Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) (31 page)

ANGLAIS ICI POSER DES QUESTIONS SUR HENRY VU LA TOMBE PARTI

“English here asking about Henry saw grave went away,” Sir Anthony translated.

“Henry?” The duke looked around the room. “Does this help? Who the bloody hell is Henry?”

“I would say that Henry is Bonfils d’Eny, who achieved a sort of local renown as the Belleville Slicer,” Moriarty said dryly.

“That is who we were asking questions about,” Holmes agreed.

“Ah!” said the duke.

“Of more immediate interest,” Moriarty suggested, “is who Macbeth is.”

“I,” said Mycroft, “concur.”

“I went from boat to train to cab and arrived at Westerleigh house in eighteen hours,” Holmes went on. “I stationed myself outside the house. The relevance of this address to our problem was confirmed when I saw PC Higgins and Mr. Maws arrive, as they must have had additional information from another source drawing them there.”

“Umm. Westerleigh House, Westerleigh House,” mused the duke. “Now where have I—” He snapped his fingers. “Of course!”

The others looked at him. “Of course?” asked the earl.

“That damned invitation! My wife wants to go, don’t you know, but I’ve told her that it’s impossible, just impossible. Parvenu scallywag!”

“To which particular parvenu, ah, scallywag are you referring, Your Grace?” asked Sir Anthony.

“That chap who’s calling himself the Earl of Messy, or some such. Trying to claim the title. Says his great-great-grandfather was the last earl. On top of which the blighter claims to be the, as he puts it, ‘last of the Plantagenets.’” The duke shook his head. “What is it all coming to, these days? Anybody thinks they can do anything, claim to be anyone. Americans come over and expect to be accepted into society.”

“Only very rich Americans,” Sir Anthony said.

“That’s little excuse. Rich Americans bring their daughters over here and marry them to some impoverished peer, trading money for a title. Then the gals expect to be called duchess or countess or baroness or whatever.”

“I would say they’ve earned the title,” said the earl.

“And the nobleman has often earned the money,” Sir Anthony added.

“Bah!” said the duke.

“What about this Westerleigh House, Your Grace?” Mycroft asked. “What invitation?”

“That house—it’s where the supposed Earl of Messy … Mersy?—has moved himself and his entourage.”

“You said something about an invitation,” Mycroft reminded the duke.

“How’s that?” The duke looked puzzled for a moment; then his face cleared. “Oh, yes. The bally upstart is throwing a bally ball, and he had the bally nerve to invite my wife and me. Won’t go, of course. The duchess wants to go—get a look at him and that sort of thing. Something to gossip about, I imagine. But how would it look? I mean, really?”

“I heard about that chap,” said the earl. “Got an invitation myself. He’s invited half of London. Almost everyone of quality—any sort of quality whatever, it seems.”

“When is the ball?”

“Saturday night.”

“We’ll have to go, of course,” said Moriarty.

“So,” Holmes said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “You think that’s it then?”

“It would seem to all come together nicely if we assume that Saturday night is the witching hour,” Moriarty said.

“Indeed,” Mycroft agreed. “In front of dozens—hundreds—of people. No way it could be hushed up.”

“We’d better have our people there,” suggested Sir Anthony.

“Without a fuss,” added the earl. “How will we manage?”

“The caterers,” said Moriarty. “Leave it to me.”

[CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX]

DO I HEAR A WALTZ?

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí. ¿Qué es la vida? Un ilusión,

una sombra, una ficción, y el mayor bien es pequeño;

que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son.

[What is life? A madhouse. What is life? An illusion,

a shadow, a fable, and the greatest good is slight,

as life is but a dream, and dreams are dreams.]

