Death at the Diogenes Club: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery (The Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mysteries Book 6), page 2
He looked up at me and, just for a second, a shadow of some unidentifiable expression flickered in his dark eyes. Then it vanished. “It doesn’t matter whether I hate it or not. I’ve still got to learn it.”
He looked back at the paper. “The rising of eighteen ninety-seven is the most successful attempt to date to combine the frontier tribes—”
Something seemed to snap inside me.
Three months ago, Jack and I had been … I wasn’t entirely sure how to put a name to it, but there had been something between us.
He’d never spoken of it, but he had at least looked as though he loved me.
Now he never touched me, ever, not so much as by a brush of his hand. He was perfectly polite, but …
Usually I left extravagant literary metaphors to Watson, but it felt as though Jack looked at me and then firmly closed some invisible door between us.
When Jack had first been shot, I had been afraid he might blame me for it, since he would never have been drawn into the Jubilee affair if not for me. He didn’t seem angry now. But then, he didn’t seem anything now.
I was fairly sure he loathed having had to ask me for help with his reading, but he hadn’t had much choice. The exams for promotion would be given in just over a month’s time, and unless he passed them, he wouldn’t have a way of keeping a roof over his and Becky’s head.
Still, I couldn’t escape the feeling that my visits here were just one more torturous duty for him to grit his teeth and endure.
“I have another idea.” I pushed my chair back from the table and stood up.
Jack stopped reading and looked up, clearly startled.
Good.
It probably wasn’t fair to be angry with him, after everything that he had been through. But I suddenly couldn’t stand to sit here and be the object of his calm, controlled, impersonal politeness for a single second longer.
“I’m out of practice with sparring. Performing at the Savoy doesn’t give me very many opportunities to train for hand-to-hand fighting.”
Up until now, I had thought Sherlock Holmes was the master of the inexpressive look. After tonight, though, I might have to hand the title over to Jack. The look he gave me was completely level, scrubbed clean of even the faintest flicker of emotion.
“Are you forgetting I’ve got a crippled leg?”
“Uncle John gave you permission to exercise weeks ago.” I raised my eyebrows. “Unless you’re afraid that I’ll beat you?”
Jack didn’t move.
I shrugged. “I suppose I could always try one of the fight clubs in Limehouse. Or I could just walk into one of the beer halls down the road. I imagine I’d find some sort of practice in close-range fighting. There aren’t exactly a shortage of bar room brawls in this neighborhood.”
A muscle tightened in the side of Jack’s cheek. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
I ignored him. “Of course, I won’t have to do either of those things if you just get up out of that chair.”
I watched as Jack pulled himself to his feet. Becky was right. He must have been doing the strength training exercises that Uncle John had given him practically tirelessly. He had always had a strong, hard-muscled form, but his shoulders were even broader now, tapering down to his narrow waist, flat stomach, and long legs.
He could stand on his injured leg—although not quite with his full weight. My heart cramped a little as I watched him limp a few steps away from the table and then turn.
“This isn’t a good idea—” he started.
I didn’t give him the chance to finish. I threw a punch directly at his face.
Even caught off-guard, Jack’s reflexes were lightning-quick. He blocked me instinctively, catching hold of my hand and then stepping aside, using my momentum to knock me off balance.
The step he’d taken had thrown him off balance too, though.
He toppled over, pulling me with him, and we crashed onto the floor together, our legs tangled and Jack’s body half on top of mine.
“God, Lucy, are you all right?” Jack sounded out of breath. “Did I hurt you?”
By some miracle, Becky hadn’t woken up.
I shook my head, trying to get back the air that had been knocked out of my own lungs. “No.”
Jack looked down at me. “Is this the part where I get to say that I told you this was a bad idea?”
He was smiling, though—the first genuine smile I’d seen from him since he’d come out of Uncle John’s surgery. The light from the fire picked out the strong, hard angles of his face and shadowed the graceful curve of his mouth. Shivers slid down my spine and all along my arms.
