Chapter Six
Twelve days ago
Miss Charlotte had yet to change out of her disguise, so it was a portly, redheaded young man who stood in the middle of the parlor, two slips of paper in his hands.
Mrs. Watson, still wearing her own traveling dress, as she’d returned from Manchester only a quarter hour ago, knew exactly what the cables said.
Miss B won’t eat eggs anymore.
Lord Bancroft sends his regards.
Even before she had opened the cables, a chill had pooled in the soles of Mrs. Watson’s feet. Mr. Mears, her butler, was highly competent. Had anything less than catastrophic taken place in Paris, he would not have sent a telegram, let alone two.
Her hands had clutched so tightly around those slips of paper that Penelope had had to pry them loose from her grip. And then she’d brought Mrs. Watson a large draught of whisky, which Mrs. Watson had tossed back as if it were so much room-temperature tea.
Miss Charlotte exhibited no such signs of agitation. From where Mrs. Watson sat, she could see the girl reflected in two different gold-framed mirrors. Every iteration of her was perfectly still, her expression, under the proliferation of false facial hair, as tranquil and bland as it had ever been. Yet something rippled and burned in the air. Mrs. Watson shivered.
Anger. She’d known Miss Charlotte an entire year and she had never once seen the girl angry.
Penelope glanced at Mrs. Watson. Had she felt the same tidal surge of wrath?
“I was just at Ravensmere, and Lord Bancroft did not meet with me. I guess he knew that until I learned about Bernadine, there was no point in seeing me, as I would not have agreed to anything he proposed.”
This made Mrs. Watson seethe.
“You missed dinner, Miss Charlotte,” said Penelope. “Are you hungry?”
“I wasn’t earlier,” answered Miss Charlotte slowly, “but now that I have some idea what Lord Bancroft wants, I believe I can have a nibble or two.”
She sat down, dropped the telegrams on an occasion table, and unwrapped the two hand-raised pies she’d bought at that little railway station as they inquired into the Christmas Eve Murder.
How long ago that seemed—and how utterly immaterial.
Miss Charlotte sliced open a cylindrical curry pie and ate one half methodically. She then did the same to a three-inch-across fruit tart, and similarly consumed one half, her motions smooth, her face serene.
It was not easy to read the young woman’s expression, but usually at mealtimes it was possible to detect a glow of pleasure upon Miss Charlotte’s countenance, especially when dessert courses were brought around.
Tonight that glow was absent.
Mrs. Watson’s heart pinched.
Miss Charlotte finished her supper, drained her travel canteen, and said quietly, “I must go back to Paris and take stock of the situation.”
She was no longer incensed. Not in the sense that she had leashed her anger but as if for her, anger was not a dark vine that hooked its barbed tentacles into the heart and refused to ever let go but as much of a soap-bubble emotion as surprise, something that existed only in the moment of reaction.
“We’ll come with you,” Mrs. Watson said immediately.
Her staff, too, were in that house.
Penelope leaped up. “I already checked. If we leave by the late train from Charing Cross, we should make Folkestone Harbour in time to take the first tidal boat across the Channel. We could be in Paris before ten in the morning.”
After Penelope left to secure tickets, Mrs. Watson said to Miss Charlotte, “My dear, I don’t question your decision at all—in fact, I think it’s the only right and proper thing to do. But surely Lord Bancroft, by his barbarous act, means for you to go to him this instant. Are you not worried that he might make things more difficult for you later on if you choose to make him wait?”
“I went to see him tonight, and he chose to make me wait,” countered Miss Charlotte.
But Lord Bancroft held the upper hand and could afford to antagonize them; the reverse was not true.
The mother hen in Mrs. Watson wanted desperately to explain that to Miss Charlotte. She had to remind herself that the girl, with her extraordinarily capacious mind, would have already considered the point before making her choice.
Instead, she murmured, “Can I just say how glad I am that you refused that man not once but twice?”
Miss Charlotte had been obliged to consider his second offer, which came after her exile from Society, with utmost seriousness. Marriage would have restored some of her former respectability, and that would have helped her family, especially her sister Miss Olivia.
“There was always something about him, wasn’t there,” Mrs. Watson went on, “that made you feel that he couldn’t be entirely trusted? Now I know it’s an emptiness of the soul. No wonder I never could bring myself to like him—and you know it’s in my nature to like everyone.”
