me. Once I would have automatically followed the dictates of the reasoning mind. However.' I could feel his breath warm on my scalp. 'I begin to suspect that— I shall say this quietly— that I was wrong, that there may be times when the heart sees something which the mind does not. Perhaps what we call the heart is simply a more efficient means of evaluating data. Perhaps I mistrust it because I cannot see the mechanism working. Perhaps it is time for me to retire once and for all. Do not worry,' he said in response to my brief stir of protest, 'I shall see this case to its end before I turn to learning Syriac and Aramaic and spending my days correcting your manuscripts. Until then, however, we must assume that the old man still possesses his full wits and that his nerviness is not unjustified. Take care in that house, please, Russ. For God's sake, don't be absentminded.'
Holmes, although as energetic and scrupulously attentive to detail in the physical aspects of marriage as ever he was in an investigation or laboratory experiment, was not otherwise a man demonstrative of his affections (a statement which will come as no surprise to any of Dr Watson's readers). His proposal of marriage was less a proposal than a challenge flung, and expressions of affection tended towards the low-key and everyday rather than the dramatic and intermittent. I believe the reason for this was that I had become by that time too much a part of him to be the focus of the great alternating sweeps of manic passion and grey despair that had been characteristic of his earlier life. At any rate, I answered him lightly, but acknowledging his serious intent.
'You have succeeded in setting my nerves on edge, I assure you. At the slightest creak of a floorboard, I'll be out of there like a shot.'
PART THREE
Tuesday, 28 August 1923-
Saturday, 1 September 1923
— Samuel Johnson
TWELVE
Tuesday was a day of preparation, a time of backstage hustle and the anticipatory discord of instruments tuning. I spent the better part of the morning in the shops, assembling a wardrobe appropriate to a salesgirl or a colonel's secretary, and most of the afternoon rendering my purchases down into a state of shabby gentility by the judicious use of too-hot water and an overheated iron, and by replacing the odd button with one that almost matched. Shoes were a problem, but in the end I settled on a good pair, for the strength of the heel and the relative comfort of the toe, and added a patina of age with grit and a poorly matched polish. The effect I was aiming for was someone who understood quality but couldn't quite afford it. Beyond this, my character's clothing needed to be innocently seductive, with the emphasis on innocence. Young, naive, unprotected, determined, and a bit scared— that was the image I held in front of me as I tried on white lawn blouses, looked at embroidered collars, and studied the effects of different sleeves. I even bought six lacy handkerchiefs embroidered with the letter
Holmes came in at three o'clock. He had left immediately after breakfast, dressed in a singularly Lestradian brown suit (the sort that is obviously purchased with an eye to shoulder seams and the amount of wear the knees will take), a soft brown hat that looked as if it had shrunk in the rain, a new-school tie, and sturdy shoes, sporting a moustache that resembled a dead mouse and a tuft of whiskers in the hollow of his left jaw that the razor had missed. He returned smooth of chin and sleek of hair, gloriously resplendent in an utterly black City suit cut to perfection and a shirt like the sun on new snow, a tie whose pattern was unfamiliar to me but which evoked immense dignity and importance, cuff links of jet with a thread of mother-of-pearl, shoes like dancing pumps, a stick of ebony and silver, and a hat ever so slightly dashing about the brim but of the degree of self-assurance that guarantees there will be no label inside. Under his arm, he carried a bulky, roughly entwined brown paper parcel that reeked of mildew and the cleansing solution used in gaols and hospitals.
'Natty duds, Holmes,' I commented deflatingly, and turned to hang another maltreated, over-ironed blouse from the door frame. Mycroft's rooms smelt like a bad laundry, all steam and scorched cotton, and now the added aromas from Holmes' bundle. 'What is the tie from?'
He tossed his load down on a chair, where it burst open and began to leak garments that looked as unsavoury as they smelt. He fingered the scrap of silk on his breast.
'The Royal Order of Nigerian Blacksmiths,' he said. 'I am actually entitled to wear it, Russell. For services rendered.' He eyed the dress I was systematically attacking, looked at it more closely in disbelief, and threaded his way past me and under my finished garments to our rooms. I heard the door of one of the phalanx of wardrobes click open, followed by the clatter of clothes hangers. I raised my voice a fraction.
'You know, Holmes, if Lestrade finds you've been impersonating a police detective, he'll be furious.'
'One cannot impersonate what one is in fact, Russell,' came his imperious and muffled reply. 'Is anyone more a citizen of this
'Save it for the warders,' I suggested, and bent down to rip out some threads from the back seam of a sleeve. 'Did you find us rooms?'
'I found many things this day, including, yes, rooms. Two adjoining, ill-furnished and underlit rooms with a bath down the hall and back windows five feet above a shed roof. No bedbugs, though. I looked.'
'Thank you. What else did you find?'
'An uninspired kitchen and mends in the curtains.'
Very well, if he wanted to tantalise me, I would allow him to prolong the telling of what he had discovered while masquerading as a Yard detective.
'How did you find them? The rooms, I mean. Mycroft?'
'No, actually, the house belongs to a cousin of Billy's.'
'Billy! I should have known. How is he?' Billy had come into Holmes' employ from the streets as a child and, as far as I could tell, remained willing to drop everything to serve his former master. A thought occurred to me, and I interrupted the description of Billy's ventures into the retail trade and his convoluted family life.
'Is he going to be keeping an eye on me?'
'Do you mind?'
With the morning's shopping successfully behind me and the knowledge of a husband who was no longer bored, I was willing to be benign.
'I don't want him following me about, no, but if he wants to loiter in the hallway listening for gurgled screams, he's quite welcome.' I threaded a needle and started to mend the seam I had just picked out.
'He won't be following you, just available if you need auxiliary troops or messenger boys. He has turned into quite a sensible person.' High praise indeed.
'That's fine, then. And you— you won't be coming back from Cambridgeshire every night, I take it?'
'I doubt it. It would look exceedingly odd for a member of the nation's great unwashed and unemployed to board the nightly five-nineteen for St Pancras. Too, I hope to worm myself into Mrs Rogers's affections to the extent of dossing down in her toolshed. I shall return Friday night. If you need to reach me before that, send Billy, or have Lestrade send a constable around to pick me up on a vagrancy charge.'
'I assume Lestrade will have to agree to all this?'
'Oh yes. Unofficially, of course, but thanks to Mycroft, that will not pose a problem. Lestrade will take care that any police investigator who comes to one of the houses will either not know us or else be warned we're there and not to take any notice.'
'Is there a telephone at the house of Billy's cousin?'
'You sound like a poor translation out of the French, Russell. But yes, there is a telephone at the house of the cousin of my friend. Utilize
'And to his wife the unwashed tramp will telephone, is that not so?'
'But yes, with regularity the tramp his wife in the boarding house will telephone.'
He walked over to where I stood, took my free hand, and ceremoniously slipped off the gold band I wore.
