A Monstrous Regiment of Women

Miles was with her, the two of them nearly concealed behind the heaps of flowers, fruit baskets, cards, books, and magazines. Neither of them recognised me. He rose warily, but politely; she looked up politely, and then her face beneath its bruises and bandages changed.

“Mary? Good heavens, it’s you, Mary! You look marvellous!”

“The astonishment in your voice is so flattering, Ronnie. Oh don’t be silly, I know I usually look like a dog’s dinner, but if I don’t spend some of this money, the revenue people will eat it all. Good afternoon, Lieutenant Fitzwarren. Sit down—I’m not staying.” Of course he did not. “Ronnie, tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know, Mary, truly I don’t. All I can remember is, it was such a crush—there’d been something on the line and the trains hadn’t been coming in, something like that. And then it was cleared and I remember feeling the air moving down the tunnel, and then people started to push forward, and that’s all, and I’m very glad I can’t remember the rest of it.”

“You didn’t see anyone you know?”

“If my own mother had been there, I shouldn’t have seen her, unless she had been immediately in front of me. Why do you ask?”

I studied her carefully and decided her colour wasn’t too bad.

“Because there’s a possibility you were pushed, Ronnie.”

“But of course I was pushed, I told you—now wait a moment, do you mean… ? You mean deliberately pushed, don’t you? What a mind you have, Mary. Why on earth would anyone want to do that? It was an accident.”

“Has it not occurred to you that there have been rather a lot of fatal accidents around the Temple recently?” I asked her gently.

“No, Mary! Don’t be absurd. That’s… No.”

“Why do you think we haven’t let you be here alone? First Holmes, then either Dr Watson or Lieutenant Fitzwarren.”

That took most of the splutters out of her mouth, so that she lay there, as white as her sheets. Her hand sought Miles’s, who looked, I thought, as ill as she did.

“I’m very sorry to do this to you, Ronnie, but something is going on in the Temple, and I have to find out what it is.”

She looked at me for a long minute, her face growing ever more pinched. “Iris?” she said finally.

“She was part of it, made to look like some kind of warning from the drug world. And in October, Lilian McCarthy. And late August—”

“Delia Laird. You actually believe this.”

“I don’t know, yet. Ronnie, how much are you leaving the Temple in your will?”

“Twenty thousand. Why do you… No. Oh, no, Mary, you can’t mean it.”

“Ronnie,” I said clearly and with all the honesty I could manufacture, “I don’t think Margery is involved.”

“How could she not be, if you’re right?”

Good question.

“She could not have been personally involved with any of the deaths,” I said. “She had alibis for all three of those periods of time.”

“Someone else, then?”

“It’s possible that someone close to Margery is doing it. Even if it’s something Margery could do, I don’t see that it’s something she would do. I’m sorry, I’m not being very clear.”

“Yes, I see what you’re saying,” she said eagerly. “Even if Margery could commit… murder, she wouldn’t do it for money.”

It was not quite what I had meant, but I left it.

“Then who?” asked Miles.

“Someone, as I said, close to Margery, someone ruthless, intelligent, and who either benefits somehow from Margery’s wealth or who imagines he or she is doing Margery a service.”

“Marie,” whispered Veronica.

“Would Margery have gone to York without her?” I asked. Veronica’s face fell.

“No. Probably not.”

“I’ll find out, but I doubt she has the brains for it. Who would know about the wills… who leaves what?”

“Margery, of course. Rachel Mallory, she supervises the office staff. Come to that, anyone with access to the filing cabinets. There’s a file in there entitled ‘Wills,’ so we have a record of bequests.”

Convenient. “Is the cabinet kept locked?”

“Oh, yes. But the keys are in Susanna’s desk drawer, which isn’t locked.”

“So no more than two hundred people could have seen the file. That narrows my search down considerably: all I have to do is find someone who can read and who loves Margery. Easy enough.”

“What are you going to do, Mary?”

“Make myself indispensable around the Temple and ask many chatty questions.” And soon, I did not add, I would make suggestions that I was about to write a new will.

“Be careful, Mary.”

“Me? Good heavens, there’s no danger for me. You haven’t said anything about Holmes, though, have you? That he’s a friend of mine?”

