Fic for angelqueen04: The Lady's Mirror
Jun. 4th, 2019 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holmesticemods posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
holmesticeTitle: The Lady’s Mirror
Recipient:angelqueen04
Author:thedoubtfulguest
Verse: Mary Russell series
Characters/Pairings: Russell/Holmes
Rating: suitable for general audiences
Warnings: n/a
Summary: Miss Russell is offered a chance to share her research with the public. She declines. (case fic, established relationship, outsider pov)
[The following manuscript was sent to the publisher of the Mary Russell series. A copy was sent to Miss Russell herself for verification, but she refused to confirm the events here did happen as described.]
The recent publication of a memoir by my dear friend Mary Russell has been an occasion for me to reflect on the beginning of our friendship. At that time, I worked for Lord Beverstone, a name that has now become a footnote in the history of journalism. Unlike press barons of later eras, Lord Beverstone pursued respectability of the Victorian kind, his name rarely mentioned in his own publications, yet well known in Whitehall. His sensibilities did not keep up with the changes brought by the 20th century; although the war brought a revival in his fortunes, the 1920s saw dwindling circulation numbers, and by 1927 his papers had folded or had been swept up by his rivals.
His true decline could be directly traced back to the afternoon he decided to invite Mary Russell to write for him. We were in the Fleet Street office of The London Chronicle and Post, a newspaper that had been required reading back in the 1890s. Everything in the office dated from that period, except for myself, six months into his employment, and his secretary, who was beginning his second week. Lord Beverstone ran through secretaries quickly, suspecting them of Socialism or Suffragist tendencies if they uttered the merest breath of disagreement. His latest secretary, a languid young man by the name of Clive, claimed that politics were simply too dull, and Lord Beverstone found this view agreeable enough to overlook the decorative neckwear and manners.
Lord Beverstone dropped a copy of The Lady’s Mirror in front of me. “What do women like, Sylvie?”
“Hats,” I said, giving his question the consideration it deserved.
He glared at me, eyebrows bristling. I regretted my moment of pertness. Moving from Miss Sylvie’s Poetry Corner to publishing stories of my own required patience and flattery.
Clive yawned. “Parisian frocks and the right to vote?”
“Women voting is a failed experiment,” Lord Beverstone announced.
“What do women want?” I asked, attempting sincerity.
The eyebrows retreated. “Women are a mystery. What man can understand their ways?” He paused as if he expected an answer. “Only one. God.”
We waited. I wondered if he was planning a replacement for The Monthly Lamb, an unsuccessful religious periodical that had quietly switched to a focus on cookery.
“There’s this female professor, a professor, can you believe it, but young with lots of blonde hair, charming figure, or so I’ve heard. I’m inviting her and her husband down for a couple of days, and I want you to help me give her the sell, tell her how much you like working for The Lady’s Mirror. Full colour photograph on the cover, weekly column about God, all these new religions, praying for a husband, whatever she wants to write.”
I agreed, but I was afraid for my corner of the magazine. It wasn’t much, but it was better than not being published at all.
The first meeting between Lord Beverstone and Miss Russell did not go well. About an hour after her arrival, I was dispatched to find her and keep her from leaving.
She was in the library, walking back and forth in front of one of the book cases. Her face was turned up, alert with excitement, and in the late afternoon sunlight, her hair was a fierce gold that twisted around her head like a crown. My entrance went unnoticed as she scanned titles on shelves that were too high for me to reach.1
“Lord Beverstone doesn’t read them,” I said.
“I would be shocked if he did,” she replied. She turned and examined me; it was not unfriendly, but it was slightly uncomfortable. I felt like a Greek soldier who has got holes in his breastplate the day Athena herself shows up to inspect the troops. “I’m Mary Russell, and you’re the one who has been sent to tell me all the reasons I should waste valuable research time writing a column about religious matters for an audience that is more concerned with gossip and going to the pictures.”
“You’re here, aren’t you? You must have had some interest.”
“The truth is, I would love to write a column for a magazine if I were to be given space enough to explain my ideas and their importance. My last paper provoked flurries of letters to the journal that published it, yet who were those readers? A few academics in the Middle West. A true introduction to theology would be a public service, but that’s not a task that can be accomplished in three hundred words every fortnight. How much space is allotted for your column?” Miss Russell asked.
“It’s poetry, so it really depends on what else is in magazine that week. How did you know I have a column?”
“That’s not my specialty,” she said. She looked amused, but I had the feeling it was directed at herself, not at me.2
“It’s not even my poetry. Readers submit poems on a theme and I choose one.” Now that the Poetry Corner has faded into the sepia-tinged nostalgia of another time, I can admit that I didn’t read all the poems. I would grab a handful of the appropriate length and read the opening and closing stanzas.
I asked her if she wanted to take a walk with me out to the lake, and she agreed, although she did cast a few longing glances at the books we were leaving behind. As we walked, she explained more about her research, and she was patient with all of my questions. Most of my questions—she did correct me sharply when I referred to Mary Magdalene as a prostitute.
