Death at the Diogenes Club: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery (The Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mysteries Book 6), page 12
Jack looked down at me, shaking his head in slow disbelief. “I’ve been a beat constable for two years, and before that, I was with Flint’s gang for ten. I’ve been in bar room fights and street brawls, I’ve been shot at, I’ve arrested murderers and thieves—and all of it was less frightening than a single conversation with you!”
“It will be all right.” I spoke more quietly. “When have you ever known me to run into danger without thinking or take unnecessary risks?”
Jack opened his mouth and then closed it again without saying anything.
“Exactly.” I nodded. “You’re trying to find a more tactful way of saying all of the time. To which I will say: Then you ought to be used to it by now.”
Jack let out a smothered sound, half-exhale, half-laugh. “God, Lucy, you make me—”
The door to the house just ahead of us opened, and a woman’s figure popped out. I suppressed an inward groan.
Sophia Highbridge, who lived at number 203, was about my age, or possibly a year or two older, with a frizz of pale blond hair around a plump face and slightly prominent blue eyes.
She and her husband were newly married, without any children as yet. Sophia was bored and lonely—and so far as I could tell, had absolutely nothing to do but sit and look out her windows all day, trying to spy on her neighbors.
“Miss James!” Despite the early hour, she was already dressed in a pink ruffled tea-gown, with a lace shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She came down her front steps and marched towards us, her shoulders back, her blond curls almost quivering with indignation. “Miss James, is this man annoying you?” She turned to Jack, waving her hands. “Be off with you! Shoo! This is a respectable neighborhood, and we will not tolerate the likes of you coming here and causing a nuisance. Now take yourself off, or I shall call the police!”
She probably wouldn’t believe that Jack was the police. With his clothes rumpled and dirty from being caught in last night’s rain and a stubble of beard tracing his jaw, he did look somewhat less than respectable.
Although I wondered what Sophia would say if she knew that beneath my borrowed overcoat, I was wearing nothing but a man’s silk dressing gown.
Jack had already stepped back into the deeper shadows that lined the edges of the street. But I still didn’t want Sophia or anyone else taking a close look at his face.
He had been a visitor at 221B before, and I couldn’t take the chance of Sophia recognizing him from one of those visits.
So I allowed her to take my arm and draw me away.
“Really.” Sophia clucked her tongue. “The way these tramps think they can go anywhere is simply shameless. Why just the other day …”
I let her words wash past me without registering more than a handful. As we reached the door of number 221, I looked back over my shoulder. Jack was already gone.
CHAPTER 19
“Lucy?” Becky’s whisper filtered in through my dream. “Lucy, are you awake?”
I opened one eye and found her perched on the side of my bed. “I am now.”
“I’m sorry!”
I sat up. “It’s all right.”
In fact, I truly didn’t mind being woken, even though I’d slept only a handful of hours since climbing into bed at dawn. The nightmare had barely started, the chill of the ice house only just beginning to creep over my skin when Becky’s voice had broken the spell.
The relief I was feeling now was akin to being let out of prison after only serving a single day’s worth of a five-year sentence.
“It’s just there are a lot of important-looking people upstairs meeting with Mr. Holmes,” Becky said. “Mr. Holmes’s brother and some other men. And then there was that letter, remember? The one from Mrs. Teale? Asking you to come and see her this afternoon at three?”
“Of course.”
I was actually lucky that I had Becky to remember for me. I had completely forgotten the letter from Suzette Teale.
I pushed back the blankets and stood up.
“Was it raining when you came home from the theater last night?” Becky asked.
“What? Why?”
“Your overcoat is still wet. You left it hanging by the door.” Becky gestured to the sitting room outside. “But it’s not the one you usually wear. Did you have to borrow someone else’s?”
This was exactly why I flinched at the thought of trying to keep Becky ignorant of Jack’s presence in London: She missed absolutely nothing.