“Not since you told me not to.”

Oh dear. “And before?”

“I don’t know. I vaguely remember saying something about the two of you, just a remark, such as ‘I had rooms in Oxford with a girl reading theology who actually knew Sherlock Holmes.’ Something like that.”

“Whom did you say it to?”

“I can’t remember, Mary, I’m terribly sorry, but there were half a dozen people, and I think I was at the Temple, but it might well have been a weekend house party.”

She was getting upset, which would do her no good.

“Don’t worry about it, Ronnie. If it comes to you, let me know, but something that vague—it’s not likely to be of any importance. What is important is getting you well and keeping you safe. I don’t think they’ll try again, but I don’t wish to lose a friend because I misjudged a madman. I’d like you to do two things for me.”

“Anything.”

“Listen to what they are before you agree,” I suggested. “First, I’d like to inform Scotland Yard. They’ll come and ask for a statement. You’ll have to tell them about the will, and when they ask if you were pushed, all you need tell them is that you can’t remember it but it might have been possible. They’ll put a guard on your door until the doctor says you may leave.”

“Is that it?”

“No. The second thing is, I want you to go away. Not for long, two or three weeks at the most, but thoroughly away. We’ll tell everyone you’re in a private clinic, recuperating. You can even go to one, if you like.”

“I can’t, Mary.”

“You must. You’re going to be out on home leave for at least three weeks, in any case. We’ll just make you a home from home. Please, Veronica, I beg you. My eyes are going to be too busy to keep one on you.”

“If I may?” Miles spoke up. “There’s a lodge I use, in Scotland. A bit on the bleak side this time of year, but there’s a large woodpile.”

“Perfect,” I got in before Veronica could say no. “You’ll take Ronnie up as soon as the doctors here give her leave, and you’ll stick to her like glue until I give you the high sign.”

I completely ignored Ronnie’s slow flush. Miles shot her a glance and retracted his hand, then scowled sternly down at her bedcover.

“There’re servants there, of course,” he said. “As chaperones. If you don’t think—that is…”

“I can only see one possible complication, Lieutenant Fitzwarren,” I said, and stopped there. He met my eyes, and his spine slowly straightened.

“There is nothing that need concern you, Miss Russell. While Veronica—while the safety of Miss Beaconsfield is my responsibility, you need not worry yourself as to my fitness.”

“That is most gratifying, Lieutenant Fitzwarren,” I said, and it did not seem odd to either of us that I, barely more than a girl, should stand in judgement concerning him. “Either Holmes or I will be here tomorrow, and we will arrange for transport and communication. In the meantime, you will, I hope, say nothing about this to anyone, even your families.” They agreed, nervously. I turned to go, and my eye fell on the shaky pile of reading material. “Is there a Strand in there?” I asked, and without waiting for permission, I began to paw through the stack until I found the December issue, with the article I was looking for. “May I borrow this? Thanks awfully.” I stepped forward and kissed the air above Veronica’s cheek, a gesture that, combined with the form of the thanks, surprised me perhaps more than it did her. Hospitals did odd things to one’s personality, even if one were only passing through.

Fighting the urge to wiggle my fingertips at them in farewell, I left them to their uncomfortable love. Two weeks or so in a Scottish hunting lodge would drive them either into each other’s arms or at each other’s throats.

I made my way to a public telephone and asked for Scotland Yard’s number. While waiting for the connexion, I glanced through the article, “An Epoch-Making Event—Fairies Photographed,” coauthored by Arthur Conan Doyle, to all appearances written in utter seriousness. It was illustrated, as the title said, by photographs of vapid-looking female children gazing right through the images of stiff fairy figurines, the artifice of which was so blatant that I should have taken it as a joke (a rather sophisticated one, considering Conan Doyle’s usual heavy-handed style) had it not been for Watson’s reaction. It seemed that the world in general did not regard it as a joke. Conan Doyle’s fascination with the supernatural had been growing over the past years, particularly after the loss of his son in the war. Spiritualism had until now mostly been kept out of the stories he published about Holmes (with the occasional flight of fancy that caused the real Holmes to growl) but to have a piece of sensational literature such as the fairies article published, not only under the Doyle name, but in the very magazine the Holmes stories appeared in, was thoughtless, to say the least. Holmes blamed an American influence for the Doyle eccentricity, and as I read the article, I had to admit that his disgust had not been without justification.