“Are you sure about that?” My voice sounded a little unsteady. I raised one hand, lightly tracing the line of Jack’s cheek.
Something sparked in his gaze. He shifted, leaning towards me—
A knock sounded on the front door.
Jack startled, rolling to his feet. Not as quickly as he would have done three months ago, but he was improving.
He steadied himself on the edge of the table, and a second later, I heard him open the door then say, “Mr. Holmes.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering whether it would be horribly unfilial to get up, shove my father back out into the street, and then slam the door in his face.
“Ah, Lucy.” Holmes’s voice broke in on me. “I was not sure whether I would find you still here.”
I opened my eyes to find Holmes looking from me to Jack, his gray eyes taking in my position—still on the floor—and no doubt the rumpled state of Jack’s clothing and my disordered hair, as well.
Jack cleared his throat. “There was nothing … that is, I hope you don’t think …”
Holmes fixed him with a keen gaze. “Notice that I am shaking your hand, young man, rather than gifting you with a broken jaw—as I would if I supposed for a moment that you had been guilty of any sort of impropriety towards my daughter.”
If it ever came to a fight between them, I wasn’t actually sure who would win. They were equally matched in height, but Holmes was thinner, his tall frame more spare.
Jack, though, smiled briefly, accepting the handshake that Holmes offered. “Thank you, sir.”
I stood up. “Have you been visiting Mycroft?”
Holmes carried a leather attaché case in one hand, stamped with an official-looking government seal like the ones I remembered seeing in my uncle’s Whitehall offices.
He glanced down at the case, then set it on the table. The catch was loose, and I caught a glimpse of the papers inside: some sort of complicated-looking diagrams for what seemed to be mechanical parts.
“You infer correctly,” Holmes said. “Mycroft wished to consult me over some recent unpleasantness at the Diogenes Club.”
Unless the members of the Diogenes had conspired to bore each other to death, it was difficult to imagine what sort of unpleasantness might have cropped up. Mycroft’s gentleman’s club was a bastion of upper-class English breeding: upper lips were stiff, collars were starched, and all talking—except in the Strangers Room—was strictly prohibited.
Holmes swung the sodden overcoat from his shoulders, dropping it over the back of a chair before sitting down.
“That, however, is not the reason for my visit.” He focused on Jack. “I have come with a proposition for you. There is a clinic, run by a man of Doctor Watson’s acquaintance—a colleague—that has had some significant success in aiding the recovery of people with injuries such as yours. I would be willing—”
Jack interrupted, his voice quiet, polite, but entirely firm. “Thank you, Mr. Holmes. But I can’t pay for anything like that. And I don’t want you to offer to help out of obligation. You don’t owe me anything.”
“You saved my life, Constable Kelly.” Holmes fixed Jack with another of his hard stares. “The debt is there, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not. If not for your quick wits and ready action, I would not be here to make this offer to you tonight. However, if you are worried that I offer assistance out of some form of sentimentality or pity, let me assure you that I do not. I am not the man to offer pity where none is required. Nor—as many besides Lucy will tell you—do I allow sentiment to influence my decisions.”
This was so patently true that even Jack couldn’t argue. Expecting sentimentality from Holmes was like asking a shark to sing lullabies.
“Lucy.” Holmes turned to me, flicking open the pocket watch he carried and consulting the time. “You are due at the Savoy tonight, are you not?”
I was. In fact, a glance at Holmes’s watch told me that I had to leave now, practically this moment, if I was to avoid arriving late for tonight’s performance. Still, I narrowed my eyes at Holmes.
“What are you up to?”
“I?” Holmes’s brows rose. “Nothing at all, beyond what I have already mentioned. There is a cab in the street outside; I directed my driver to wait. He will bring you to the Strand, while Constable Kelly and I take a few moments to discuss the matter before us.”
I nodded slowly. “Thank you.”