“Fallen woman,” I corrected myself, a little surprised because Miss Russell wasn’t the type to resort to Victorian euphemisms.
“That depends on who is writing the story,” she said.
“My family wasn’t very religious. My father is an art historian, so I only know about Madonnas and Last Judgments and Susannah and the Elders and the Magdalene looking regretful as her clothing slides off.”
“I hope that’s not all in the same painting,” she said.
“My father is bringing Lord Beverstone some paintings tomorrow. He doesn’t really approve of Lord Beverstone’s taste—he hasn’t said it directly, but he thinks my Poetry Corner is some the worst of it. As for the worst…” We were almost at the lake. “Turn around.”
From the front, only a few glimpses of the Victorian additions to Bevers Hall could be glimpsed. From the lake, a glorious ramble of turrets and arched windows blazed forth. The library extended out from the main building and was fortified with crenellation and a row of banners proudly declaring Lord Beverstone’s dominion.
Miss Russell gasped. “It’s wonderful, in the old meaning of the word.” She turned back to the lake. “The reflection,” she said, and started to laugh. She picked up a stone, and with an expert flick of her wrist, sent it skipping across the water. She picked up a few more stones, and I watched her send them dancing across Lord Beverstone’s feudal daydreams as I told her about the stories I’d hoped to have published. Lord Beverstone had been writing large cheques to anyone published in an Oxford or Cambridge student magazine, but he wasn’t getting their best work and their literary journals were folding like daisies at sunset. I could do better. She agreed, and I felt my heart soar.
We returned to the library so Mary could read before it was time to dress for dinner. Clive was shelving books. After sliding a volume into place, he would heave a sigh that would make Sisyphus feel as if he’d got the better end of the deal. When he saw us entering, he put an exaggerated finger to his lips, then rolled his eyes to indicate one of our fellow guests was sleeping by the fire.
Mary returned to the books. “If I weren’t leaving tomorrow,” she said.
“Tomorrow? What happened to a week in the country?” The sleeping man had removed his newspaper and stood to face us.
He seemed familiar to me; perhaps the angles in his face or his sharp grey eyes reminded me of the hawks we’d seen circling the lake. He was older than Lord Beverstone or my father, but his energy made him appear years younger.
“What are you doing here?” Mary asked. I wish my pen could capture the sweetness in her voice as she added, “Husband.”
“I was lonely. Bees are good company, but only to a certain point.”
I began to feel that I was intruding on a moment that was not intended for an audience, so I motioned to Clive, who was openly staring at the couple, and we discreetly exited the room. As the door closed, I caught a glimpse of my new friend throwing her arms around her husband’s neck, dangling as a locket does on a chain, close to his heart.3 Introductions could wait.
Clive sighed again, shoulders drooping as he contemplated the closed library door. I went up back upstairs to dress for dinner.
Mary and her husband were in the blue drawing-room with the other guests before dinner. I suppose in the interests of completeness, I should reproduce the guest list here, but that isn’t necessary. Detective novelists like to pretend that in any given house there are a number of people who might wish to dispose of the host, but real life is far simpler. Many people disliked Lord Beverstone, feuded with him, held grudges against him, but these weren’t the kind of strong feelings that lead to murder. Murder comes from a deeper passion, from the simmering cauldron of anger, duty, love, and despair that can be found at the heart of even the most outwardly placid family life.
Most of the guests were connected to Lord Beverstone’s print empire. A managing director, a writer, an editor, and their spouses were all “talking shop” with a vicar’s daughter that Clive had recruited in order to avoid the dreaded thirteen at dinner. She looked as if she’d had a lot of experience listening to other people talk. Lord Beverstone’s sons had not yet come downstairs, which left me feeling oddly relieved.
I may have given you the impression that my presence at Lord Beverstone’s house party was related to my employment, but this isn’t entirely true. Even now, I feel some embarrassment over the youthful folly that had resulted in an almost-engagement to Lord Beverstone’s youngest son, Anthony. He was tall, wore clothes well, and when we danced I felt my heart race in a way not entirely explained by the movement of my feet and the music. He would move his hands, most girls would have given him a slap, but I didn’t. If it were only dancing and the other, I would have been happy to become his wife even as the feeling that I didn’t want to be married at all was growing inside of me. However, once we became closer, he began to share his true feelings with me, and those feelings were mostly about how much he hated his father and brother and his grand plans for the company once they were gone.
“Your father could live to be ninety,” I told him once. “And your brother is only two years older than you.”
“Maybe there’ll be another war. That’ll take care of Roland,” he said.
Anthony’s casual, light tone horrified me, and I knew that he secretly did hope for a cataclysm that would leave him the only one standing.
His brother Roland was not as tall, not as well-dressed, and far more open in both in his loathing for his family and his desire to take over the family business. I was relieved at their absence.
I joined Mary and her husband by the window.
“Sylvie, I’d like to introduce you to my husband, Sherlock Holmes.”
Now I knew why her husband had looked so familiar—a memory of illustrations that had haunted me as a child. I extended my hand in greeting, and was mortified to see it was trembling.
“Don’t worry, you’re not the first to believe my husband to be a fictional character.”