The telephone crackled and the woman told me I was connected to Scotland Yard. It took a short time to reach the Criminal Investigations division, but once I was through, I put on a voice.

“Good afternoon,” I cooed. “I should like to speak with Inspector John Lestrade, please. He’s not? Oh dear, that is too bad. Could you tell me then—” I waited, and when the voice had stopped, I paused in silence for a moment, then applied a layer of ice to my voice. “No, there is not ‘something you can do for me,’ my dear man. The duke would not care for that in the least. Could you—” This second interruption I greeted with a lengthy silence, then dropped my voice and froze the man’s ear. “Young man, if you wish to attain higher rank in your chosen profession, might I suggest that you learn to kerb what is obviously a deep-seated tendency towards ill manners? Now, as I was saying. Could you kindly tell me when the good inspector might be present to receive a telephone call? And before you are driven to ask—no, it would not be convenient to have him telephone me, or I should have suggested it in the first place.”

The man on the other end cleared his throat and spoke in strangled tones. “Yes, mum. You’ll understand, mum, I can’t be positive about his schedule, but I know he has a meeting here in the Yard at four, and he’ll for sure come to his office afterwards, around five.”

“Very well. You will tell him to expect my call at ten minutes past five.”

“Mum? If I could just tell him who’s—” I gently rang off. Good. Five o’clock gave me plenty of time to dress myself, for Lestrade and for my debut at the Temple.

I spent the afternoon at the Turkish baths, being steamed, pounded, powdered, and perfumed, then manicured, plucked, coiffured, and dressed in clothing brought at my direction by Mrs Q, until finally, polished and gleaming, I was escorted carefully out to the pavement, a moving work of artifice, a monument to the skills of beautician and couturier. All I wanted was a brace of Afghan hounds. Taxis slavered at my feet.

I chose one whose leather work did not look as though it would put ladders into my stockings.

“Scotland Yard, please. And I’d like to approach it from the Embankment side, not from Whitehall.”

“Right you are, miss.”

I could, of course, have asked Mycroft to retrieve a more complete account of the police investigation into Iris Fitzwarren’s murder, and in fact I did think about it, for perhaps five seconds. I had become involved in this whole affair through a friend, and if there was a case here, it was mine, not Holmes’. Veronica’s safety was now a personal responsibility, and I had no intention of allowing Holmes to talk me out of carrying it through in my own way.

My goal for the evening was Inspector John Lestrade, the only person I knew to any degree within Scotland Yard. Holmes knew Lestrade professionally, had worked with his father numerous times in the Baker Street days, and I had met Lestrade two years before when he had been “in charge” of the investigation into the attempted murders of Mr S. Holmes, Miss M. Russell, and Dr J. Watson. (Needless to say, Holmes and I had solved the problem; Scotland Yard took the credit.)

Unfortunately, Lestrade was not involved in the Iris Fitzwarren case. Even if he had been, I could hardly ring him up casually and expect him to answer my questions for the sake of some dubious old times. Indeed, considering the impression I’d left him with, I knew that if he were told that Mary Russell was waiting outside his office, he very probably would go out the back entrance. No, a subtler approach was required.

When the hideous building was in sight, I tapped on the glass and signalled the driver that I wished to stop on the river side of the road. He stopped beneath a streetlamp and came around to speak with me.

“Driver, we need to wait here for a few minutes. I wish to intercept a friend who will be coming out soon, but I… I cannot go in to meet him, his… colleagues might not approve. Do you take my meaning?” I met his eyes, and by the dim light, he gave me a grin, though not the knowing leer I was braced for.

“Yes, miss. Will he be expecting you?”

“My good man, you have a ready grasp of the essentials, I see. No, he is not expecting me. Would you mind awfully…”

“Just tell me what your friend looks like, miss, and leave it to me.”