Jack still hadn’t spoken. Watching him, I couldn’t at all tell whether he was likely to accept Holmes’s offer.
“Tell Becky I said goodbye. I’ll see you next week?”
Jack tipped his head in acknowledgement, looking up at me only briefly. “Thanks for the reading lesson. I’ll see you then.”
CHAPTER 3
I woke with a jolt, sitting bolt upright. My heart was pounding so hard it felt as though my ribs ought to be cracking. The white cotton of my nightdress was damp and clammy with sweat.
I sat for a moment, resting my forehead against my raised knees and trying to erase the dream from my mind. The dark, moisture-slick walls of the ice house, the feeling of iron shackles around my wrists—
I straightened. Light was creeping in around the edges of the bedroom curtains, which meant that at least it was morning.
The worst was when the nightmare struck in the middle of the night, leaving me to lie awake for hours, staring at the ceiling and not wanting to close my eyes.
Someone rapped on the flat’s outer door, and I realized that was what had awakened me.
I allowed myself a silent curse and a fervent wish that I hadn’t screamed or cried out in the middle of the nightmare.
The night of the Jubilee Ball, Mycroft had been drugged, tied up, and threatened … Holmes and Uncle John could both easily have been killed … Becky had been captured by one of the villains—
I shook my head fiercely. It seemed like weakness—worse, self-indulgent weakness—to let myself be terrified of nightmares about that night, when everyone else had just as much if not more reason to be haunted by the memory of that affair than I did.
The real trouble was that the nightmares were never about what had actually happened. It was the could-have-happened scenarios that came to life in monstrous form every night.
I caught up my dressing gown, slipping it on as I went to answer the knock.
“Lucy!” I had barely gotten the door open when Becky bounced inside, blond braids flying. She had recently lost her two front teeth, and it showed when she smiled. “Jack has gone to stay with a friend of Doctor Watson’s who might be able to help him get better, and he left this morning, so I’m going to stay with you!”
She delivered the tumble of words in a single breath, beaming at me.
I hugged Becky automatically, still trying to blink away the last lingering remnants of the dream.
“That is good news.”
It was. If Jack really was willing to accept Holmes’s help—and if this colleague of Uncle John’s really could do something to make his injuries heal faster—then that was quite probably the best news I had heard in the last two months.
Even if he hadn’t bothered to tell me in person. Or say goodbye.
I worked at not letting the sting of that blossom into anger inside me.
Becky looked up at me, a slight frown marring her brows. “You don’t mind having me here to stay, do you, Lucy?”
I shook my head. It wasn’t fair to spoil Becky’s happiness with my own wish that I’d actually gotten the chance to punch her maddening brother in the face the night before.
“Mind? Of course I don’t mind. I’m delighted!” I manufactured an answering smile, which wasn’t hard. I really did love having Becky to stay with me. “We’re going to have a wonderful time.”
Becky’s face cleared. “Oh, good.” She bounced on her toes again. “Hurry and get dressed then, and come to the kitchen. Mrs. Hudson promised to teach me how to bake scones.”
An hour later, I was cleaning flour off my hands and watching as Mrs. Hudson pulled a tray from the oven.
“Ah, well.” Mrs. Hudson’s kindly, pink-cheeked face was carefully neutral as she inspected the pallid lumps of dough on the baking sheet. I’d somehow managed to make them turn out burned in some places and at the same time underdone in others. Possibly a new record.
“Perhaps if we served them with butter …” Mrs. Hudson began.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Hudson.” I smiled at her. “We had to take cookery classes when I was at school. If it were humanly possible to set the kitchen on fire while slicing cucumber sandwiches, I’m sure I would have done it.”
Becky giggled. The scones that she and Mrs. Hudson had made together were already resting on the kitchen table, steaming and golden in their perfection.
“We can feed them to Prince. He won’t mind.”
Holmes appeared in the kitchen doorway. He gave my scones a slightly startled look, then focused on Mrs. Hudson.