“I always knew it would be only a matter of time before he made his vengeance felt,” said Miss Charlotte, wiping her fingers one by one with a napkin. She threw aside the napkin abruptly. “I didn’t think, however, that it would be at this moment.”
This moment when they needed all their energy and attention on Moriarty.
?Miss Olivia Holmes was unexpectedly enchanted by Aix-en-Provence.
For all that she had always wished to visit the South of France, she had largely aspired to the C?te d’Azur, sunny and mild even in the deepest winter, its towns and seaside villages fashionable retreats for those who could afford to get away from England in cold, damp January.
Charlotte, however, had not asked Livia to meet with her in Cannes, Antibes, Saint-Tropez—or even the little principality of Monaco—but in Aix-en-Provence.
We have visited Aix a time or two, and it charms Mrs. Watson greatly—perhaps it will have the same captivating effect on you.
Once Aix had been the seat of the Counts of Provence, a nexus of both power and culture. Now it was but a quiet provincial town. Why had Charlotte and Mrs. Watson journeyed more than once from Paris to visit the place, and then proposed it for their reunion?
A few months ago on the RMS Provence, Mrs. Watson had told Livia, We have news of Mr. Marbleton’s whereabouts. And we plan to take advantage of that.
Livia, when she’d recovered from her astonishment, had promptly offered her assistance, such as it was. But Mrs. Watson had smiled and said, You go on with your travels, my dear. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy your hard-won freedom. Write more tales of Sherlock Holmes, if you wish. We will ask for your help when the time comes.
The time was nigh, Livia was sure. Mrs. Watson had not disclosed Mr. Marbleton’s location, but dared Livia presume that he was being held right here?
Charlotte’s letter, inviting Livia to come to Aix, had reached Livia in Athens, as she and Mrs. Newell returned from Constantinople. Livia’s heart had not stopped hammering since, with both dread and wild hope. Aix-en-Provence had loomed large in her mind, a vaguely sinister locale full of locked doors and closed shutters, its public squares deserted, its very air heavy and oppressive.
When she arrived, however, she’d found the town lovely, full of edifices the colors of sunshine and warm butter. The sidewalk cafés, cool in the dappled green shade of tall elm trees, brimmed with patrons reading books and newspapers, and children looking about curiously as they drank their syrupy soda water. Fountains burbled everywhere, from splashy congregations of mythological creatures to some that were little more than a spigot on a wall spouting into a plain stone basin, yet somehow that little stream of water sparkled in the sun and made music as it fell.
She prayed that Mr. Marbleton, so talented at taking pleasure in small things, managed to enjoy the unspooling of daily life here: the vibrant produce on market days; the scent of thyme, aniseed, and good bread in the air; the soft thuds of coffee cups on marble-top café tables giving way to the clinking of wineglasses and silverware as day drifted into evening.
Was there—was there any chance at all that he had already spied her, walking about? Had he perhaps seen Charlotte and Mrs. Watson, too, on their earlier jaunts? Had he begun his own preparations, sensing that his escape was near—that maybe now, with her appearance, it was imminent?
He loved life; she never loved life so much as when she saw it through his eyes. But by that same token, as long as he remained a prisoner, her own freedom would be incomplete.
“Mademoiselle Holmes?” called out the clerk at the reception desk as she came through the hotel’s front door with enough patisserie for three Charlottes. “Mademoiselle, we have a letter for you.”
Charlotte!
Livia took the letter from the clerk, thanked him, and made sure that she walked normally out of the foyer and up the curving staircase to her bright, high-ceilinged room on the next floor. There she carefully set down the packages in her hands and sliced open the envelope.
Dear Livia,
I hope this letter finds you well and that you have been pleasantly situated in Aix-en-Provence.
I’m afraid I write with unhappy news.
Don’t worry, no one is in danger—at least not at the moment.
I have not told you this earlier, but in the past several weeks, I have received two notes from Lord Bancroft, each expressing a desire for greater understanding and friendship. It was obvious Lord Bancroft harbored ulterior motives, but it was not obvious what exactly he wanted.