Something in my description changed his knowing expression to one of discreet puzzlement. (Lestrade’s height, perhaps, compared with mine? Or was it the phrase “like a ferret, or rat”?) However, he took up his lounging position readily enough, and when Lestrade appeared (at 5:20, not 5:15, as I had estimated, but with the resentful irritation I had expected to see in his shoulders, from the ducal telephone call that had not come), the driver pushed away from the wall, looked towards the car for my white flag of confirmation, and dodged across the heavy bridge traffic to approach the inspector. Captions were unnecessary in the pantomime that followed, and it ended with Lestrade, puzzled and wary and still irritated, following the driver to the cab.

He put his head in and ran an experienced eye over me.

“Now, miss, what’s all this your driver’s been telling me about?” His eyes had reached my face again, and this time they stopped there. He leant forward, squinting, and then his ill-shaven jaw dropped. “My God. You’re—Miss Russell, I never expected to see—is Mr Holmes—” He jerked his head back out the door, leaving his hat inside, but when the now frankly baffled driver failed to metamorphise into the éminence grise of a purportedly retired consulting detective, Lestrade looked back inside and cleared his throat.

“Why, Miss Russell, I doubt I’d have recognised you on the street. You’ve, er, you’ve changed.” Such acuity had led Holmes to his renowned high opinion of the official police. I had to admit, however, that the colourful flapper in the dark taxi did bear only a passing resemblance to the gangly, ill-dressed nineteen-year-old he had last seen.

“Full marks, Inspector, although I believe that the first time we met, I was in evening dress. But I agree, it has been quite a while.” I held his hat out to him.

He took it, glanced a last time at my silken ankles, and withdrew his gaze to my face and his thoughts to my presence.

“You wanted to see me, then?”

“I should like to buy you a drink, Inspector.”

For some reason, this did not seem to meet with wholehearted enthusiasm. On the contrary, his habitually cramped features tightened into open suspicion.

“Why?” he asked bluntly.

“Or dinner, if you have the time.”

“Why?”

“You will become uncomfortably damp if you persist in that position,” I commented mildly. It was drizzling.

“You’re right. It’s time I took myself home.”

“Just one drink, Inspector, and a few questions. And, I may have some information in return.”

“About?”

“Iris Fitzwarren.”

“Not my case,” he said immediately, his eyes sharpening.

“I am aware of that.”

“Why me?”

“A drink, Inspector?”

His long day and a strong disinclination to put himself into my clutches battled with a simple curiosity, the policeman’s innate desire for information, and other, more elemental urges, as well. With the circumspection of a male black widow spider approaching his beloved, Lestrade climbed in beside me. The driver stood waiting.

“Where to, miss?”

I looked to Lestrade for advice, and he in turn spoke to the driver.

“You know where the Bell and Bugle is?”

“I do, sir,” he said, and climbed into his seat, fastened the rain cape over his legs, and we started up.

“But,” Lestrade said to me, “I’ll pay for the drinks.”

The darkness hid my smile. I had thought he would.

I allowed Lestrade to hand me out onto the wet pavement, then arranged with the driver, whose unlikely name was Mallow, to wait for me. The man had definite possibilities as an ally, and I did not wish to lose him.

Lestrade had a pint of ale; I ordered a mixed cocktail, a monstrosity I normally avoided like the plague but which fitted my present persona. He swallowed a third of his glass at one go, put it down, and fixed me with a beady eye.

“Very well, young lady, what is this all about?” he demanded. I smiled pityingly, to tell him it hadn’t worked, and began deliberately to remove my purple gloves, finger by finger.

“Ladies first, Inspector. Before I tell all, I need to know the things the newspapers are not saying about the Iris Fitzwarren case.”

“What makes you think I know anything about it?”

“For pity’s sake, Inspector, it’s obvious you do. I should think you had a meeting with the investigating team just this afternoon.” The ventured shot sank home, to my relief. I pressed on rapidly. “There was something strange about her death. What was it? What connexion did it have with the club? And why are you looking for Miles Fitzwarren?” His head came up fast.

“Do you know where he is?” he demanded.

I fluttered my eyes at him and complained prettily.

“You see? No one ever tells me anything. I didn’t know you’d lost him. How could I? I don’t know what you people do know—how could I possibly suspect what it is you don’t know?” I ran one polished finger around the rim of my glass and looked up at him. “However, if you’d like to tell me what you do know…”

“Oh, stop that,” he said irritably, and I laughed and settled back in my chair. “All right, but it’d better be worth it, and no one’s to know where it came from.”