—PEDRO CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA

THE RENTED CHINA AND SILVER PLATE
arrived Friday evening in three carriages: twelve large wooden chests, which were lugged in through the service entrance and stacked in the downstairs pantry and adjoining hallway. The caterers arrived Saturday noon: in the service entrance, down the hall past the downstairs pantry and the cold pantry, through the bucket room, through the bottle room, up the stairs into the upper kitchen and butler’s pantry, and then to work unpacking and distributing the kitchenware and cutlery which they had brought with them, and commencing the cutting, peeling, boiling, baking, pounding, ripping, and swearing that the jars of duck confit must be somewhere amongst the comestible supplies that had been sent ahead earlier, packed carefully in ice chests. It was not to be a formal dinner but a floating buffet, which was certain to strain their resources and their patience. Maisgot, the seneschal, had used that dreaded phrase “His Lordship leaves the decisions to your good judgment.” Which in practice meant His Lordship reserved the right to carp about the food choices until the very last moment, when it would be impossible to alter any of the major decisions.

The extra staff, supplied by Cogswell’s Superior Servant Exchange, began arriving shortly after and set to unpacking and sorting the china and plate and polishing and buffing the odd piece that wasn’t up to Cogswell standards, and trying to find out from Maisgot where to put it all. He referred them to the caterers, which resulted in several muttered comments that he affected not to hear.

The orchestra arrived at four, except for the flautist, who was half an hour late and showed up in a state of nervous excitement over a contretemps with his landlady, and had to be calmed with a cup of hot tea and lemon and a biscuit before he could join in the rehearsal. In the tradesmen’s entrance they went, up to the ballroom, pausing for an admonition from Maisgot that food and beverages would be supplied as requested, but they were not to mingle with the guests, and then up to the players’ balcony, which overlooked both the entrance hall and the ballroom, with high railings and bars like a seraglio to prevent the cellist from leaping down and mingling with said guests.

On the far side of the ballroom was a second balcony, similar to the first but smaller, opening only onto the ballroom, with heavy red velvet drapes covering the three walls. Two ornate red-velvet-covered chairs, on which over the past two hundred years various monarchs and other royals were said to have stationed themselves when they merely wished to make an appearance but didn’t wish to mingle with the mere nobility or commoners, faced the room down below.

At five the man who no longer thought of himself as Albreth Decanare, except in the wee hours of the morning when he awakened from a troubled sleep and, for a few frightening moments, couldn’t remember where he was or why, looked around the ballroom from the privileged balcony. “It seems so large,” he said.

“There will be,” Macbeth told him, “over two hundred guests as of the latest tally. The room will not seem large. You have hired twenty-two extra staff, not counting the caterers.”

“I have?”

“And all will be utilized. You’ll see.”

“I shall be recognized!” exulted the prospective Earl of Mersy.

“After tonight, if all goes according to plan, your name will be on the lips of everyone in the English-speaking world.”

“Plan?”

Macbeth made a sweeping gesture with his arm, encompassing the ballroom and all it would contain, the past and the future, Albreth’s hopes and his fears. Macbeth was good at these sweeping gestures. “You must be regal,” he said, “and yet humble. Be firm, and yet flexible. This is the beginning!”

“Gracious!” Albreth said. “The Princess Andrea, she is still coming, is she not? I am anxious to meet her.”

“She will definitely be here,” said Macbeth. “We are sending a carriage for her.”

“We are?”

“We want to assure her presence, do we not?” asked Macbeth.

“We do? I mean, of course we do. I just assumed she had her own carriage.”

“Her mother, the grand duchess, didn’t want her to come,” said Macbeth. “I arranged for
un petit pot
for the mother and a carriage for the daughter.”

The almost earl turned to look at his mentor. “You paid her to come?” he asked, a querulous whine in his voice. “You actually
paid
her?”

“I gave a small consideration to the grand duchess, and then Her Grace graciously permitted her daughter to come,” said Macbeth. “Not quite the same thing. I have reasons for wanting the princess here.”

“Yes, yes,” Albreth agreed. “To see if she is suitable.”

Macbeth, who was thinking of something else, looked surprised for a second. “Suitable?”

“As my bride,” Albreth explained.

“Oh, yes. That. Of course.”

“What else?”

Macbeth took a deep breath, put his arm around Albreth’s shoulder, and said, “We have much to do, milord. We can discuss this later.”