“Sorry, I…”
“A fictional existence makes life simpler in some ways,” Mr Holmes said. “I do have it better than Allan Quatermain. Most people think he’s dead.”
“Let’s try this again,” Mary said. “Sherlock, I’d like you to meet… Sylvie and I are already on a first name basis…”
“Sylvie Morris. How do you do? I’m the editor of Miss Sylvie’s Poetry Corner, I’m sure you’ve never read it, most sensible people never do, not that poetry is the domain of insensible, unsensible, foolish readers, that is to say, the kind of readers and contributors that the Poetry Corner attracts tend to be younger and older, it all still rhymes, you see.”
I felt desperately aware of the nonsensical phrases leaving my mouth, and hoped that Mary believed it was nerves from meeting an adventure story come to life. I had always known that Sherlock Holmes was real, and now I had lied directly to his face. Surely the man who was once the world’s greatest detective would be able to tell.
Mr Holmes began telling us about a case early in his career, a mediocre poet, but skilled forger who had decided that crime was the only true art. He was clearly trying to put me at ease, and I could see the story was new to Mary as well. She asked several technical questions, and at one point stretched out her palm so her husband could demonstrate the peculiar looped Q that had been the poet’s downfall.
I excused myself, and slipped into the main hall where one of the telephones was kept. Before I could place a call, I was interrupted by my almost-fiancé, Anthony.
“Sylvie, Sylvie, all will love Sylvie,” he bellowed, and lifted me off my feet in an overly enthusiastic embrace.
“Hullo, Tony. You’re certainly cheerful tonight.”
“I talked to my father, Roland has been caught cooking the books, sautéing the ledgers, roasting the numbers and all that. He’s out and I’m in.” He grinned triumphantly, and in that moment, he looked so much like his father that I was repulsed. Luckily, the gong sounded before he could raise the topic of marriage again, and we went in to dinner.
Anthony and Roland were seated at the head of the table next to their father, while Mary Russell, whose presence was ostensibly the occasion for the gathering, was marooned in the middle between an editor (primary interest: horses) and Clive. It was an odd arrangement, and one that our group was too staid to carry off successfully. I was seated next to Roland, who kept glancing at his brother, and back at me, sly, knowing glances that made me want to kick him under the table. I did splash a few drops of wine in his direction, not at all by accident.
Lord Beverstone saw himself as a man of action rather than appetites, and his table reflected his beliefs. While his neighbours bribed good cooks with large salaries to keep them from enjoying the freedom that comes from opening one’s own tea shop or restaurant, he said that plain English cooking should be enough for anyone, so he hired the first sober person to apply for the position of head cook. Sobriety has little to do with skill; the clear soup was frighteningly opaque and didn’t taste like anything at all. There was little conversation at my end of the table, mostly Anthony and Roland glaring at each other while their father slurped at the soup, and then at a salmon mousse covered in an unidentifiable sauce. I could hear Mary scandalising the vicar’s daughter with some argument over the dating of certain key texts, while at the end of the table, her husband was keeping the rest of the guests enthralled with an account of a perilous chase over the rooftops of night-time London.
Before I could begin to search the canard aux olives for the olives, Lord Beverstone began to cough. It was an ugly, choking cough, he pushed his seat away from the table, his face turning purple. “Help me,” he groaned, “I’ve been poisoned.” There was an uproar at his words—screams, gasps, I rushed to his side, but Clive was there first, helping his employer roll on to his side.
“Get everyone back into the drawing-room,” he ordered, and I was too sickened by what I had seen to wonder at Clive’s swift change from languor to authority.
What I had seen: both Anthony and Roland had been completely expressionless.
Tea was brought in for us as we waited to discover the fate of our host.
“I suppose it won’t matter now that he didn’t like my last story,” one of the writers said. There was a long silence after this comment, finally broken by the managing director who opined that it was awfully convenient to have Mr Holmes on the scene because he was sure to tell us who done it.
“You’ll have to ask a policeman,” Mr Holmes said. The managing director grumbled that it was a poor sort of joke, and the room returned to silence.
“Did you know Clive, Lord Beverstone’s secretary, was a detective of some sort?” I whispered to Mary.
She shook her head. “No, but now I believe that I was asked here under false pretences. Lord Beverstone knew that Holmes would not come if invited, but might accompany his wife.” She glanced at her husband. “Don’t tell me you knew.”
“The signs that mark the plainclothes policeman are there for anyone with eyes,” he said, a little too pleased with himself.4
The policeman in question appeared at the door. He apologised, said that Lord Beverstone was recovering, but that no one should leave until the investigation was complete. There were sighs of relief at his first statement, and a wave of discontent at his second, but most of the guests returned to their rooms quietly, exhausted by the lateness of the hour and the unexpected encounter with the law.
“It has occurred to me, wife, that if we wake up early, we can easily solve this problem before breakfast, and be home before lunch.”
Mary sighed. “That would be lovely.”
“Wait, does that mean you know, both of you know who poisoned Lord Beverstone? How?” I asked. I remembered how empty Anthony had looked as he watched his father writhing on the floor, and I felt sick again.
