Page 68 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
A flock of seagulls, which had been floating on the waves, spread their wings and took to the sky. He offered his arm to Mrs. Watson again. “Don’t be sad, ma’am. I am far happier today than I was a year ago, far happier even than I was three months ago. I simply do not know what will happen in the future, that’s all. None of us do.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I suppose you are right.”
He was. He was a bit melancholy, too, so he resolved to ask Holmes to make her erotic tale twice as salacious. That wouldn’t resolve the fundamental problem—not in the least—but it would be great fun, wouldn’t it?
They climbed back up to the top of the bluffs. Near the Garden’s gate, Mrs. Felton drove out and waved at them—she’d finished her work for the day and was leaving with Holmes’s letter to post. They detoured by the carriage house—the Garden’s coach still hadn’t returned.
Halfway down the somewhat muddy central path, a woman in a grey jacket and a matching pair of bloomers came around a dormant garden bed.
“Miss Stoppard?” As she neared, Lord Ingram asked with some hesitation. He’d never seen her in good light.
“That’s right,” said Miss Stoppard.
And walked past them without another word, headed for their cottage. Lord Ingram and Mrs. Watson exchanged a look.
In front of their cottage, Miss Stoppard knocked. Lord Ingram and Mrs. Watson stopped a few paces away. The woman didn’t seem to want any hospitality, best let her get on with what she had come to do.
Holmes opened the door.
Without any preamble, Miss Stoppard handed over an envelope. “Good afternoon, Miss Holmes. I have something for you from Miss Baxter.”
Mrs. Watson’s hand tightened around Lord Ingram’s forearm.
“Thank you,” said Holmes.
Miss Stoppard nodded, pivoted, and left.
By the time Lord Ingram and Mrs. Watson entered the cottage, Holmes had already broken the seal on the envelope.
She pulled out a card, glanced at it, then glanced up at Lord Ingram and Mrs. Watson. “The card says ‘Miss Baxter will be pleased to receive Miss Holmes and company this evening at six.’”
16
Oxford Street ranked among London’s—and therefore perhaps the world’s—busiest thoroughfares. So it should come as no surprise that Hanley Street, an offshoot of Oxford Street, had plenty of commercial establishments and that 23Hanley Street was a shopfront.
Yet Livia, standing across the street, was so dismayed she could barely understand the words on the display window.
fine patriotic souvenirs for her majesty’s golden jubilee.
Carriages rumbled past without cease in both directions. Customers ran with parcels to their carriages. Pedestrians darted between clarences and hansom cabs, then shouted and swore as they were splashed by churning carriage wheels.
With all the commotion, Livia still saw those words much too clearly.
She had made a terrible mistake. This couldn’t be the address toward which Mr. Marbleton had tried so hard to point her. Which one should it have been? She tried to recall the other addresses, but numbers and letters ran amok in her head.
Maybe he hadn’t touched the register at all. Maybe he’d meant to signal her some other way and she’d missed it entirely. Or maybe he hadn’t been able to do anything at all, but was as helpless as she herself and—
She took a deep breath. She must calm down. She must not despair. And she must not have so little faith in herself. For now, she was going to assume that she was correct, that this was the place.
She crossed the street, stopped directly before the display window, and squinted at the rows of neatly arranged merchandise inside. There were yellow-and-purple hats that would have made Charlotte’s magpie soul trill in joy, ribbons featuring the queen’s pudgy, unsmiling face, and teacups painted with the dates of her fifty years on the throne. There were also stacks of Jubilee playing cards and Jubilee fans, interspersed with cockades and what looked like rather fat Jubilee fountain pens.
The cockades!
She blinked and leaned down for a closer look. But there was no question, the glimpse of color and texture she’d seen on his coat—he had worn such a cockade as a stickpin.
All at once she could envision him, standing before the register in the Reading Room, looking at his guards and asking softly in German,What should I put down for my address?
The guards would respond along the lines ofAnything, as long as it’s wrong.