And Sophia Highbridge had interrupted Jack and me before Jack could say whether he wanted me to tell Becky the truth.
I picked up the brush from my dressing table and started brushing out my hair, willing myself to sound as-usual.
My mirrored reflection still showed traces of last night’s rouge on my cheeks and lips.
“Yes, it started raining quite suddenly, after the performance was over at the Savoy. So I had to borrow an overcoat.”
Strictly speaking, I hadn’t lied, but I still felt slightly sick telling Becky even a half-truth, when I had never tried to conceal anything from her before.
But then she had never been in this type of danger before, either.
Memories flashed before me, like colored projections in a lantern slide show: Becky, following me to Lansdowne House and single-handedly confronting the guard placed at the ice house door. Becky, captured by Griffin—
She hadn’t been hurt that night. But she so easily could have been. And if I told her any part of the truth now, I wouldn’t put it past her to climb out the window the second my back was turned and go to find her brother.
Becky sat down on the edge of the bed, seeming to lose interest.
I exhaled, slowly and silently, while I continued to watch her in the mirror.
“Becky, about the meeting upstairs …”
Becky had already anticipated what I was going to say. “I know, I can’t come. Those sorts of people always think children should be seen and not heard.” She sounded slightly disconsolate, but then smiled. “Tell me all about it afterwards?”
“If I can, I will.”
“All right.” Becky frowned. “Also, why is there a chicken in the sitting room?”
I closed my eyes briefly. I had almost succeeded in forgetting about the chicken. It had been so late when I’d come home that I had just set the cage down on the sitting room floor and gone to bed. But the hen probably needed water and … whatever it was that chickens ate by now.
“I rescued it from a bird vendor last night,” I told Becky. “Give me a minute to get dressed, and we can go and introduce her to Mrs. Hudson together.”
Mrs. Hudson blinked at my edited account of having adopted a chicken, but then shrugged philosophically.
After twenty years as Sherlock Holmes’s housekeeper and landlady, very little could surprise or rattle her.
“Ah, well, I’ve dealt with stranger things, heaven knows, since Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson moved in here.”
Becky was on her hands and knees on the kitchen floor, studying the bird through the bars of the cage. “Do you think it would be disrespectful if we called it Sherlock?”
I almost choked trying to smother a laugh. Usually I thought of my father’s features as hawk-like, but there was something about the chicken’s close-set, sharp eyes and jutting beak …
“I’m not sure Mr. Holmes would see the humor of the comparison. Besides, I have it on authority that it’s a lady chicken.”
Becky tapped her chin. “I’ll have to think of another name, then.”
Mrs. Hudson hefted the cage into her arms, glancing at Becky. “Why don’t you get her some water in a dish, and some of yesterday’s bread. I’ll put her outside in the yard for now.”
I followed Mrs. Hudson out while Becky stayed in the kitchen, assembling the water and food.
There was no garden behind the house, just a small, square paved yard that opened off the kitchen door and was chiefly frequented by tradesmen when they came to make deliveries.
Mrs. Hudson set the bird’s cage down in a patch of watery sunshine that was just beginning to break through the morning clouds.
“Later on I can see about getting Fred the carpenter’s boy to come and build a coop for her.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.” I glanced at the kitchen window, but I could see that Becky was still at the table, tearing up scraps of stale bread. “There was one other thing. Try not to let Becky out of your sight. Definitely don’t let her go outside alone. And if anyone comes to the door, make sure that it’s someone you know before you let them in.”
Mrs. Hudson looked no more shocked than she had at the arrival of the chicken. “Ah. I take it there’s some trouble brewing, is there? Well, don’t worry about the child. I’ll keep her with me every moment you’re not here.”
“Thank you.” I hugged her.
“That’s all right, dear.” Mrs. Hudson patted my arm, her plump, motherly face hardening with determination. “And if a stranger tries to force himself into my kitchen, he’ll soon find himself on the business end of my heaviest frying pan.”