“It’s rather simple,” Mary said. “We’ll show you in the morning. Don’t worry too much about your young man.”
The minutes ticked by, but I remained wide awake, the events of the night racing through my mind. I halfway expected the usual knock on my door to interrupt the early hours of the morning, but the police were still holding Anthony and his brother, so I had to watch the room slowly brighten alone. Eventually I gave up on sleep, dressed, and went downstairs to wait for Mary and her husband.
They were already outside the dining room, alternately charming and ordering the constable guarding it to let them inside. I didn’t have anything to add, so I tried a different approach. I went down to the library, and asked Clive, I should say Detective Sergeant Merton, to allow us to investigate.
“The brothers are accusing each other,” he said as we walked back to the dining room.
“Tony told me that Roland was embezzling,” I said.
“They both were. You’re not surprised?”
“When I saw Lord Beverstone… Tony doing something like that wasn’t unthinkable to me, that’s when I knew why I kept turning down his proposals. If my first thought had been he would never…”
“I don’t think he did, but let’s see what your friend Sherlock Holmes has to say.”
Mary is the one that’s my friend, I wanted to say, but didn’t.
“We need tea,” DS Merton told the constable. He looked at Mr Holmes. “You have however long it takes water to boil.”
Mary and her husband sat opposite each other, Mary in Tony’s seat, Mr Holmes in Roland’s. They stared at each other, Mary readjusted her glasses, they switched seats.
“Elementary, my dear Holmes.”
“Russell.”
They switched seats again.
Mary turned toward DS Merton. “A wealthy man desires police protection. Threatening letters?”
“Letters, an incident with his motorcar that appeared deliberate. Lord Beverstone has made some influential friends over the years, some of them at Scotland Yard.”
Mr Holmes leaned back as far as the chair would allow. “Are his companies doing well enough to survive two embezzling sons.”
“Reports from his rivals would suggest not.”
DS Merton looked from Mary to Mr Holmes. “I agree,” he said. “We still need witness statements from the guests, but this investigation is over.”
“What will the charge be?” Mary asked.
“It won’t be enough as far as I’m concerned,” DS Merton said bitterly. He slammed the door behind him, startling the constable who was carefully bringing in a tea tray.
“It’s obvious,” Mary said, noting my confusion. “Lord Beverstone wants to escape his failing company and punish his thieving sons. The police will find a large quantity of arsenic in his salmon mousse—”
“Do you think it was arsenic?” Holmes interrupted. “It seemed his convulsions were an attempt at mimicking the effects of belladonna.”
“That was bad acting. Arsenic is simpler and a small amount could be ingested to add verisimilitude if his bodily fluids, such as saliva, are tested. I believe his next step would have been to stage a disappearance and leave his sons to take the blame.”
“That’s speculation, Russell. We’ll never know if he wanted to see his sons in prison or on the gallows.”
I felt as if I were going to be sick again. Mary quickly poured me a cup of tea. “Sylvie, I’m afraid you’ll have to take the poetry to another corner,” she said.
We heard shouting in the hall, before DS Merton returned. “Your father’s here, Miss Moran. I told him that we will need a statement from you, but he’s insisting on taking you home.”
“Miss Moran? You said your name was Morris,” Mary said.
“Can I make a statement now?” I asked, wanting to escape before Mary realised why I’d lied about my name.
Mary stared at me, anger beginning to tighten the corners of her eyes. “Moran. Any relation to the Moran who—”
“His grand-daughter. His son, who is standing right outside the door listening to us, is an art historian, sometime dealer and critic, and has never had anything to do with his father’s business,” Mr Holmes said.5
“I would never have anything to do with that man.” My father stepped into the room. My relief at his presence was mixed with despair at Mary’s anger.
“Why did you lie?” she asked.
“I didn’t think…” I didn’t want to explain it to her, that I’d briefly had a fantasy where she invited me to chronicle her adventures, to be her Watson.
“She thought you knew about the letters,” Mr Holmes said. “Every few years, Colonel Moran writes me a letter, swearing vengeance, saying that one day I’ll hear a knock on my door. It is all in the tradition of the best Victorian melodrama. However, I made the acquaintance of Mr Moran shortly after he left Oxford, so I knew I had nothing to fear from that quarter.”
“You should have let Dr Watson shoot him when you caught him in the empty house. He made my mother’s life hell,” my father said.
“How is Colonel Moran still alive?” Mary shook her head. “No, the question is, how many of your old enemies are still alive and how law-abiding are their relatives, that is what I want to know. I have a right to know.”
DS Merton cleared his throat. “Miss Russell, I can answer one of your questions. Colonel Moran was charged with attempted murder and faced additional conspiracy charges from his connection to Professor Moriarty, but the air-gun disappeared from evidence. Superintendent Lestrade always believed it was a cover up, an inside job, as they say. That’s partly why the Chief Inspector—” He stopped, unwilling share any more of the Yard’s weakness.
“I’d hoped we would become friends, Miss Russell,” I said, abandoning all dignity.
