if he needed this treatment. Yet – Manolete? After all, she had never
seen
Manolete. She had only read about him and looked at photographs. It might be better to leave Manolete, that statuesque and noble figure, out of it. She doubted whether she could sustain a conversation about him. One had to be
rather sure
about things like bull-fighting and the ballet and Sartre and – who was that other foreign author? One didn’t really feel
too
sure about the Ravenna mosaics, either, although one had seen them three times. But that, of course, was by the way.

Celia banished Manolete and decided to concentrate upon Manoel Lupez himself and to bring the conversation round to Mexican bull-fighters and Aztec art. He would hardly be likely to know much about Aztec art. She should be on pretty safe territory there. It would be a good idea to marry Manoel if he did not prove to be too much of a savage. Uncle (cousin?) Bohun’s money would have to go somewhere when he died, and Manoel, the natural son, and herself (for Mummy would have died by that time) the nearest other relative, if one didn’t count those two delicate children, could save a lot of trouble and legal expenses if they were man and wife.

She finished her gin and French and daringly poured herself another. She gazed at herself in the dressing-table mirror and raised her glass.

‘Manoel! Manoel!’ she murmured.

It was on the following day that Manoel Lupez pressed his flat black
montera
well down on his head and bowed to the President’s box. Then, one of half a dozen young men who paraded in the October sunshine, he slipped aside to his left through a gap in the fence which protected the spectators from the bulls, collected his
capote de brega
from his sword-boy’s leather case, slung his magnificent gala cape to a friend in the front row of the bull-ring, and waited for the flick of the umpire’s handkerchief – the signal for the bugle to sound.

It was the end of the bull-fighting season, and it marked Manoel’s last public appearance until the following March. In the interim he would visit his natural father in England, and this time he would go not as a penniless, proud boy, but as a bull-fighter of Spain who had made a name for himself, yes, and money for himself, too. He would demand recognition. He would have his rights. No cap in hand for him! The Englishman had had what he wanted of Manoel’s mother. Take what you want, says God, and pay for it. The Englishman had taken what he wanted. Now, thought Manoel, glancing down at his gold-embroidered trousers, he should pay.

‘Everyone to his taste, as the old woman said when she kissed her cow.’

ANONYMOUS
–
Old Proverb

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES DINNER
, given by Sir Bohun Chantrey at the third house he had bought since his accession (so to speak) to the throne of his cousin’s fortune, was destined to be, in some respects at least, a success beyond even his own secret wishes. Apart from all other considerations, the weather was most obliging. He had fixed upon a date towards the end of November in the hope that a descent of twentieth-century fog would provide the illusion of a true, vintage, Baker Street pea-souper, and his reward was to have his house-party arrive on the day before the revels in welcome if wintry sunshine, and his less-favoured guests – those who had merely been invited to dinner and to take part in the competitions – drive up to his door on the evening of the festivities when what had been a wet but yellowing mist all the afternoon was beginning to clamp down an impenetrable blanket of the dark upon all that part of England and most of the London area.

Owing to shortage of dancing space and a dining-room which, although spacious in the manner of the late seventeenth century, could not be expected to make itself any bigger, nine people were the most which he had felt able to invite. These, with himself, his secretary, his elder nephew’s tutor, his younger nephew’s nursery governess and the two children themselves were to have made up the numbers to fifteen, but, as the finishing touches were being added to his list, he had received a communication from his natural son Manoel Lupez, proposing to visit him and stay a week or so, and Manoel he could scarcely refuse. At any rate, that was his own feeling in the matter.

‘We must see that he has a part,’ said Sir Bohun to his secretary,
a
violently red-haired young man whose appearance had cast him for the part of Duncan Ross of the
Red-Headed League
in the forthcoming revels. ‘I had intended to take Dr Watson upon myself, but I am wondering whether the part of Moriarty will not give me more scope. As Manoel is coming, I shall give him the part of young Arthur Holder, the misjudged and heroic son in the story of
The Beryl Coronet
. It is an easy part, and, if he will wear the clothes of the period, he can scarcely go wrong, for all else he need do is to put on the lofty expression which seems to come naturally to him, and there it is!’

The secretary, who disliked the unfortunate Manoel intensely, and suspected the Spaniard of looking down his nose at him, replied briefly, ‘Very good, Sir Bohun. I will write him to that effect.’