I paused on the stairwell, just outside the door to 221B’s sitting room, listening.
I was dressed in the plainest and most conservative skirt and shirtwaist I had in my wardrobe, with my hair neatly smoothed back into a low bun and all traces of last night’s rouge scrubbed away.
I didn’t doubt that some of the important personages in the room would still regard me as no more fit to take part in the conversation than they would Becky. Although that was their trouble, not mine. What was making me pause was the anticipation of who exactly I would be facing in there.
I could hear the murmur of masculine voices from inside the sitting room: Mycroft’s deep baritone rumble, followed by another voice I didn’t recognize. I couldn’t hear Lord Lansdowne, but it was more than likely that he would be present. He was Secretary of State for War, after all.
Get it over with.
I opened the door and rapidly took stock of the men assembled.
Mycroft and my father. Lord Lansdowne and Edward Barton.
And three gentlemen I didn’t recognize, all of whom looked as though they were trying to murder each other by sheer force of will.
The tension in the room was so thick it felt like an almost physical presence weighting the air.
Mycroft and all of the other men immediately got to their feet at sight of me, all of them far too well trained in proper behavior to sit while a lady was standing.
“Ah, Lucy, my dear,” Mycroft greeted me. “I am grateful that you could join us. Gentlemen, this is Miss Lucy James, with whom you may speak as freely as you would before my brother and myself.”
I had sometimes reflected that dealing with thugs like the man Yates in the coffee house last night was actually easier than dealing with men of the English Establishment. Men like Yates could be impressed—or at least intimidated—by hitting them in the face, as needed.
Gentlemen who had lived their entire lives with the intrinsic, often unconscious belief of being physically, morally, culturally, and intellectually superior to the entire female population were far harder to sway.
The three men I didn’t know had stopped glaring at one another, their faces smoothing out into polite, if stiff, expressions. Now they gave Mycroft startled glances, as though checking to be sure that he wasn’t playing some elaborate joke.
“Allow me to introduce you,” Mycroft went on. “Lord Lansdowne and his secretary Mr. Barton I believe you already know.”
Lansdowne and Mr. Barton were positioned at the small breakfast table.
I could feel my father’s gray eyes lingering on me as I smiled a greeting in their direction. Holmes had risen with the other men from his customary chair by the fire, and he didn’t look worried, precisely. But his expression was certainly watchful.
I concentrated on standing straight and unflinching. I was fine. Just because Lord Lansdowne was here did not mean I had to let myself fall into another waking nightmare. Besides, my own memories scarcely mattered, compared to the danger hanging over Becky and Jack.
“Hello.”
Lord Lansdowne gave me a polite nod of greeting, and Mr. Barton flashed a friendly smile.
“And these gentlemen are Sir Andrew Noble and Lord Armstrong, of the Sir W. G. Armstrong and Company armaments firm,” Mycroft said.
I turned to the men who had risen from the chairs flanking Holmes.
I might not have met either of them before, but Uncle John had mentioned them to me, in connection with his journey to Newcastle in June. I knew Lord Armstrong to be the founder of the arms’ manufacturing firm, while Sir Andrew, his business partner, was responsible for most of the day-to-day running of the company.
Sir Andrew Noble appeared to be somewhere in his sixties, with a bald, domed head, bushy gray mutton-chop whiskers and equally bushy brows. He gave me a keen look and a pleased to meet you, Miss James before subsiding into silence.
Beside him, Lord Armstrong looked ancient. His age had to be approaching ninety, and his back was slightly bowed. His skin, mottled and papery-looking, had pulled back, stretching tightly over the bones of his face and his prominent beak of a nose, and his eyes were rheumy.
“It’s nice to meet you, gentlemen,” I said.
Lord Armstrong also looked unsteady enough on his feet that I was afraid a strong breeze would knock him over. I sat down quickly, taking a place at the breakfast table, so that he would be free to regain his own chair.