Mary didn’t forgive me that day, but when we met again by chance on the Orient Express, my assistance on that adventure proved I had no secret vendetta against her or Mr Holmes, and we maintained a correspondence for many years.
----
1. MR: The library was an unremarkable collection of Midddlemarch and Marcus Aurelius; however, the higher shelves contained an interesting selection that included books on medicinal herbs, covered in marginalia that time had rendered nearly illegible, and a commentary on the Codex Leningradensis. The decorator must have bought a collection at auction and used them to fill in Lord Beverstone’s shelves without assessing the worth of each volume. The handwritten notes were suggestive of a tradition of women’s spirituality that is worthy of further study. Unfortunately, the library was not disposed of separately from the estate, so the books remain inaccessible to scholars.↩
2. MR: There’s always more guesswork than my husband likes to admit. The clothing was expensive, but not the height of fashion; accent, educated, but not precise; hands, obviously have spent time moving over keys, but which ones? My husband claims to believe that music and art give a spiritual cast to the face, but I don’t need to bring spirit into it. Lord Beverstone is a publisher, so it is far more likely that an aspiring writer be drawn into his circle than an aspiring musician.↩
3. MR: This is completely absurd. Holmes and I are too close in height, which makes “dangling” around his neck an impossibility.↩
4. MR: Holmes later confessed that he had once seen Clive Merton in Lestrade’s office. Years later, they discussed the art of disguise, and Merton claimed that the Detective Sergeant was the performance, while for investigations the only disguise he needed was the truth.↩
5. SH: Moran’s son resembled his father in every way, except for the eyes. There was cynicism, yes, but he lacked the cruelty and aggression. There was not even a hint of criminality in his personal life, yet I would advise caution when buying a painting from him.↩
Recipient:
angelqueen04Author:
thedoubtfulguestVerse: Mary Russell series
Characters/Pairings: Russell/Holmes
Rating: suitable for general audiences
Warnings: n/a
Summary: Miss Russell is offered a chance to share her research with the public. She declines. (case fic, established relationship, outsider pov)
[The following manuscript was sent to the publisher of the Mary Russell series. A copy was sent to Miss Russell herself for verification, but she refused to confirm the events here did happen as described.]
The recent publication of a memoir by my dear friend Mary Russell has been an occasion for me to reflect on the beginning of our friendship. At that time, I worked for Lord Beverstone, a name that has now become a footnote in the history of journalism. Unlike press barons of later eras, Lord Beverstone pursued respectability of the Victorian kind, his name rarely mentioned in his own publications, yet well known in Whitehall. His sensibilities did not keep up with the changes brought by the 20th century; although the war brought a revival in his fortunes, the 1920s saw dwindling circulation numbers, and by 1927 his papers had folded or had been swept up by his rivals.
His true decline could be directly traced back to the afternoon he decided to invite Mary Russell to write for him. We were in the Fleet Street office of The London Chronicle and Post, a newspaper that had been required reading back in the 1890s. Everything in the office dated from that period, except for myself, six months into his employment, and his secretary, who was beginning his second week. Lord Beverstone ran through secretaries quickly, suspecting them of Socialism or Suffragist tendencies if they uttered the merest breath of disagreement. His latest secretary, a languid young man by the name of Clive, claimed that politics were simply too dull, and Lord Beverstone found this view agreeable enough to overlook the decorative neckwear and manners.
Lord Beverstone dropped a copy of The Lady’s Mirror in front of me. “What do women like, Sylvie?”
“Hats,” I said, giving his question the consideration it deserved.
He glared at me, eyebrows bristling. I regretted my moment of pertness. Moving from Miss Sylvie’s Poetry Corner to publishing stories of my own required patience and flattery.
Clive yawned. “Parisian frocks and the right to vote?”
“Women voting is a failed experiment,” Lord Beverstone announced.
“What do women want?” I asked, attempting sincerity.
The eyebrows retreated. “Women are a mystery. What man can understand their ways?” He paused as if he expected an answer. “Only one. God.”
We waited. I wondered if he was planning a replacement for The Monthly Lamb, an unsuccessful religious periodical that had quietly switched to a focus on cookery.
“There’s this female professor, a professor, can you believe it, but young with lots of blonde hair, charming figure, or so I’ve heard. I’m inviting her and her husband down for a couple of days, and I want you to help me give her the sell, tell her how much you like working for The Lady’s Mirror. Full colour photograph on the cover, weekly column about God, all these new religions, praying for a husband, whatever she wants to write.”
I agreed, but I was afraid for my corner of the magazine. It wasn’t much, but it was better than not being published at all.
The first meeting between Lord Beverstone and Miss Russell did not go well. About an hour after her arrival, I was dispatched to find her and keep her from leaving.
She was in the library, walking back and forth in front of one of the book cases. Her face was turned up, alert with excitement, and in the late afternoon sunlight, her hair was a fierce gold that twisted around her head like a crown. My entrance went unnoticed as she scanned titles on shelves that were too high for me to reach.1
“Lord Beverstone doesn’t read them,” I said.
