lips and shifted a white bishop three spaces. “Your Miss Beaconsfield appears to have some… interesting friends.” Another pause while he moved the black king to the side, and then he seemed to tire of it. He clasped his hands behind his back and continued around the room, his eyes examining the rows of leather-bound spines. At the window, his gaze dropped to the carpet, and he put out his left hand and began to run one finger slowly along the pleated back of the long maroon leather settee, then under the fringe of the lamp shade, across the space to the gleaming mahogany of the desk, touching its carved ivory pen holder lightly before he came to a halt before the rigid figure of Miles Fitzwarren, who was standing still for the first time since I had met him. Holmes stood in contemplation of the intricate crystal paperweight that had appeared in his hand, then slowly raised his eyes to those of the younger man, fixing him with a grey gaze that seemed to come from a great height.
“Good evening, Lieutenant Fitzwarren,” he said with the voice of gentle Fate. The man jerked upright and tried to find his mask.
“Evenin’, sir. I, er, I don’t believe I’ve had the honour.”
“We have met, but it was some years ago. The name is Holmes, Sherlock Holmes.”
The younger man blinked his eyes rapidly and tried unsuccessfully to laugh.
“Awkward name, that, don’t you find? People mistakin’ you for that detective chappy? Magnifyin’ glass and deerstalker and all that.”
“I am that detective chappy, Lieutenant. And I have been in this house before, a trifling matter of some jewels, when you were but a lad. I expect you might remember if you turned your thoughts to it.”
“Good Lord. I do. I mean, I thought it was my imagination, but I do remember meeting Sherlock Holmes.” The awe had knocked out his silly-ass act, and he looked slightly stunned. “What are you doing here? I mean to say, is there anything I can do for you?”
“I came here to ask the same of you.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Do you mean about Iris? The police seem to be—”
Holmes held up a finger and cut him to silence.
“Lieutenant Fitzwarren,” he said clearly, “you can be helped.”
The young man gawped and swallowed. “Yes? Er, well, that’s terribly kind of you,” he began uncertainly before Holmes cut him off again.
“Young man, you have made the unfortunate and all-too-common discovery that the compound formed by the acetylation of morphia is highly addictive both physically and mentally. I cannot help you with your mental dependency on heroin, but I can help you rid yourself of the physiological one. It is not a pleasant process. You will feel as you do now for an unbearably long time, and you will for a shorter time feel considerably worse. At the end of it, you will feel weak and empty and filled with shame, and the craving for the drug will eat at your very soul, but you will be clean, and you will begin to remember who you are. If, as I believe, the desire for cleanliness and memory is growing in you, I can help. You, however, must make the decision.”
“But… why? I don’t even know you. Why should you…”
“For four years, you did for me what I could not, in the trenches, and this is the price. I have been in your debt since you set foot on the troopship. I can now begin to pay off that debt, by taking over a small part of the price that you paid. You need only say the word, and I am your man.”
A clock ticked slow seconds. Half a minute passed, then a minute. I listened in agony for the approach of footsteps that would interrupt the two men (the one young and racked by the drug pulling at his nerves, the other implacable and utterly solid) and their wordless confrontation.
It was hard to say who moved first, but as the young man gasped for breath, his hand came up, and as Holmes took it, his other hand came around to seize Fitzwarren’s shoulder in support and approval.
“Good man. Where’s your hat?”
“My hat? Surely you don’t intend—”
“I do intend.”
“But, my mother…”
“Your mother will be infinitely better served by knowing that her son is returning to himself than if she were forced to be around him in his present state. She will forgive your absence at the funeral. Besides, if ’twere done, best ’twere done quickly.” He took the elegantly clad elbow and politely but inexorably propelled his charge towards the door. “No, young man, you asked for my help, and as many have found, you must take it as it comes, inconvenient as that may be. Russell, you will make our apologies to the family and give out some explanation or other, will you? Also, would you be so good as to telephone Mycroft at the Diogenes Club and tell him that we are on our way to the sanatorium and please to inform Dr McDaniels that we shall meet him there.”
The startled Marshall had scurried to retrieve the belongings of the two men, and Holmes took the hat from the butler’s hand and slapped it onto Fitzwarren’s head, jammed his own on, and gathered up the two proffered coats.
“Good-bye, Russell. You can reach me through Mycroft.”
“
“Thank you, Russell,” he said, and added under his breath, “I shall need it.” Ignoring the hovering butler, he draped the young man’s shoulders with a coat and shrugged into his own. The poor servant leapt for the door and held it until both men had been whisked away by the waiting taxi, and then he turned to me with a faint air of reproach.
“Does madam wish anything?” he murmured.
“Madam wishes only that that man can find a way out of his troubles,” I answered absently.
He looked startled, but his training held.
“Indeed, madam,” he said, only a fraction more emphatically than necessary.
I went back into the library, made the telephone call, and felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Only part of it was Miles.
EIGHT
Thursday, 30 December
—Saint Augustine
With Holmes out of the way and Miles out of my hands, life looked somewhat more manageable. I played Holmes’ game six moves to checkmate, poured myself a glass of predictably excellent sherry from a crystal decanter, and went to browse through the books.
I was twenty-three pages into a late-seventeenth-century Italian work on the doges of Venice when Veronica came back.
“Sorry to have been so long, Mary. Where’s Miles?”
I closed the book over my finger. “Ronnie, your Miles is off taking the cure.”
“What are you talking about?”
I told her briefly what had taken place.
“That was all? As simple as that?”
“A beginning, perhaps, nothing more.”