He did sit down, though he continued to eye me with interest. “American, are you? Well, I don’t hold it against you. During the War Between the States you had over there in the 1860s, the Americans were some of my best customers.”
Beside me, Mr. Barton murmured—so quietly I doubted anyone else could hear—“On both the northern and the southern sides of the conflict.”
I glanced at him, but his face was bland.
“And this is Mr. Alexander Dimitrios,” Mycroft finished. “Of Blackthorn Munitions.”
The last man to be introduced was middle aged, with dark hair growing into a pronounced widow’s peak on his forehead. His face was broad and craggy, with deeply scored lines around the edges of his mouth. His eyes were dark, and somehow sad, almost haunted-looking, as though life had in the past dealt him a crippling blow from which he had never quite recovered.
He tipped his head in my direction. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss James.”
I had expected a Greek accent, to match the name Dimitrios, but he sounded more Russian.
His profession also probably explained the lethal quality of the glares being exchanged with the two men from the Armstrong armaments company. If the three men were business rivals, they had probably had occasion to meet—and dislike—one another before.
“They were Mr. Dimitrios’ weapons that were stolen,” Mycroft continued. He settled back onto the sofa, that being the only seat in the room capable of supporting his bulk. “But both firms of weapons manufacturing have experienced, shall we say, unexpected setbacks in their production of late.”
“By which you mean sabotage?” I asked.
Mr. Dimitrios sat up, looking past Mycroft to give Sir Andrew a hard stare. “We assumed that the difficulties originated with the same source as they had in the past.”
Sir Andrew’s jaw locked. If it were literally possible to look daggers at someone, Mr. Dimitrios would currently have a six-inch steel blade sprouting from his chest.
“Were these difficulties you speak of at Blackthorn armaments similar to the time we had an important fleet of diplomats from the Spanish government coming to bid against the Japanese on our latest design in breech-loading rifles? And somehow, mysteriously, the car in which the Spaniards were traveling chanced to break down, forcing them to abandon the trip? Or the time that the prototypes for our new design of armored ships’ turrets were mysteriously hacked to pieces before they could be brought to testing?”
Mycroft held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Gentlemen, please. What is in the past must necessarily remain there, if this meeting is to proceed towards anything resembling a productive outcome.”
The two men subsided, though Mr. Dimitrios continued to look surly and white dents appeared at the edges of Sir Andrew’s mouth.
Lord Armstrong turned to me. He had been silent during his partner’s exchange with Mr. Dimitrios, his face stiff. But there was now a faint gleam in his eyes that made me suspect the elderly man was rather enjoying himself.
“I’m afraid, Miss James, that ours can be a somewhat ruthless profession.”
I bit my tongue before I could say imagine that or something equally sarcastic.
I couldn’t scrape together much surprise that the profession of creating weapons designed for the sole purpose of killing and maiming one’s enemies should be a ruthless one.
But then, I wasn’t sure whether I was in a position to judge. I had in the past used physical force to defend myself. I had fired weapons—possibly weapons manufactured by the men before me—in self-defense or to defend Holmes.
My father had been leaning back in his chair, his eyes half-closed as though he were scarcely listening to the conversation around him. But now he murmured, “Both Armstrong and Company and Blackthorn Munitions have suffered sabotage of a particularly subtle variety, the sort that only becomes apparent during the final rounds of weapons testing. However, Blackthorn Munitions is the only firm—to our knowledge—to have weapons outright stolen.”
I looked at my father closely. “You believe that to be significant? As I understand it, the weapons were all stored in a warehouse owned by the War Office, where they were to be kept before they could be shipped off to the Sudan. You think that someone deliberately targeted the crates of weapons manufactured by Mr. Dimitrios’ firm?”
I glanced at Mr. Dimitrios as I said it and saw him heave a sigh.
“My family were Jews. Forced to flee Russia during the pogroms after the death of Czar Alexander. Unfortunately, escaping the threat of death does not mean that one will not face other, more subtle ways of persecution.”