“I would be shocked if he did,” she replied. She turned and examined me; it was not unfriendly, but it was slightly uncomfortable. I felt like a Greek soldier who has got holes in his breastplate the day Athena herself shows up to inspect the troops. “I’m Mary Russell, and you’re the one who has been sent to tell me all the reasons I should waste valuable research time writing a column about religious matters for an audience that is more concerned with gossip and going to the pictures.”
“You’re here, aren’t you? You must have had some interest.”
“The truth is, I would love to write a column for a magazine if I were to be given space enough to explain my ideas and their importance. My last paper provoked flurries of letters to the journal that published it, yet who were those readers? A few academics in the Middle West. A true introduction to theology would be a public service, but that’s not a task that can be accomplished in three hundred words every fortnight. How much space is allotted for your column?” Miss Russell asked.
“It’s poetry, so it really depends on what else is in magazine that week. How did you know I have a column?”
“That’s not my specialty,” she said. She looked amused, but I had the feeling it was directed at herself, not at me.2
“It’s not even my poetry. Readers submit poems on a theme and I choose one.” Now that the Poetry Corner has faded into the sepia-tinged nostalgia of another time, I can admit that I didn’t read all the poems. I would grab a handful of the appropriate length and read the opening and closing stanzas.
I asked her if she wanted to take a walk with me out to the lake, and she agreed, although she did cast a few longing glances at the books we were leaving behind. As we walked, she explained more about her research, and she was patient with all of my questions. Most of my questions—she did correct me sharply when I referred to Mary Magdalene as a prostitute.
“Fallen woman,” I corrected myself, a little surprised because Miss Russell wasn’t the type to resort to Victorian euphemisms.
“That depends on who is writing the story,” she said.
“My family wasn’t very religious. My father is an art historian, so I only know about Madonnas and Last Judgments and Susannah and the Elders and the Magdalene looking regretful as her clothing slides off.”
“I hope that’s not all in the same painting,” she said.
“My father is bringing Lord Beverstone some paintings tomorrow. He doesn’t really approve of Lord Beverstone’s taste—he hasn’t said it directly, but he thinks my Poetry Corner is some the worst of it. As for the worst…” We were almost at the lake. “Turn around.”
From the front, only a few glimpses of the Victorian additions to Bevers Hall could be glimpsed. From the lake, a glorious ramble of turrets and arched windows blazed forth. The library extended out from the main building and was fortified with crenellation and a row of banners proudly declaring Lord Beverstone’s dominion.
Miss Russell gasped. “It’s wonderful, in the old meaning of the word.” She turned back to the lake. “The reflection,” she said, and started to laugh. She picked up a stone, and with an expert flick of her wrist, sent it skipping across the water. She picked up a few more stones, and I watched her send them dancing across Lord Beverstone’s feudal daydreams as I told her about the stories I’d hoped to have published. Lord Beverstone had been writing large cheques to anyone published in an Oxford or Cambridge student magazine, but he wasn’t getting their best work and their literary journals were folding like daisies at sunset. I could do better. She agreed, and I felt my heart soar.
We returned to the library so Mary could read before it was time to dress for dinner. Clive was shelving books. After sliding a volume into place, he would heave a sigh that would make Sisyphus feel as if he’d got the better end of the deal. When he saw us entering, he put an exaggerated finger to his lips, then rolled his eyes to indicate one of our fellow guests was sleeping by the fire.
Mary returned to the books. “If I weren’t leaving tomorrow,” she said.
“Tomorrow? What happened to a week in the country?” The sleeping man had removed his newspaper and stood to face us.
He seemed familiar to me; perhaps the angles in his face or his sharp grey eyes reminded me of the hawks we’d seen circling the lake. He was older than Lord Beverstone or my father, but his energy made him appear years younger.
“What are you doing here?” Mary asked. I wish my pen could capture the sweetness in her voice as she added, “Husband.”
“I was lonely. Bees are good company, but only to a certain point.”
I began to feel that I was intruding on a moment that was not intended for an audience, so I motioned to Clive, who was openly staring at the couple, and we discreetly exited the room. As the door closed, I caught a glimpse of my new friend throwing her arms around her husband’s neck, dangling as a locket does on a chain, close to his heart.3 Introductions could wait.
Clive sighed again, shoulders drooping as he contemplated the closed library door. I went up back upstairs to dress for dinner.
Mary and her husband were in the blue drawing-room with the other guests before dinner. I suppose in the interests of completeness, I should reproduce the guest list here, but that isn’t necessary. Detective novelists like to pretend that in any given house there are a number of people who might wish to dispose of the host, but real life is far simpler. Many people disliked Lord Beverstone, feuded with him, held grudges against him, but these weren’t the kind of strong feelings that lead to murder. Murder comes from a deeper passion, from the simmering cauldron of anger, duty, love, and despair that can be found at the heart of even the most outwardly placid family life.
Most of the guests were connected to Lord Beverstone’s print empire. A managing director, a writer, an editor, and their spouses were all “talking shop” with a vicar’s daughter that Clive had recruited in order to avoid the dreaded thirteen at dinner. She looked as if she’d had a lot of experience listening to other people talk. Lord Beverstone’s sons had not yet come downstairs, which left me feeling oddly relieved.