“No one but Holmes,” I agreed, and he nodded and drank deeply.

“You’re right,” he said in a low voice, “though I don’t know how you guessed.” He stopped and shot me a glance not lacking in humour. “Oh, right, I forgot. You never guess. How you deduced, then. Yes, there was something peculiar about her death. A couple of somethings, but most of all was the way she was killed. We’ve had three other deaths like hers in the last few months, two during the same night back in July, then one in late November. There was… a kind of mutilation common to all four, after death.”

“Facial?” I suggested. He started to ask me how I had guessed, then visibly changed his mind.

“Yes. The earlier ones we knew about; the two who got it first had given us information concerning a certain importer, shall we say. The other one had a grievance against him, too.”

“A personal one?”

“Yes. He was apparently not involved with the use of… the importer’s wares, but his cousin, who was also his closest friend, was. The cousin died, he began to look into the death on his own, and five weeks later was killed for his trouble.”

“Inspector Lestrade, I’m not a solicitor looking for evidence of slander. The man was, or is, I assume, importing drugs. He’s killed three people who threatened to expose him, and he may have killed Iris Fitzwarren as well, for the same reason he killed the nosey cousin. What is his name?”

“Where is Miles Fitzwarren?”

“Safe. Unwell, but as safe as Holmes and several responsible doctors can make him. If you wish, Holmes can arrange that you or your colleague be taken to him. Now, the name?”

“Tommy Buchanan is the name he’s going by at the moment. Heard of him?”

“No. Why do you connect Iris with him, other than the circumstances of her death? Oh come now, Inspector, I have to know before I can give you my information.”

“Don’t want much, do you?” He stood up and looked at my half-empty glass. “Another drink?”

“Thank you. The same.” I lifted the glass as if to drain it, and when his back was turned, I took it from my lips and exchanged it for an empty glass from the next table. Its previous owner was deep in conversation with a young lady, and neither of them noticed, even when he absently picked up my lipstick-stained remnants and tossed down the strange contents. Lestrade came back.

“All right. But for Holmes’ sake, it better be good. There was a note in her handbag, written on a corner of newspaper, that said, ‘Tommy, the Poseidon, midnight.’ The Poseidon being Buchanan’s club,” he added. “She got there about eleven-thirty, but Buchanan wasn’t there that night; in fact, he wasn’t even in town. He was having dinner with some friends in Surrey, spent the night there.”

“Convenient.”

“Yes, but verified.”

“So he personally is off the hook.”

“Exactly.”

“Colleagues, employees, and henchmen?”

“Half a dozen of them. Nothing specific on any of them yet, but two of them have a history of knives.”

“What else was in her handbag?”

He hesitated at the abrupt change of direction but could find nothing objectionable in it.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Money purse, powder compact, lipstick, small mother-of-pearl penknife, handkerchiefs, key ring with the keys to her flat, to her parents’ place, and one to each of her free clinics. A fifth one hasn’t yet been identified, some sort of house key. She hadn’t been robbed, there was money in the purse, and she had a gold bracelet and a small pearl ring on.”

“Inspector, I should very much like to see a detailed list of what she had with her.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Russell, that’s going too far.”

“I could possibly tell you where the fifth key goes.”

He snorted. “You’d better tell me a lot more than that. How about starting with what your interest is. Was she a friend of yours?”

“Not at all. I did meet her, the night she died, in fact.”

“Where? Not at the nightclub?”

“Unfortunately, no. At the Temple.”

“You? Went there?” A curious melange of incredulity, amusement, and scorn swept across his tight little face. I ignored them all.

“Yes, I went there. Your fifth key almost certainly opens a door in there—if not an outside door, then to one of the offices.”

“Fine, I’ll tell—I’ll let the investigator in charge know. Why were you there?”

“Business.” I exaggerated.

“What kind of business? Last I heard, you were in your studies at Oxford.”

“A client asked that I go there.”

“A client? Oh, blimey, not you, too. Who’s your ‘client’?”