The second of these notes arrived just as Mrs. Watson, Miss Redmayne, and I began our recent journey to England to call on Lord Ingram, who fractured his limb in an accident at Stern Hollow.
Livia sucked in a breath. Lord Ingram was the last person to break a bone while proceeding under his own power.
Instead of starting immediately for Paris after the visit—Lord Ingram appeared in decent form and I could discern no signs of foul play—we headed to London, so that I might call on Lord Bancroft and uncover his purpose in writing to me.
I did just that yesterday, but was not granted an audience. Upon reaching the hotel, however, I learned that henchmen under orders from Lord Bancroft had overrun Mrs. Watson’s house in Paris and taken its residents hostage.
Livia cried out, “What?”
Our return journey began within hours. We reached Paris this morning and found the house indeed occupied by four armed individuals, three men and one woman.
They have an air of mercenaries about them—the sort to do evil mechanically, rather than with personal relish. But they let Mrs. Watson, Miss Redmayne, and myself into the house without raising a fuss: My lord Bancroft, it would seem, understands that I will do nothing for him unless first assured of the well-being of everyone in the household.
The mercenaries have not mistreated anyone but hand down strict orders that they expect to be meekly and swiftly obeyed. Mr. Mears, the only man in the household, has been locked in his own room. Madame Gascoigne has to cook for everyone, Polly and Rosie Banning waiting on the mercenaries hand and foot.
Thankfully they let Mademoiselle Robineau remain with Bernadine in her room at all times.
When I saw her, Bernadine was not too badly off. Fortunately, at this point, Mademoiselle Robineau has been a part of the household for months. And she has an innate calm and a cheerful presence. So even though Bernadine must feel, to some extent, the fear and tension of the situation, within her own room, with the invaders out of sight, she seemed to be carrying on more or less normally except for a reduced appetite.
We were not allowed to remain long. After a quick visit with everyone and a few words spoken across Mr. Mears’s door, we were booted out. Miss Redmayne kindly put us up in her place, where I may compose letters and telegrams. She and Mrs. Watson are out now, purchasing enough ready-to-eat foods to supply a platoon. We will deliver all that, plus a large hamper of foodstuff from Lord Ingram, to the house this evening. It should make life easier for the staff. And, we hope, allow us another chance to see Bernadine.
By the time you receive this letter, on the morrow, I should be getting ready for the railway trip to Boulogne, there to cross the Channel back to England again.
To confront Lord Bancroft.
At this point the letter switched to a jumble of letters, which Livia recognized as the Cdaq Khuha code that she and Charlotte had devised to use with each other when they were children.
Deciphered, it read,
No doubt you feel anxious and likely wish that you could either journey to Paris to keep an eye on the situation or join me in England. But I must ask you to remain in Aix. Since I cannot be there, you must be my eyes and ears. I am counting on you.
Love,
Charlotte
?For most of her life, Livia had felt insufficiently heated. At the height of the English summer, she often needed a shawl. And even then, she would have preferred a fire laid in her room morning and evening, to dispel the chill brought in by a damp draught.
During the past few months, however, she had been gloriously, sensationally warm. Malta. Egypt. The Aegean Sea. Everywhere she’d broiled luxuriously, wallowing in the sensation of fingers and toes that didn’t feel the least bit cold. Why, Provence itself was prodigiously sultry.
She’d thought that somehow, with all the heat she’d soaked up, she would be like a sunbaked stone and remain warm for a while, even after day turned into night. How na?ve she had been. In a single moment, she felt herself transported back to that drafty bedroom at home, cold all over and dead certain she’d never again be warm enough.
Carefully she read the letter again, especially the part originally in cipher. Then she went down to the reception and said to the clerk, “Alas, I have some unwelcome news. My friends will not be able to join me as scheduled.”
“We are sorry to hear that, mademoiselle.”
“Thank you. I will let you know if anything changes.”
She began to walk away, then turned around, as if in afterthought. “In Paris I knew a Swiss manufacturer named Herr Albrecht. I’ve heard that he has a house in Aix. Would you happen to know anything about it?”
“Herr Albrecht? Mais oui, mademoiselle. He bought an h?tel particulier seven or eight doors further east on the Cours Mirabeau, on this side of course—this is the superior side. But I don’t believe he visits much.”
So Charlotte’s information was correct.
