Mrs. Watson stepped aside so he could offer his hand to Charlotte to shake. Charlotte slid her still-gloved thumb across the back of his hand. He turned their joined hands so that her palm faced down. She wasn’t sure how he did it, but as he let go, this man who had protested so vociferously at her only somewhat erotic missive, his fingertips brushed the inside of her wrist, that sliver of skin just above the cuff of her glove, concealed by the belling of her sleeve.
The water with which he’d washed must have been glacial melt, for his fingertips were ice-cold. And yet she felt only heat at their contact, as if sparks from the grate had landed directly on her skin.
“But surely we have washbasins upstairs,” puzzled Mrs. Watson. “And are you not cold, my dear, without your jacket?”
Charlotte had already noticed the slight sheen of perspiration near his hairline. “I imagine Lord Ingram took off his jacket because he was warm.”
No fires had been lit in the house earlier, as Charlotte and Mrs. Watson had been out all day—Mrs. Watson, having come from modest beginnings, did not believe in wasting coal in unoccupied rooms. Lord Ingram, who saw to his own comfort very well, would have laid fires after his arrival. But it seemed unlikely for him to have built such blazes that he needed to remove his jacket.
“Were you at some physical exertion?” asked Mrs. Watson.
“You could say so,” he answered lightly.
“There’s a dark spot on your elbow,” Charlotte pointed out. “It looks to be a grease stain. Lubricating oil?”
Up close he did not carry with him the scent of a pristine countryside, but a whiff of machinery.
“Correct again.”
Charlotte looked at him askance. “Don’t tell me you were assembling a Maxim gun upstairs.”
“A what?” Mrs. Watson’s startled cry echoed against the walls.
“You’ve heard of a Gatling gun, perhaps, ma’am?” said Lord Ingram to her, very gently.
“That—that American rapid-fire weapon?” answered Mrs. Watson in a whisper.
“One hand cranks a Gatling gun,” explained Lord Ingram, “but a Maxim gun is recoil-operated. The rounds feed automatically.”
Mrs. Watson stared at their visitor, and then at Charlotte, who said, “Do we have enough room upstairs for a Maxim gun?”
“Not precisely. But come and see.”
He led the way. Charlotte, her attention snagged by the sight of him heading up the staircase—without his jacket she could almost perceive the contours of his posterior through his trousers—barely remembered to tug at Mrs. Watson, still rooted in place, to follow them to the parlor.
The parlor had been refreshed, too. A beige-and-gold Aubusson rug, full of blooming roses on stylized cartouches, now covered much of the floor. The formerly subdued armchairs had been reupholstered in a leafy chintz that reflected the summery themes of the carpet.
The space still smelled distinctly of tonics and tinctures, which served as a reminder to visitors that the unseen savant in the adjacent bedroom was a patient who could not meet with his petitioners face-to-face because of his never-specified conditions.
The bedroom, of course, was perennially empty, except when Charlotte entered to seek her “brother’s” sage advice, or when her companions wanted to listen in on a particular client’s story. But it, too, was fully furnished, with neatly folded pajamas and nightgowns in the wardrobe, a black shawl left on the headboard, a pair of slippers by the side of the bed, and even a bedpan hidden in the nightstand.
Now, however, in the space between the bed and the wall, there stood something that looked faintly like a camera on a tripod, except for the slender, foot-long metal tube that protruded from its front.
“It’s much smaller than I expected. Did it come in that?” Charlotte pointed to a barrel-stave trunk that had been pushed to the far side of the bed.
Lord Ingram nodded, shrugging back into his jacket. “With the weight of the trunk everything comes to about four and a half stones. Not easy for one person to move but doable.”
Charlotte approached the apparatus and examined it more closely. “Excellent—it has a universal pivot. Where are the cartridges?”
He pointed to a smaller suitcase. “There, in long belts. I’ll load them later.”
Mrs. Watson held on to a finial on the headboard, her grip so tight the tendons of her wrist stood out. “So you did bring a machine gun,” she said, her voice quavering.
“I didn’t know what we would face,” said Lord Ingram.
“Probably not a machine gun on the part of Moriarty’s minions,” said Charlotte quietly.
“Given our current uncertainties, I prefer to err on the side of caution. If the Maxim gun turns out to be comically unnecessary, I can always pack it away.”
His tone was light, yet firm.
Mrs. Watson glanced again at the Maxim gun. “I think—I’d better see to our tea.”
Charlotte, too, headed for the parlor—the contents of the basket she’d brought beckoned. As she passed Lord Ingram, she settled a hand at the small of his back. “I like it, your miniaturized Maxim gun.”
He looked down at her, a barely perceptible smile about his lips. “I thought you would.”
Said the man who knew all about her enjoyment of Patent Office catalogues.
“I might feature it in a story,” she murmured.
“I see you plan to instill the fear of God in me yet,” said he, his low voice sounding not at all afraid.
She laughed on the inside, but kept her face impassive, since he had written in his letter that was how he imagined she’d looked, scribbling away at her small scene of seduction. “You’ve worked hard, sir. Come have some tea.”
* * *
“Her latest letter was full of musings on the human condition—or rather, the human apparel,” said Mrs. Watson, of her beloved niece Miss Redmayne, a medical student in Paris. “After having attended two childbirths, an appendectomy, and a funeral all in one week, she wondered whether we are so insistent on good clothes because the body, in the end, is unmistakably animal. A human childbirth is shockingly messy, a human split open is just organs and intestines, and a decomposing human is no different from any other piece of meat left out too long.”
Neither Lord Ingram nor Charlotte said anything. Charlotte had nothing to add. As for Lord Ingram, perhaps his sense of delicacy prevented him from furthering the conversation. But more importantly, they both knew that Mrs. Watson was reaching for things to say, meandering on to delay the inevitable.
Which could not be delayed much longer.
Charlotte rose and went to the window seat, where a pot of narcissus bloomed, all snow-white petals and bright yellow centers. It had been given to Sherlock Holmes by a horticulturally inclined client, alongside a handwritten booklet on its proper care and feeding. Charlotte’s favorite part of the instruction concerned the sousing of the bulbs, an addition of spirits so that the stalks would not grow too tall and bend over.
She was decanting a spoonful of whisky into the footed bowl when Lord Ingram said, “Holmes, I take it your plan is still to wait and see?”
Putting aside the whisky, she picked up a piece of soft linen and wiped particles of dust from the slender green stems. “Officially, yes. But we also have Bernadine already sedated and placed inside Mrs. Watson’s coach, alongside some essential luggage. Mrs. Watson and I currently carry a dizzying number of banknotes, plus two firearms apiece. And Lawson is to bring the carriage around the back of number 18 a little after the arrival of Moriarty’s representatives.”