“I’m sorry, Inspector, there’s a certain confidentiality involved that I’m not prepared to breach just now. There are other things, however, that I think might interest you.” I looked around us. The smoke-filled room had become crowded and very noisy, and we had to raise our voices. “Not here, though. I want to go back to your office.” Lestrade looked exasperated. “I know, but you wouldn’t have let me come up if I’d just sent my name up, would you?”

“Why the—why on earth should I let you come up now?”

I leant forward to meet his eyes directly, then said clearly, “Fraud. Three women dead, probably murdered. Preventing a fourth woman’s death.”

We went to his office.

The room had not changed much in the two years since a marksman had come close to murdering me with a bullet through the window that overlooked the river. The dust was thicker, the walls grimier, but it was surprisingly neat, particularly when compared to Holmes’ rat’s nest of a study. I took the proffered chair, across the desk from him, and nearly quailed before his ferrety glower. Nonetheless, I had to see the list. I told him so, and he exploded.

“All right now, Miss Russell, I’ve been patient with you, God knows why, on a Saturday night when a Christian might expect to be at home. You keep hanging in front of my nose these little hints about how much information you have, but it’s me who talks. Another little technique you learnt from your teacher Mr Holmes, no doubt. I’m beginning to think you don’t know anything about this business at all.”

“Would I do that to you?”

“Why ever not?”

“Would I do that to Holmes?”

That gave him pause, because it was obvious that I, a person whom Sherlock Holmes had called his partner, would not voluntarily put my partner’s relationship with the police into jeopardy without very good cause.

“Please,” I asked, “please, just let me see the list, and then I’ll tell you all I can.”

He did not notice that I had not said “all I know,” but I thought he was going to refuse, anyway. However, in the end he went to his filing cabinet and withdrew, not a single sheet, but the entire file.

“God knows why I’m doing this,” he grumbled, throwing it onto the desk in front of me. I knew why: It was because of Holmes. I said nothing, however, and opened it gratefully. He went off and I vaguely heard the rattle of kettle and cups while I rapidly scanned the pale carbon copies and committed to memory the details of Iris Fitzwarren’s movements and possessions that last night of her life.

There was very little in it that was new, as Mycroft had given the information to Holmes, and Holmes to me. It was not politic to let Lestrade know this, however, and it was just possible something had slipped by Mycroft’s source. I read, and at the end of the pages, I sat back and reached automatically for the cup beside me, which startled me by being cool. Lestrade was in his chair, his heels up on his desk, reading another file and making notes in a notepad. He looked up.

“Find what you were looking for?”

“I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, Inspector.”

“You were skimming through that pretty fast.”

“I was reading. I have a couple of questions.”

“Just for a change,” he said sarcastically. He closed his file and put his feet on the floor.

“Er, yes. Did the beat constable make a regular round, or did he vary it?”

“It was regular. It is no longer.”

“I see. Also, is this list of the articles in her handbag in any order? Or just a list?”

“Let me see that.” He took it, glanced through it, handed it back. “It will be in the order he took the things from the handbag. The man who wrote the report is very particular that way.”

“I see,” I said again. The precise list had not been included in the oral information transmitted. I thought for a moment before I realised that he had spoken. “Sorry?”

“I asked you why it mattered, and if you do a Sherlock Holmes on me and tell me it’s perfectly elementary, I swear, you’ll never get so much as the time of day from me in the future.”

“Oh, no, I haven’t picked up that particular bad habit. I was just trying to come up with a reasonable explanation that would cover the facts. The constable wouldn’t have gone through her handbag, searching for identification, would he?”

He spoke through his teeth, which I noticed were small and pointed.

“Miss Russell, the only person who opened her handbag was the man who wrote that list.”

“Because, you see,” I hastened to mollify him, “she had a head cold.”

“Who?”