Livia walked out of the hotel onto the Cours Mirabeau. Charlotte had never said that Mr. Marbleton was here, only that Miss Moriarty had become convinced that das Phantomschloss, the rumored castle where Moriarty kept his treasures, secrets, and prisoners, did not exist. That instead he made use of a loose network of locations, the house in Aix-en-Provence under the name of Albrecht—one of his aliases—among them.
Livia crossed the boulevard to the less superior side of the Cours Mirabeau, which faced north and would be in the shadows for much of the day as the sun rounded toward the south.
She passed a bank, an elegant patisserie, and an office for some sort of agricultural cooperative. Another bank. A school that was empty of students at the height of summer.
Her heart pounding, she cast a quick glance across the street.
That house. Yes, that particular house. She risked another peek from underneath the tassel fringes of her parasol. Four floors up, did a curtain flutter?
Her beloved Mr. Marbleton—her Stephen—looking down at her?
Yesterday, when she’d walked the same route, that thought and that thought alone had consumed her. Now the chaos inside her head was a sustained wail, a cry for help in the middle of an infinite wasteland.
Would Bernadine be all right? Would Charlotte be all right? Would any of them, in the end, be all right?
?The unmarked carriage was parked two streets away from the headquarters of Credit Lyonnais, where a cache of secrets that Charlotte had stolen from Moriarty the previous December sat undisturbed in an underground safe-deposit box. The inside of the carriage, with its curtains drawn, was dim—and a bit warm. Charlotte studied her slightly hazy reflection in the mirror.
She was disguised as an old woman this morning, but not an old woman who bore any resemblance to Mrs. Ramsay, the character she’d played on the RMS Provence. This old woman, with her fully grey hair, her plain black attire, and her hunched posture, would attract little notice but for the headscarf suggesting that she might be an adherent of the Eastern Orthodox church.
She put away the mirror and nibbled, in a most genteel manner, on a cream puff held in an embroidered handkerchief—and started only a little when a knock came at the carriage door.
“C’est moi, madame, votre seigneur et ma?tre,” announced a reedy and somewhat crackly voice.
Charlotte almost choked on her cream puff—and hastened to admit her “lord and master.” A man as old as she must currently appear hooked his walking stick over his arm, grabbed the side of the open door, made a feeble attempt to climb up—and promptly planted himself face-first in the interior of the carriage.
This heavenly creature, clad in fashion from at least three decades ago, his cologne overpowering, his face spotted with age, squinted at her in indignation as he finally managed to raise himself to the seat opposite hers.
“Will you never learn to dress with discretion, woman? Why, every man in Paris would look twice at your headscarf,” he sputtered.
After that huffy commentary, he took a moment to catch his breath before pulling the carriage door shut with a shaky hand.
Catching her gaze on his hand, he pointed an equally shaky finger at her. “This is all your fault, woman. How many times have I told you, at our age, you can’t keep me up at night like that?”
“So…” Charlotte said meekly, “no more games of draughts before bed?”
The man coughed. “And no more waking me up to massage your calves.”
Charlotte sat up straighter. “Does that mean that when my calves cramp up in the future, I can call on our new footman for it? You know, Pierre, the one with biceps the size of hams?”
The man coughed some more. “Well, Pierre must work during the day, too. I’ll buy you a Granville hammer that you can use to percuss your limbs at night.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. “A vibrator?”
She leaped across the carriage and wrapped her arms around him. “You would buy a vibrator, sir? For me? Oh, my decrepit angel!”
The man burst out laughing. “Vibrator, what a word. Makes those clunky devices sound absolutely deviant.”
He kissed her on the lips. “Hullo, Holmes.”
She drew back a few inches—that perfume indeed overwhelmed. “Hullo, Ash. Thanks for coming to my aid.”
“Speak nothing of it—what’s an English Channel crossing or two between friends?” But his expression sobered. “I’m sorry for what happened, and I’m incensed on Miss Bernadine’s behalf.”
She flattened her lips. “As am I.”
She felt another flare of anger, that unfamiliar emotion, before it was superseded by a stab of fear, a sensation that she was coming to know more than she wished to.
“Don’t worry,” said her lover quietly. “He might laugh now, but he won’t laugh long, not if I have anything to say about it.”