I may have given you the impression that my presence at Lord Beverstone’s house party was related to my employment, but this isn’t entirely true. Even now, I feel some embarrassment over the youthful folly that had resulted in an almost-engagement to Lord Beverstone’s youngest son, Anthony. He was tall, wore clothes well, and when we danced I felt my heart race in a way not entirely explained by the movement of my feet and the music. He would move his hands, most girls would have given him a slap, but I didn’t. If it were only dancing and the other, I would have been happy to become his wife even as the feeling that I didn’t want to be married at all was growing inside of me. However, once we became closer, he began to share his true feelings with me, and those feelings were mostly about how much he hated his father and brother and his grand plans for the company once they were gone.
“Your father could live to be ninety,” I told him once. “And your brother is only two years older than you.”
“Maybe there’ll be another war. That’ll take care of Roland,” he said.
Anthony’s casual, light tone horrified me, and I knew that he secretly did hope for a cataclysm that would leave him the only one standing.
His brother Roland was not as tall, not as well-dressed, and far more open in both in his loathing for his family and his desire to take over the family business. I was relieved at their absence.
I joined Mary and her husband by the window.
“Sylvie, I’d like to introduce you to my husband, Sherlock Holmes.”
Now I knew why her husband had looked so familiar—a memory of illustrations that had haunted me as a child. I extended my hand in greeting, and was mortified to see it was trembling.
“Don’t worry, you’re not the first to believe my husband to be a fictional character.”
“Sorry, I…”
“A fictional existence makes life simpler in some ways,” Mr Holmes said. “I do have it better than Allan Quatermain. Most people think he’s dead.”
“Let’s try this again,” Mary said. “Sherlock, I’d like you to meet… Sylvie and I are already on a first name basis…”
“Sylvie Morris. How do you do? I’m the editor of Miss Sylvie’s Poetry Corner, I’m sure you’ve never read it, most sensible people never do, not that poetry is the domain of insensible, unsensible, foolish readers, that is to say, the kind of readers and contributors that the Poetry Corner attracts tend to be younger and older, it all still rhymes, you see.”
I felt desperately aware of the nonsensical phrases leaving my mouth, and hoped that Mary believed it was nerves from meeting an adventure story come to life. I had always known that Sherlock Holmes was real, and now I had lied directly to his face. Surely the man who was once the world’s greatest detective would be able to tell.
Mr Holmes began telling us about a case early in his career, a mediocre poet, but skilled forger who had decided that crime was the only true art. He was clearly trying to put me at ease, and I could see the story was new to Mary as well. She asked several technical questions, and at one point stretched out her palm so her husband could demonstrate the peculiar looped Q that had been the poet’s downfall.
I excused myself, and slipped into the main hall where one of the telephones was kept. Before I could place a call, I was interrupted by my almost-fiancé, Anthony.
“Sylvie, Sylvie, all will love Sylvie,” he bellowed, and lifted me off my feet in an overly enthusiastic embrace.
“Hullo, Tony. You’re certainly cheerful tonight.”
“I talked to my father, Roland has been caught cooking the books, sautéing the ledgers, roasting the numbers and all that. He’s out and I’m in.” He grinned triumphantly, and in that moment, he looked so much like his father that I was repulsed. Luckily, the gong sounded before he could raise the topic of marriage again, and we went in to dinner.
Anthony and Roland were seated at the head of the table next to their father, while Mary Russell, whose presence was ostensibly the occasion for the gathering, was marooned in the middle between an editor (primary interest: horses) and Clive. It was an odd arrangement, and one that our group was too staid to carry off successfully. I was seated next to Roland, who kept glancing at his brother, and back at me, sly, knowing glances that made me want to kick him under the table. I did splash a few drops of wine in his direction, not at all by accident.
Lord Beverstone saw himself as a man of action rather than appetites, and his table reflected his beliefs. While his neighbours bribed good cooks with large salaries to keep them from enjoying the freedom that comes from opening one’s own tea shop or restaurant, he said that plain English cooking should be enough for anyone, so he hired the first sober person to apply for the position of head cook. Sobriety has little to do with skill; the clear soup was frighteningly opaque and didn’t taste like anything at all. There was little conversation at my end of the table, mostly Anthony and Roland glaring at each other while their father slurped at the soup, and then at a salmon mousse covered in an unidentifiable sauce. I could hear Mary scandalising the vicar’s daughter with some argument over the dating of certain key texts, while at the end of the table, her husband was keeping the rest of the guests enthralled with an account of a perilous chase over the rooftops of night-time London.
Before I could begin to search the canard aux olives for the olives, Lord Beverstone began to cough. It was an ugly, choking cough, he pushed his seat away from the table, his face turning purple. “Help me,” he groaned, “I’ve been poisoned.” There was an uproar at his words—screams, gasps, I rushed to his side, but Clive was there first, helping his employer roll on to his side.
“Get everyone back into the drawing-room,” he ordered, and I was too sickened by what I had seen to wonder at Clive’s swift change from languor to authority.