“Iris Fitzwarren. A bad cold. A terribly runny nose.” I wasn’t getting through to him. In a minute, he would hurl me out the door. I sighed to myself. “Inspector, why should a woman with a bad cold bury her handkerchiefs at the bottom of her handbag? There were none in the pockets of her coat, but two were underneath the compact and lipstick, and even underneath the paper with the name and address of the club. It’s possible she had her handbag open and rummaged around for something—that might explain why the heavier items were on top—but she would never have put her only handkerchiefs away at the bottom. It was a very bad cold, and on a miserable wet night like that, she would have been blowing her nose almost continuously. Plus, there’s the address, right on top. She didn’t need it after she got to the club at eleven-thirty, but when she was killed, it was found on top of everything else. Unlikely if she’d put it in, but just where it would be if her murderer had emptied her bag of anything incriminating, shovelled the stuff back in, and then slipped in a note for the police to find, a note which would either explain her death in a satisfactory way or incriminate Tommy Buchanan, or both.”

I watched his face covertly as I talked, seeing that although the significance of the handkerchiefs had escaped him, that of the note’s placement had not. My estimation of the official investigators rose slightly. I continued.

“Obviously, if the note had been deliberately put there, it becomes extremely unlikely that Tommy Buchanan had anything to do with it, or his thugs. However, it would have to be someone who knew about Buchanan and also knew…” I fell silent for a moment, then resumed slowly. “Someone who also knew about the style of murders linked with him. I assume that various people know about that, newspaper people, for example, even if they were stopped from printing the details?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Does the Clarion have any women reporters?”

“Two, I believe.” He was looking cross again, building up to another, no doubt final explosion, which I hastened to defuse.

“May I tell you a story, Inspector? It is not a long story, nor a pleasant one, and the amount of guesswork that has gone into it would horrify Holmes, but elements of it, I know to be the truth.” He eased back into his chair with an “at last!” expression on his face.

“It begins with the war and the perfectly appalling numbers of young men who were killed and crippled during those four years. At the beginning of the War, there were around six million men in this country of a marrying age, between twenty and forty. By the end of 1918, nearly a million of them lay dead. Another two million were wounded, half of them so badly damaged, mentally or physically, that they may never recover. Where does this leave some two to three million healthy young women who would ordinarily have married healthy young men and spent the rest of their lives caring for babies and husbands? The papers refer to them—us!—as ‘surplus women,’ as if our poor planning left us here while the men were removed. The women who ran this country, and ran it well, from 1915 to 1919, have now been pushed from their jobs to make way for the returning soldiers. Strong, capable women are now made to feel redundant in both the workplace and the home, and no, Inspector, this is not just suffragette ranting; this is the basis of our case…

“Have you met Margery Childe?”

“I have. A woman who was staying in her church went home to visit her husband, and got herself murdered.”

“What was your impression of her?”

“A nice woman, but strange.”

“Strange how?”

“It was… She didn’t seem to be listening to us. She answered our questions. She was polite, friendly even, but it was as if what we were asking weren’t important. As if we had interrupted something and she had her mind still on it while she was talking with us—but, you know, I didn’t get the idea that she was in any hurry to get back to anything specific. She was just… well, distracted, I suppose.”

“Yes. And yet when one of her women comes to her with a problem, she listens with her entire being concentrated on that woman, because that is where her interest lies, because, quite simply, she has little time for the concerns of men.

“What happens, then, when this extravagantly charismatic, articulate, single-minded individual comes into contact with a segment of the population that is feeling unwanted, unimportant, and useless? What happens when some of those people are also very wealthy (remember all those young men whose deaths passed large parts of fortunes onto their sisters), when they are educated and come from powerful families and are so elated at being given a purpose, something of value in their lives, that they would give everything to the person who has given them back their dignity? Yes, exactly.

“You know that Iris Fitzwarren left money to Margery Childe. She left it to the New Temple in God, but it amounts to the same thing. Not all her money by any means, but quite a lot. Are you also aware that another young woman died last October, in an automobile accident, and left the Temple a small fortune? And a third drowned in her bath in August, leaving a larger one?”

Lestrade’s eyes narrowed unpleasantly.

“I personally was not aware of that,” he said carefully. “I will find out if Inspector Tomlinson knows.”

“Perhaps at the same time you could mention that another wealthy Temple member was injured two days ago when she fell onto the tracks of the Underground, just as a train was coming into the station.”

The big building was not silent, I thought in the minutes that followed, just sturdily built, like the opera house it had originally been designed as. Lestrade reached for the telephone, and in a minute he was speaking to a man who, his intonation implied, was marginally his superior, and something of a rival.

