“Yes, I did, and it was most edifying.”
“I am quite sure.” She eyed his apparel pointedly. “You do not normally dress in your finery to attend a Society meeting.”
Kingsley began to squirm and so did Conan Doyle. “Kingsley, get down. Daddy is trying to talk to Mama.” He slid the boy off his lap.
“Daddy, what about my soldier?”
Conan Doyle irritatedly snatched the toy from his little boy’s grip and set it down on his writing desk. “Daddy will have it mended. Now go and find out what your sister’s up to. Go on.” He chivvied the boy from the room with a wave and a paternal look.
Louise Doyle sank wearily onto the edge of a leather armchair. From the look on her face it was clear the interrogation was only just beginning.
“After the meeting, did you go for supper with one of the members?”
“Ahhhh, let me think. Um, yes… yes I did.”
“A gentleman… or a lady?”
At that moment, Florence, the maid, entered the study bearing a letter on a silver salver.
“A letter arrived for you, sir. By first post.”
“Thank you, Florence.” He bade her to place it on the desk with an impatient wave, but she obstinately remained hovering by the door. “A-a-a lady, as a matter of fact. A medium. Yes, quite fascinating. Our conversation, that is. We discussed séances and—”
“She must be a very pretty lady for you to wear your best suit and take the time to wax your moustaches.”
“Pretty? I–I didn’t really notice. I — no, I’d say she was, if anything, a little… frowsy. You know, the spinsterly type.”
“A spinster, indeed? I know many of the members of the Society. Might I recognize the unmarried lady’s name?”
“No, ah, no. Probably not. She only recently joined. Ah, I believe her name was Jean. Yes, Jean… Leckie, or something like that.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Florence interrupted. She held up the envelope. “That’s who the letter is from, a Miss Jean Leckie.”
Something deeply wounded flashed across Louise Doyle’s face, but she reined it in behind a tight smile. “How interesting. You two had dinner just last evening and here she has already sent you a billet-doux. She sounds very keen.”
“Hardly a billet-doux, darling,” Conan Doyle said with an uneasy chuckle. “What ever must Florence think? A billet-doux, indeed!”
To make matters worse, the letter had arrived in a lilac envelope, an incriminatingly feminine color. But even as he waffled, Conan Doyle realized he had a possible bolt-hole: he could reveal the fact that he’d been called in to consult on a murder. But then this was no ordinary murder — it was an assassination, and one he had been officially proscribed from speaking about — to anyone. A logjam of sentences crowded Conan Doyle’s throat and suffocated there.
Louise Doyle rose unsteadily from her chair, eyes gleaming, her pale features cinched in a broken smile. “Well, Arthur. I’ll leave you to read your letter in private. I think I can guess exactly what kind of message it is.”
And with that, his wife tottered from the study, helping herself along the way by leaning on every piece of furniture that came to hand.
The maid flushed and fidgeted. She handed the letter to her master, bounced a quick curtsy, and muttered, “I’d best be getting on with the ironing” and fled the room.
That had been a disaster. But now it was over, Conan Doyle felt his spine unratchet a cog or two. Still, his hands shook with excitement as he slashed a letter opener beneath the flap and tore open the envelope. At the sight of exquisite feminine handwriting, his heart quickened and he fought to focus his mind as he read the short missive.
Dearest Arthur,
I so enjoyed our little tête-à-tête last evening. I was sorry to see it cut short. If you are free today, perhaps we may luncheon together. My train arrives at Waterloo Station at 12:30 p.m., Platform 2. If you are unable to make it on such short notice, I shall understand, although I will be sad not to see your handsome face again.
Yours fondly,
Miss Jean Leckie
As his eyes tripped over the elegant flourish of her signature, a thrill surged through him. It seemed shockingly forward, but then Conan Doyle reasoned, times were changing and Miss Leckie was of a generation where the old rules of chaste female decorum seemed laughably twee. He rose to his feet, dithering. If he left now, so suddenly, it would be clear that his departure was in response to the letter. But then the image swam up in his mind of Jean’s graceful neck, the doeish eyes, and the baying hound of desire slipped free of its leash. Suddenly energized, he rushed from the study and galumphed up the staircase to his room. If he hurried, he might just catch the 10:45 train back to London.
Minutes later, Conan Doyle was pedaling his three-wheeler bicycle along the tree-lined lane that ascended in a long, sweeping curve into Haslemere. He was standing on the pedals, thighs burning, as he muscled up the final hill before the train station, when he was snatched from his reverie by a wisssshthump… wisssssshthump…
Suddenly, he was overtaken by a man in a flapping canvas coat, goggles and a backward cap, sitting astride a fiery broomstick — a steam-powered bicycle. Conan Doyle was an enthusiastic cyclist, and had published articles on the benefits of exercise and mental relaxation afforded to him by cycling, but now he cursed his tricycle, which by comparison seemed ponderous and lumbering. The steam cyclist swooped effortlessly up the steep hill dragging a wispy vapor trail of steam. Conan Doyle felt a stab of envy and grumbled to himself, “I shall have to get one of those.”
CHAPTER 7
SHANGHAIED IN WATERLOO
Conan Doyle panted into Haslemere station, stiff-legged and red-faced, only to find that he was annoyingly early as the persistent fog made nonsense of railway timetables. Fortunately, this gave him time to snatch up a copy of The Times, and during the train ride to London he read with great interest the official version of Lord Howell’s assassination. Prime Minister Gladstone expressed outrage at the murder, which he laid at the feet of “International Anarchists” and other shadowy groups (made up mostly of foreigners) striving to topple the legitimate government of Great Britain. Somehow the paper had produced a highly accurate sketch of Vicente, Lord Howell’s Italian valet, whom Gladstone thundered, “Would feel the lash of British Justice!”
With just ten miles to London, he tossed the paper aside, flipped open his leather portfolio, and slid out his Casebook: a slim leather volume secured by a strap and a tiny padlock. He reached beneath his collar and drew out a key on a long ribbon. The key sprung open the lock and Conan Doyle took out a fountain pen and turned to the blank first page. For the remainder of the journey, he scribbled an account of his adventure of the previous night and the mysteriously vanishing body of Charlie Higginbotham. When he finished his account, he snapped the cap back on his fountain pen and took out the newspaper cutting tucked between the Casebook’s pages.
“Fog Committee Sees No Solution”
His eyes dropped to the large photograph and the cadre of high-powered politicos and industrial magnates seated around the table. He scanned the line of puffed-up faces and stopped at the figure whose features registered only as an anonymous gray blur indentified by the enigmatic caption as UNKNOWN.
A whistle sounded as the London train passed the signal and began its rumbling deceleration into Waterloo Station. He closed the journal in his lap and studied it. Written across the cover in his own neat hand was: Casebook No. 2 followed by a hovering colon waiting to complete the thought. The man who created Sherlock Holmes considered a moment and then uncapped his fountain pen, touched its gold nib to smooth leather, and penned in a careful, steady hand: The Dead Assassin.