Free The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes by Carole Nelson Douglas Page B

lives,” he commented.
    “Surprise always gives one the advantage. I wished to wait for you here, not in the street.’
    “ Hmm . Not for reasons of social discretion but because you don’t want anyone to suspect that you have consulted me.”
    “Exactly.”
    “I am aware that you have pursued delicate private inquiries from time to time on the Continent these past six years.”
    “I am aware that your have pursued your same interesting array of cases here, thanks to the published accounts of your Boswell, who is mightily annoyed with the both of us at the moment.”
    “He is annoyed that I have banished him from the case, but I merely follow your preference in that.”
    “The always prescient Mr. Holmes,” I murmured.
    “Not always, or I would have anticipated your arrival.” He strode to the round table littered with this and that and seized that day’s Times .
    “Ha! The Belgravia arrived at Hampton from Ostend . No. Ah. Here is an editorial screed against the scandalous numbers of houses of harlotry, etcetera, et cetera. I presume you announced yourself as my wife because you need a temporary husband on this island, not from any defection of Mr. Godfrey Norton’s.”
    He eyed me quizzically over the folded and crackling newsprint, more interested in my reply than he expected me to notice. As an operatic performer, I know acting when I see it.
    “Not from any defection,” I answered, watching his expression shift into either relief, or regret.
    “You’re quite right,” I went on, “which is why I am applying to you. I have a most vexing duty to perform for an old friend and wished to both consult and enlist you in my cause. I’m in a far better position to afford your services now.”
    “I take cases that intrigue me. The pay is . . . what you will.”
    “I was of the hope that I still intrigue you.”
    “Your bold appearance yet again on my doorstep certainly does,” he conceded, casting himself as casually and limberly as a boy onto the basket chair opposite me, taking a deep inhalation of smoke and closing his eyes. “Regale me, madam, with the particulars.”
    “As you know, Mr. Holmes, my dark soprano voice made me difficult to cast in opera, yet I had managed a decent career until my ill-advised acquaintance with the Crown Prince, and then King, of Bohemia . I see that Dr .Watson turned first to that episode in cataloging your cases in fiction, and was in the dark about several aspects of the matter.”
    “Good old Watson! I always find his direct approach to life invigorating and he much fancies himself as a vocational scribbler.”
    “That is why I wish only you to know the circumstances I outline. This matter cannot ever be made public. A singer is an itinerant soul. Friendships wax and wane from capital to capital and opera to opera. Yet in those early days of my career I formed an attachment with a sister soprano, an English girl named Sophia Treadwell.”
    “What of the formidable Miss Huxleigh, as much the soul of propriety as you are not?”
    “Like your Dr. Watson, Nell came and went in my life during that time. Now she is with me in France , and the bane of all Parisian debauchery.”
    His laughter was a rich bark of amusement. I always thought that Sherlock Holmes rather more appreciated Nell than he let on.
    “The performing life is taxing,” I continued, “and not terribly profitable for all but international sensations like Sarah Bernhardt. Sophia was delighted to win the interest of a man from a prominent English family. Reginald Montague was twenty years older, but a ‘good catch,’ as the Society mamas put it in their mercenary way.”
    “Montague.” He leapt up to consult a thick commonplace book on a shelf across the room. “A larcenous cloth merchant. Hardly. The nefarious thimble collector. No. Hmm . A Shropshire family dating back to the crusades. More likely.”
    “The very one. Sophia and I have corresponded sporadically. Then, this spring, I began