“Ah, Mrs. Hudson. I fear that I shall not be in for lunch today after all.”
Holmes’s housekeeper was used to my father’s ways. She simply slid the cold veal pie she had intended to serve back into the icebox.
“Will you be back for supper, Mr. Holmes?”
Holmes made a vague gesture. “That remains to be seen.”
Mrs. Hudson gave him a resigned look. “Just as you say, Mr. Holmes.”
Becky was busy offering half-burned scones to Prince, who was lying in front of the big cast-iron cooking range. Holmes looked at her a moment, then raised his eyes to meet mine. He didn’t speak, but he tilted his head just slightly towards the kitchen door.
I untied my apron. “I’ll be back in a moment, Becky.”
I followed Holmes through the doorway and into the hall, swinging the kitchen door shut behind me.
“What’s happened?” I demanded. My first thought was that there was some bad news about Jack, since Holmes clearly didn’t want to speak in front of Becky.
But his first words were, “The unpleasantness I mentioned at the Diogenes Club has taken a somewhat graver turn.”
I tried not to let out a breath of relief. “Graver in what way?”
Holmes’s face was grim, but there was an undercurrent of … not enjoyment, exactly, but at least satisfaction in his expression. He might dedicate his life to fighting criminal activity in London, but he also came alive at the news of a fresh challenge. That was simply how he was made.
“Murder.”
CHAPTER 4
“Murder,” I said. The word still somehow seemed entirely incompatible with everything I knew about the Diogenes. “Who has been killed?”
Holmes turned away from the carriage window. We were in a hansom cab, on our way across town to Mycroft’s club on Waterloo Place.
Becky had been happy to stay behind at Baker Street, having extracted a promise from Mrs. Hudson to teach her how to make shortbread this afternoon—and a promise from me that I would tell her all the details of the mystery when I came home.
Holmes raised his voice to be heard over the creak of the carriage springs and the steady clop of the horse’s hooves.
“The victim is one John Pettigrew, a retired general in the Indian Army. Which is odd, because …”
Holmes’s brows knitted together.
“Because?” I finally prompted.
Holmes gave a quick, impatient shake of his head. “It is immaterial. Matters have simply played out differently than I had anticipated, that is all.”
“Had you met this General Pettigrew?” I asked. “Do you have any idea why someone should want him dead?”
Holmes leaned back in his seat. “As you know, the Diogenes Club’s entire purpose is to provide a refuge for the most unsociable men in London. Some are shy, others misanthropic. General Pettigrew fell into the latter category. He was one of the club’s oldest members and had a pervasive hatred of the world and humanity in general.”
“He sounds a charming character.”
“As you say. However, to answer your question, I do not know of any specific reason why someone should have wished him dead.”
Holmes stopped as our cab drew up outside a handsome white stucco building, with bow windows and neoclassical columns framing the entrance.
“Are you sure that it’s all right for me to come inside with you?” I asked, eyeing the large brass knocker on the front door. “As I recall, the Diogenes isn’t exactly a bastion of progressivism when it comes to welcoming female visitors.”
I had come to the club before while we were working on another case. The ban on talking had prevented anyone from outright demanding that I leave, but there had been an absolute thunderstorm of outraged newspaper rattling from the reading room as I passed through.
“Quite probably. However, Watson is seeing patients at his surgery this afternoon, and I believe you may have better success than I at questioning some of the maidservants and kitchen staff. For some reason, girls of that class seem to find me intimidating.”
“No, really?”
Two years ago, I would have said that humor was as foreign to Holmes’s nature as sentimentality. But now the briefest trace of a smile hovered at the edges of his mouth before vanishing.
I followed him out of the carriage. “I wanted to ask you, where exactly is this clinic that Uncle John recommended to Jack?”
Holmes was frowning again, eyeing the front door of the Diogenes in the manner of a general planning a military attack on an enemy stronghold. But he answered without hesitation.
