This one looked enticingly warm, and my new evening clothes were not. Surely Holmes had not meant to be inflexible, had he? I looked through the door at the bored driver, stepped back, and waved him on. He looked highly irritated, which matched my mood precisely. I peered down the street in wan hope, studiously ignoring the doorman, when up before me pulled a very old and very battered cab drawn by one very old and battered horse.
'Cab, Miss?' said the voice from the moving anachronism.
I cursed Holmes under my breath. It looked very cold in there compared to the others, but it was a cab, or it had been thirty years before: a London growler. I told the driver where I wanted to go, saw my purchases piled inside, and got in. The doorman looked after me as if I were stark raving mad. Which I was.
I did not know London at all well then, though I had studied the maps a bit, so it took me a while to realise that we were going in the wrong direction. Not completely wrong, just very roundabout. My first thought was that the driver was pulling a swindle in order to charge me more for the ride. I had opened my mouth to call out when I froze with a terrible thought. Perhaps I had been followed.
Perhaps this driver was an ally of the blind pencil seller.
First I was frightened, but then I was furious. I fought the remnants of a window down and craned my neck out to see him. 'Oy, driver, where are you taking me? This isn't the way to Covent Garden.'
'Yes, Miss, this is the faster way, away from the heavy traffic, Miss,' the voice whined obsequiously.
'All right, you, now look. I have a revolver, and I will shoot you if you do not stop immediately.'
'Now, Miss, you doesn't want to be doing that, now,' he snivelled.
'I'm feeling more like it every moment. Stop this cab, now!'
'But I can't do that, Miss, I really cannot.'
'Why not?'
The shaggy head leaned over the side, and I stared up at him. 'Because we'll miss the curtain if I do,' said Holmes.
'You! You utter bastard,' I growled. The gun shook in my hand, and Holmes, seeing it, drew his head back quickly. 'Look, you, that's the second time you've played your bloody tricks on me in three days.' I caught the startled look of a passerby and lowered my voice. 'If you do it again and I have a gun in my hand, I won't be responsible, d'you hear? As sure as my mother's name is Mary McCarthy, I'll not be responsible for my temper.'
I sat back in the swaying cab and caught my breath.
Several minutes later a thin voice drifted down to me.
'Yes, Miss.'
Some distance from the theatre he pulled the ancient cab into a dark spot adjoining one of London's innumerable small and hidden parks. The growler sagged sideways with his weight, and in a moment the door fell open. He eyed me.
'Your mother's name was not Mary McCarthy,' he said accusingly.
'No, it was Judith Klein, just don't scare me again, please. I've been walking around frightened and blind since I left your brother's rooms, and I'm tired.'
'Apologies, Russell. My twisted sense of humour has had me in trouble before this. Pax?'
'Pax.' We clasped hands firmly. He stepped up into the cab. 'Russell, this time it is you who must turn your back. I can hardly go into the theatre looking like the driver of a four-wheeler.' I hastily departed out the other side.
Coat and hat, stick and proper evening coat, hair combed, moustache applied, he alighted from the cab. A small man wandered up, whistling softly.
'Good evening, Billy.'
'Evenin', Mr — Evenin', sir.' He touched his hat to me.
'Don't break your neck over the boxes inside, Billy.
And there's a rug under the seat if you need it. Just keep your eyes open.'
'That I will, sir. Have a good evenin', sir, Miss.'
I was so preoccupied that I did not notice when Holmes tucked my arm in his.
'Holmes, how on earth did you find me?'
'Well, I cannot claim it was entirely a coincidence, as I thought it possible you would fall victim to the charms of the place and be there all day. Also, both the doorman and the attendant to whom you gave Watson's bag were watching and swore you hadn't yet left when I asked an hour ago. That was a slip, incidentally, Russell. You ought to have abandoned the trousers.'
'So I see. Sorry. What did you find today?'
'Do you know, I found absolutely nothing. Not a rumour, not a word, nary a breath of someone moving against that old scoundrel Holmes. I must be losing my touch.'
'Perhaps there was nothing?'
'Perhaps. It is a most piquant problem, I must admit.
I am intrigued.'
'I am cold. So, what are we going to do now?' 'We shall listen to the voices of angels and of men, my child, set to the music of Verdi and Puccini.'
'And after that?'
'After that we shall dine.'
'And then?'
'I fear we shall skulk back to my brother's rooms and hide behind his drapes.'
'Oh. How is your back?'
'Damn my back, I do wish you would stop harping on the accursed thing. If you must know, I had it serviced again this afternoon by a retired surgeon who does a good line in illegal operations and patching up gunshot wounds.
He found very little to do on it, told me to go away, and I find the topic tiresome.'
I was pleased to hear his mood so improved.
The evening that followed was a lovely, sparkling interval, set off in my mind by what went before and what came after as a jewel set into mud. I fell asleep twice and woke with my hat in Holmes' ear, but he seemed not to notice. In fact, so carried away was he by the music that I believe he forgot I was there, forgot where he was, forgot to breathe, even, at certain passages. I have never been a great lover of the operatic voice, but that night — I cannot tell you what we saw, unfortunately — even I could begin to see the point. (Incidentally, I feel that this is one place where I must contradict the record of Holmes' late biographer and protest that I never, ever witnessed Holmes 'gently waving his fingers about in time to the music,' as Watson once wrote. The good doctor, on the other hand, was wont earnestly to perform this activity of the musically obtuse, particularly when he was tipsy.)
We drank champagne at the intermission and took to a quiet corner lest he be recognised. Holmes could be charming when he so desired, but that evening he positively scintillated, during the intermission with stories about the primary cast members, and over supper later talking about his conversations with the lamas in Tibet, his most recent monographs on varieties of lipstick and the peculiarities of modern tyre marks, the changes occasioned by the disappearance of castrati from the music world, and the analysis of some changes in rhythm in one of the arias we had just heard. I was quite dazzled by this rarely seen Holmes, a distinguished-looking, sophisticated bon vivant without a care in the world (who could also spend hours in a grey, biting mood, write precise monographs on the science of detection, and paint blobs on the backs of bees to track them across the Sussex Downs). 'Holmes,' I asked as we stepped into the street, 'I realise the question sounds sophomoric, but do you find that there are aspects of yourself with which you feel most comfortable? I only ask out of curiosity; you needn't feel obliged to answer.' He offered me his arm and, formally, I took it.
''Who am I?' you mean.' He smiled at the question and gave what was at first glance a most oblique answer. 'Do you know what a fugue is?'
'Are you changing the subject?'
'No.'
I thought in silence for some distance before his answer arranged itself sensibly in my mind. 'I see. Two discrete sections of a fugue may not appear related, unless the listener has received the entire work, at which time
