“Of course. But, Lestrade, what is the nature of the case?”
He shook his head. “No. I will not speak of it.”
“Eh? Why not?”
“Because you will try to get out of it.”
“But—”
“He will be here just after four. The details are all in the envelope. Do not open it until I am gone.”
“Why?”
He did not tarry to answer. With the superhuman speed of his kind, he swept past me to my front door, opened it himself, favored me with a quick bow, and was gone.
“How very peculiar,” I mused, shaking my head. Though let me just admit that—as normality had become so burdensome to me—the peculiar was a welcome change. The reader may easily understand, then, that it was with a blend of detached amusement and hopeful curiosity that I folded open the envelope’s flap and allowed it to disgorge onto my side table a single sheet of paper.
Or rather, a single sheet of graphic smut.
I gave a horrified gasp. Being a doctor, I was quite familiar with the human body, but I’d never seen anything like this before. Somebody had taken the time to draw severeal rows of nude figures in exhaustive detail. All the figures were male. Very male. Let us only say that certain exaggerative liberties taken by the illustrator left little doubt as to the subjects’ gender. Nor were their proclivities much of a mystery either, for the figures cavorted with each other in such lewd contortions that I think only a few of the world’s foremost acrobats might have a chance of repeating them.
I boggled at the thing. Was this some kind of joke? What was Lestrade playing at? I stared and stared, but could not understand.
From behind me came a voice. “Will thirth be requiring any refrethment?”
“Aaaaaaaaagh!” I cried, flinging my body over the illicit document. “Joachim? Knock, damn it! Knock next time! Did nobody ever teach you to knock when entering a sitting room?”
“Er… no,” he said, then added, “Did thir’th guest not thtay for tea?”
“No. Believe me, Lestrade does not want any tea.”
“He did mention, when he came in, that he had peculiar tasteth. But I’m thure I’ve got thomething around here that he might like.”
“Well, let’s hope not,” I reflected. “Just so you know, I am expecting another guest at teatime.”
“And when ith that?”
“Good God, man… What are you even doing in England?”
* * *
Hilton Cubitt was a tall, ruddy, clean-shaven gentleman, whose clear eyes and florid cheeks told of a life lived far from grim, gray London. He had an honest innocence to him that, I think, made him appear a touch younger than he actually was. Like any country gentleman working up to a somewhat sensitive topic, he preferred a certain amount of prevarication.
“So, er, you’re a medical doctor, are you?” he asked, once introductions were out of the way and we were settled in with steaming cups of tea. He hardly paid attention to his, but held it in his left hand. Funny, but just that simple similarity to my friend, Warlock, made me like Mr. Cubitt all the more.
“Chiefly, yes, a doctor,” I told him. “But I’ve handled a number of cases with Inspector Lestrade, and he knows he can count on my help.”
“Ah. Good. Good…” He looked aimlessly about my sitting room for a bit, then remarked, “A fine house you’ve got here.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Everything is so new, though.”
“Is it?” Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it. I had some rather old books in the room, and a family portrait or two. Though, yes, I supposed most of the contributions were by Mary’s artistic set and were both modern and awful. I made a bit of a face.
“Or maybe I’m just used to very old things,” Cubitt said quickly. “Five hundred years: that’s how long my family’s lived at Ridling Thorpe Manor. A cornerstone of the community, you know. We always have been. Though now, I suppose they’ve finally got a black sheep in the family. Me, of all people…”
“Why is that?” I asked, doing my best not to look at the oblong envelope on the table between us.
Yet Hilton Cubitt came up with a different answer than I expected. “I married Elsie.”
“Oh?”
“I didn’t mean to!” he protested.
“Hmm. I know all about that. I didn’t mean to marry my wife, either.”
“They warned me about her. I was on a trip to London last year and chose a boarding house in Russell Square because Parker, the vicar of our parish, was staying there. He warned me there was a lady present that any man who wished his reputation to remain unblemished would do well to steer clear of. I tried to. I tried! She was an American burlesque performer, they said, from a particularly infamous theater in New Jersey, called ‘The Joint’. They said she was a woman with no single ounce of reserve or decorum. And God help me, that wasn’t far from the truth.”
“And you were drawn in and undone by her feminine wiles, I suppose?” I asked.
“No! That wasn’t it at all! You see the thing was—the thing they didn’t mention—she’s wonderful. Every night the boring old farts on holiday would sit in the common room, gossiping and disapproving, while Elsie played piano. Oh, they didn’t like her at first, but it wasn’t long before we all did. She was just so light, you know. It was impossible to spend an evening in her company and not feel it was one of the brightest evenings you’d ever had. She knows what she is, but she is as unembarrassed as she is uninhibited. Elsie is a wild and free spirit, Dr. Watson, of a sort that does not occur in this land. They have to be imported. I feared she’d never want me, but when I made my suit, oh! How happy she made me, the day she said