Milord.
It had a certain pleasant ring, Albreth thought.
Milord.
He nodded and then gasped. “The silver!”

“The what?”

“The silver, the plate, the china—has it arrived? I don’t see it.”

“It is here. Maisgot assures me that everything is in order. The silver service is in the kitchen awaiting food. The plates will be brought out as soon as the plate warmers are placed and lighted. Most of the service will be done in the dining room.” Macbeth pointed toward the two pair of double doors leading to the dining room. “Small tables, each seating four, will be scattered about for people to sit and eat. At nine or nine thirty the tables and chairs will be cleared away, and the dancing may commence. That is the schedule.”

“Ah!” said Milord.

It was just after five when a black brougham swung through Totting Square, rounded the corner, and pulled up by the carriage house in Totting Mews. A tall man who looked a lot like the Prince of Wales emerged, giggling at something only he could see, and was escorted by his short, stocky companion through a concealed side door to Westerleigh House. About ten minutes later a second carriage arrived at the carriage house, and a tall, slender man enveloped in a dark cloak was helped out by two companions. He appeared to be drunk, or drugged, or otherwise incapable of walking on his own, and his companions carefully guided him through the side door, and the carriage pulled away.

[CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN]

THE PRINCE AND THE GIGGLER

Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry, “Hold, hold!”

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

THE SMUG, THE EPT, THE UNCURIOUS,
the socially insecure thought it best to avoid the fete at Westerleigh House. The adventurous, the bored, the curious, the hungry, the uncertain thought it might be quite interesting to attend and meet the parvenu earl. Some unfortunates were hobbled by husbands or wives who felt that they couldn’t—they simply
couldn’t
—be seen at such an event, but the lure of good food, entertainment, dancing, mingling with the nobility, and meeting the most talked-about man in London that week was an intriguing idea. So they came.

The guests began to arrive a few hairs before seven. They shed their outer garments in the cloakroom and were announced as they entered the ballroom by a grandiloquently attired majordomo with a great gold-tipped ebony staff that he thumped on the hardwood floor before and after each name.

Thump.
“The Honorable and Mrs. Jacob ValVoort.”
Thump.

   
Thump.
“Baron and Baroness Strubell.”
Thump.

      
Thump.
“The Honorable Professor James Moriarty.”
Thump.

Invitations are easy to forge, if you know someone who makes his living drawing pound notes freehand.

The star of the show, the possible Earl of Mersy, was not in evidence as the guests arrived. He had wanted to be—had pictured himself—standing just inside the ballroom door, smiling and nodding and graciously accepting all the bows and curtseys of his guests as they came through, but Macbeth had convinced him that it would not be wise. There were those, Macbeth suggested, who would choose not to bow or curtsey to a man who, after all, was still a commoner, no matter how close he was to gaining the privilege of being hanged by a silken cord, if convicted of a capital crime.

Now Macbeth had unaccountably disappeared, leaving Albreth standing by the door to his bedroom and trying to decide on his own just when the proper moment would be for his descent down the great staircase.

“How many?” he asked, intercepting a maid who was scurrying down the hall and clutching her arm as though he thought she would run off if he let go.

“’Scuse me, Your Lordship?” (He
would
be called “Your Lordship” in his own house.)

“How many guests have arrived? How many people are downstairs?”

She considered for a second and then curtseyed. “I don’t rightly know, Your Lordship. I’ll go down and find out for you.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Do that.”

“If you’d let go of my arm…”

“Oh. Sorry.” He released her, and she scurried off.

Two minutes later she scurried back and stopped a respectful distance from His Lordship. “Mr. Maisgot says as how an hundred and twenty-seven persons have passed in through the front door so far,” she volunteered. “Not counting a few servants and the like.”

“Ah!” said Albreth. “Go back and tell him to inform me when the number reaches two hundred. At that time will I reveal myself.”

“Yessir, Your Lordship,” said the girl, and she scurried off again.

*   *   *

“He’s here!” Sir Anthony whispered, looking casually about as though he just happened to be standing next to Moriarty.