‘Brenda Dance – a divorce is pending, but nothing has been done about it yet, I am happy to say – will play Miss Mary Sutherland, and serve her right. She has no business to make herself happy with a paramour. Miss Campbell seems highly pleased with the part of Irene Adler, and Grimston, of course, with his good looks and his rather astonishing poise, is to represent Lord Robert St Simon, the
Noble Bachelor
. There is nobody else who could do it. Now I wonder whether I am right to take on Moriarty and not Watson? I don’t
see
Toby Dance as Watson, and yet – is it quite the part for me? Too phlegmatic, perhaps?’

‘Grimston is not too happy about that character part, Sir Bohun. He would prefer – ’ began the secretary.

‘Whatever can he find to dislike in it?’ demanded Sir Bohun annoyed at having his self-analysis interrupted by an underling. ‘Hang the fellow, he will have the most becoming costume of us all, and if he does not like the part he will have to lump it! I don’t pay him to dictate his likes and dislikes. He will do as he’s told. There is only one person who will not.’

‘Mrs Lestrange Bradley,’ said the secretary unemotionally.

‘How did you know?’

‘I file all your correspondence, Sir Bohun.’

‘Of course. She wishes to have the part of Mrs Farintosh, and, you know, Bell, I was flummoxed, completely flummoxed, for the moment. I could call to mind no such person as Mrs Farintosh in the
saga
. I had to look her up! And when I did, I realized that the thing is in the nature of a jest. Ah, well, as we have had previous
reason
to know, Mrs Bradley has her own peculiar sense of fun. I wonder how she will interpret the part? It will be interesting to see how she does, for there is nothing in the chronicles to guide her.’

Bell permitted himself a restrained chuckle. Like most young people, he was attracted by the extraordinary old lady.

‘It will be very interesting, Sir Bohun,’ he agreed, ‘but Señor Lupez’ costume may cause some difficulty. He may say he’ll be too cold, dressed only in his shirt and trousers, and, of course, he is used to a hot country, and it is, after all, mid-winter, almost, over here.’

‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Manoel’s natural father vigorously. ‘He mustn’t be namby-pamby. He is to hold the Beryl Coronet in his hands. His figure will look well enough in shirt and trousers, and the coronet is an excellent prop. Everybody will recognize him. What more can he possibly desire?’

‘Grimston would willingly change parts with him, Sir Bohun. It might suit both of them, I think, if that could be arranged.’

‘No, no, no! I will
not
have my plans upset! Manoel would look
ridiculous
as Lord Robert St Simon. It needs the English touch. And, talking of that, I am not best pleased that Mrs Bradley’s secretary-girl wants to come as Mrs Grant Munro, mother of a piccaninny. However, if that’s her idea – Who else have we got? Oh, yes, there is my niece Celia as Mrs Watson – a lot of nonsense, incidentally, for Mrs Watson is quite a redundant character. She is only brought in to redeem the good doctor from the taint of celibacy. And for Holmes himself – ’

‘And for Holmes, himself, Sir Bohun,’ put in the secretary quickly, ‘have you decided finally –?’

‘Oh, Mildren. I know I’ve changed my mind several times about him, but I think he will carry The Sage as adequately as we can expect. My good Cousin Amelia Godley will do as Mrs Barclay in
The Crooked Man
. She is a singularly unimaginative woman, and we shall just have to
tell
people who she is, for they’ll never guess. Now, about the competitions I have planned – ’

The baronet and his secretary went into a huddle, and came out of it over an hour and a half later, when Sir Bohun, smiling delightedly, smacked his secretary on the back and said:

‘Charming, charming, my boy! Oh, very, very good! Very good indeed! If anybody guesses them all, he’ll deserve half a dozen
prizes!
Now don’t drop the faintest hint, for that would ruin the fun.’

‘I certainly won’t hint, sir,’ promised Bell with a cynical smile. His employer’s childishness was sometimes irritating. ‘By the way, if it
should
turn foggy, as you hope, the orchestra may be late and so may some of the guests.’

Sir Bohun waved this aside.

‘Late-comers can be coped with, and, in any case, there will be a running buffet in the long parlour. There is no occasion to worry. It would be a pity about the band, but you and Grimston could take turns at operating the radio-gramophone, which will probably keep better time than a “live” orchestra,’ he said.