“Tomlinson? Lestrade here. I have someone in my office with information on the Fitzwarren case… Because I was here, and she knew me slightly from a previous case… Yes, I do think it’s worth your coming in. I don’t think I ought to give you her name or her information over the telephone… Well, it’s up to you, but if I were you, I’d give dinner a miss… All right, twenty minutes.” He laid the receiver into its cradle but left his hand on it. “If this other woman is in danger…”

“Her name is Veronica Beaconsfield—yes, of that family— and she’s at the moment in Guys under the eye of Dr Watson or another of Holmes’ minions, who would probably be happy to be relieved by an official guard. Miss Beaconsfield is, just to complicate matters, Miles Fitzwarren’s fiancée. He has agreed to take her away from London after the doctors say she can leave, probably Monday or Tuesday, and keep her safe until we settle this. Holmes thinks Lieutenant Fitzwarren may be willing to tell you about his connexions with the drug world.”

“Perhaps I should give one of our drugs men a ring, have him listen to you, as well.”

“Not tonight. I must be on my way. No, truly, Inspector, I am more than happy to work with all and sundry on this, but tonight I have to be at the Temple for the evening service. I shall miss the first part of it as it is, but I need to be there when she finishes, because there isn’t another meeting until Monday, and time is of the essence.”

The police in 1921 were more restricted in their auxiliary use of civilians than they had been thirty years earlier when Holmes was at his peak; nonetheless, their concerns were primarily with the embarrassment of having incompetents endangering themselves or making a muddle of an investigation. With my background, and having received the spurious impression that Holmes was to be more or less constantly at my side, I knew Lestrade could be persuaded into supporting (however reluctantly) my proposed actions. On the principle that asking for a thing invites refusal, I simply told him my plans.

“So,” I concluded, “there’s nothing yet to justify a full, open investigation on your part, and there’s a good chance it’d scare them off. I am already in a position to watch for anything odd, to take advantage of it. I can take care of myself. All I need is a way to set up an alarm for your instant response if I need it. If you put a watch on the Temple, or try to infiltrate, it would be duplicating what I already have, and it could easily put the investigation, and me, in danger.” (I was saying, in effect, I’ve put myself into your hands; don’t take my information and betray me with it. He heard me, though he did not care for it in the least.)

“At least stay until Tomlinson comes, let him hear what you have to say.”

“I’ve given you everything of any importance, Inspector Lestrade. It’s more important for me to be at that gathering of the Circle than waiting for your colleague.”

“He may decide to arrest Margery Childe straightaway.”

“If he does, then he’s a damned fool and ought to be back pounding a beat, and you can tell him that Sherlock Holmes himself said that. Arrange a meeting tomorrow if you like. Or midnight tonight, for that matter.” I gave him the number of the telephone that, along with the flat’s other furnishings, was temporarily for my use.

He waited until I was at the door before he asked me the vital question.

“Do you think she killed those women?”

I was taken unawares by a sudden jolt of revulsion for my persona, my shoes, and the decision that had brought me here.

“Frankly, no,” I said tiredly. “But I think you need to take a very close look at her. She is the common link between three dead women and a fourth who got lucky. She knows everything about her inner circle of followers. She knows that Veronica Beaconsfield and the others willed money to benefit the Temple. She has a friend on the staff of the Clarion, and this person would have known about the mutilations of the other victims. Margery has private rooms in the Temple complex, is often in retreat and unavailable, with a sharp-toothed maidservant to guard her doors, and very probably has some sort of private entrance. She is also embarking on a very expensive bid for public attention which will lead, she hopes, to a certain degree of political power. Clinics, literacy programs, and shelters can hardly be supported by the contributions taken in at the services. If you want me to tell you what your job is, I might suggest that a closer look at the church’s finances would be in order, and a close scrutiny of the automobile and drowning accident reports. Inspector Tomlinson will undoubtedly have his own ideas. Now, I am away. Good evening, Inspector Lestrade. Thank you for the drinks.”

I passed Inspector Tomlinson at the door, a tall and elegantly dressed figure perhaps a bit too aware of his own masculinity; not a characteristic, I reflected, that would help him on this particular case.