had not been necessary. The two sides of me lived in friendly mutual incomprehension.
That bed, though…
In the course of various investigations over the years, Holmes and I had spent any number of nights within arm’s reach of each other. He had slept in my bed, and I in his. Several times, we had even slept together in one bed, or whatever passed for a bed at the time. Never once had there been awkwardness over this. Two years before, at the beginning and at the end of a tense and terrifying case, we had each made a faint overture in the male-female dance, but later we had made the unspoken decision not to pursue that line of activity. We were intimate friends, but without the intimacy of the body.
Perhaps I ought to mention here that I was at the time not unaware of the entertainment value afforded by the reactions of one’s body. The postwar years had brought large numbers of mature young men into Oxford, and one of them in particular, being possessed of a quick mind, a wry sense of humour, an inexplicable persistence, and an automobile, had taught me a great deal.
However, the mind is a most peculiar organ, and the simple fact was that until the night atop the hansom, I had never drawn a connexion between those bodily reactions and Sherlock Holmes. I had contemplated marriage, had even played with the idea of suggesting it, but until he had himself referred so sarcastically to the marriage bed, I had never actually pictured him in those terms. Now, however, the checks were off, the blinkers removed; since I had seen him emerge from the dark doorway into the rainy street, the physical awareness of his proximity and his being had hammered at me, unrelenting. When he passed behind me, I had felt like the victim of a child’s balloon game, with static electricity causing the hairs on the arm to rise and follow the balloon’s path back and forth above the skin—I had been almost painfully aware of quivering receptors following him about the room.
The only way to stop it had been to savage him and drive him away. That had bought me some breathing space, albeit brief and at a high price, but now I had it, I could not think what to do. Something would have to be done, that was obvious. I had not asked for this intolerable awareness, I did not want it, and I should have given a great deal to have it taken from me, but it had come, and I was in its grip.
I lay on the sofa long in what was left of the night, struggling with myself and my options, and in the end, long before dawn, I took the only possible action: I ran away.
I walked the streets until the sky was a fraction lighter than the rooftops, then went, shivering and wet through, to the door of the ladies’ club that I had joined the year before. It was a small establishment with the cheerless and misleading name of the Vicissitude, but it did not allow its right-thinking feminist policies to interfere with the amount of hot water in its pipes or the quality of food that came from its kitchen. The old matron on night duty greeted me with horror and bundled me off to a hot bath, brought me a mug of something scalding and appallingly alcoholic, retrieved my stored clothes, and found a bed for me. I did not sleep much, but it was nice to be warm, and alone.
I was in the museum at the agreed time, ill-rested, unfed, and hastily dressed. At 12:30, Veronica had still not appeared. I decided to give her until one, and ten minutes before then, she came around the corner, as carelessly dressed as I, but pale, red-eyed, and half-focused. I greeted her with apprehension, wondering what new upheaval had tossed her here in this condition, but she managed a distracted smile and seemed to be trying to pull herself together.
“Mary, I’m so sorry. Something happened this morning, and I totally forgot the time until Margery reminded me that I had a luncheon date with you.”
“Yes, I can see something happened.” Her stockings did not match, her hair was perfunctorily combed, and she was wearing a dark green woollen dress with a black coat, an infelicitous combination. “You should have sent a message; I’d have understood. Was it something at the Temple?”
“No. Well, yes, in a way. Miles’s sister died last night. She was a member. You met her, in fact—Iris. Tall, marcelled hair.”
“Cigarette holder, red fingernails, small opal ring on her right hand. She had a terrible cold,” I recalled. She had been one of those who had run a brief and disbelieving eye across my clothing and returned, politely amused, to the business at hand. Ronnie nodded.
“What happened?”
“She was mur—murdered.” Her control slipped for an instant before it caught again, and she drew a shaky breath. “She left the meeting with the rest of us, just after eleven, but she never made it home. A bobby found her in an alleyway at four this morning, in the West End. She was… her throat… Oh God.”
She gulped and put her hand to her mouth, and I grabbed her arm hard, putting a sharp twist into it to distract her, and hustled her out the doors and into the rain, down the steps, and through the gates. I kept pushing her until we had our seats in the restaurant. The owner knew me well and responded with alacrity to my demand for strong drink and food, and soon the greenish tones had faded from her face and she could begin to tell me about it.
“Iris’s father telephoned me early this morning—about seven, I think it was—wanting to know if I had any idea where Miles might be. I said no, and he said if I heard from him that Miles should go home immediately. I started to say that it was unlikely that I should see him, but he just rang off. After I’d had some coffee I realised that he’d sounded terribly upset about something, so I telephoned back—it took the exchange an age to get through—and asked if there was anything wrong. That’s when he told me Iris was… dead.”
“And Miles was—” I started, but she spoke over me.
“We were never close, Iris and I. We were too different, I guess. But she was devoted to Miles, and very involved in her Temple work—it was through her that I met Margery. We will all miss her so much.”
Her eyes filled, and I downed a few hasty mouthfuls to silence my hardhearted appetite before steering her with equal ruthlessness back from elegy to facts.
“When you spoke with their father, Miles was missing?”
She wiped her eyes. “Yes, but that’s hardly unusual. Iris told me he often disappeared from his flat for several days at a time.”
“What else did he say? Mr Fitzwarren, that is.”
“Major. Just that she’d been killed and that his wife—Miles and Iris’s mother—was under heavy sedation and wanted Miles. They had only the two,” she added, and sighed into her untouched salad.
“Nothing else?”
“No. I told him I’d call later today, but he said I ought to telephone first, to see how Mrs Fitzwarren was feeling.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I dressed and went to the Temple. I thought Margery ought to know, and I… I suppose I hoped she might tell me what to do. I wasn’t thinking very clearly.”
“Did she?”
“She wasn’t in when I first arrived, so I went into the chapel for some quiet. She came in after a while, and I told her. She listened in that marvellous way of hers, and she told me to pray while she made some telephone calls. She brought together the Inner Circle, most of them, and reached a friend of hers at the
I interrupted briskly before the graphic remembrance could hit her. “Do you want to telephone the Fitzwarrens now and ask if they want to see you?”
“Yes, perhaps I ought to now. I get on well with Mrs Fitzwarren. I think she might like me to come.”
She went off to Tonio’s telephone while I paid the bill. When she returned, she was pale but composed.
“Yes, I’ll go there now.”
“Any sign of Miles?”
“None.”
“How long has he been missing? Do you know?”
“Two or three days, I think. The major is furious.”
Furious rather than worried, I noted, but I did not point it out. She had quite enough on her plate without that.
Tonio ushered us out the door and personally whistled up a cab. Veronica gave the driver the address and got