What I had seen: both Anthony and Roland had been completely expressionless.
Tea was brought in for us as we waited to discover the fate of our host.
“I suppose it won’t matter now that he didn’t like my last story,” one of the writers said. There was a long silence after this comment, finally broken by the managing director who opined that it was awfully convenient to have Mr Holmes on the scene because he was sure to tell us who done it.
“You’ll have to ask a policeman,” Mr Holmes said. The managing director grumbled that it was a poor sort of joke, and the room returned to silence.
“Did you know Clive, Lord Beverstone’s secretary, was a detective of some sort?” I whispered to Mary.
She shook her head. “No, but now I believe that I was asked here under false pretences. Lord Beverstone knew that Holmes would not come if invited, but might accompany his wife.” She glanced at her husband. “Don’t tell me you knew.”
“The signs that mark the plainclothes policeman are there for anyone with eyes,” he said, a little too pleased with himself.4
The policeman in question appeared at the door. He apologised, said that Lord Beverstone was recovering, but that no one should leave until the investigation was complete. There were sighs of relief at his first statement, and a wave of discontent at his second, but most of the guests returned to their rooms quietly, exhausted by the lateness of the hour and the unexpected encounter with the law.
“It has occurred to me, wife, that if we wake up early, we can easily solve this problem before breakfast, and be home before lunch.”
Mary sighed. “That would be lovely.”
“Wait, does that mean you know, both of you know who poisoned Lord Beverstone? How?” I asked. I remembered how empty Anthony had looked as he watched his father writhing on the floor, and I felt sick again.
“It’s rather simple,” Mary said. “We’ll show you in the morning. Don’t worry too much about your young man.”
The minutes ticked by, but I remained wide awake, the events of the night racing through my mind. I halfway expected the usual knock on my door to interrupt the early hours of the morning, but the police were still holding Anthony and his brother, so I had to watch the room slowly brighten alone. Eventually I gave up on sleep, dressed, and went downstairs to wait for Mary and her husband.
They were already outside the dining room, alternately charming and ordering the constable guarding it to let them inside. I didn’t have anything to add, so I tried a different approach. I went down to the library, and asked Clive, I should say Detective Sergeant Merton, to allow us to investigate.
“The brothers are accusing each other,” he said as we walked back to the dining room.
“Tony told me that Roland was embezzling,” I said.
“They both were. You’re not surprised?”
“When I saw Lord Beverstone… Tony doing something like that wasn’t unthinkable to me, that’s when I knew why I kept turning down his proposals. If my first thought had been he would never…”
“I don’t think he did, but let’s see what your friend Sherlock Holmes has to say.”
Mary is the one that’s my friend, I wanted to say, but didn’t.
“We need tea,” DS Merton told the constable. He looked at Mr Holmes. “You have however long it takes water to boil.”
Mary and her husband sat opposite each other, Mary in Tony’s seat, Mr Holmes in Roland’s. They stared at each other, Mary readjusted her glasses, they switched seats.
“Elementary, my dear Holmes.”
“Russell.”
They switched seats again.
Mary turned toward DS Merton. “A wealthy man desires police protection. Threatening letters?”
“Letters, an incident with his motorcar that appeared deliberate. Lord Beverstone has made some influential friends over the years, some of them at Scotland Yard.”
Mr Holmes leaned back as far as the chair would allow. “Are his companies doing well enough to survive two embezzling sons.”
“Reports from his rivals would suggest not.”
DS Merton looked from Mary to Mr Holmes. “I agree,” he said. “We still need witness statements from the guests, but this investigation is over.”
“What will the charge be?” Mary asked.
“It won’t be enough as far as I’m concerned,” DS Merton said bitterly. He slammed the door behind him, startling the constable who was carefully bringing in a tea tray.
“It’s obvious,” Mary said, noting my confusion. “Lord Beverstone wants to escape his failing company and punish his thieving sons. The police will find a large quantity of arsenic in his salmon mousse—”
“Do you think it was arsenic?” Holmes interrupted. “It seemed his convulsions were an attempt at mimicking the effects of belladonna.”
“That was bad acting. Arsenic is simpler and a small amount could be ingested to add verisimilitude if his bodily fluids, such as saliva, are tested. I believe his next step would have been to stage a disappearance and leave his sons to take the blame.”
“That’s speculation, Russell. We’ll never know if he wanted to see his sons in prison or on the gallows.”
I felt as if I were going to be sick again. Mary quickly poured me a cup of tea. “Sylvie, I’m afraid you’ll have to take the poetry to another corner,” she said.
We heard shouting in the hall, before DS Merton returned. “Your father’s here, Miss Moran. I told him that we will need a statement from you, but he’s insisting on taking you home.”
“Miss Moran? You said your name was Morris,” Mary said.
“Can I make a statement now?” I asked, wanting to escape before Mary realised why I’d lied about my name.
Mary stared at me, anger beginning to tighten the corners of her eyes. “Moran. Any relation to the Moran who—”
“His grand-daughter. His son, who is standing right outside the door listening to us, is an art historian, sometime dealer and critic, and has never had anything to do with his father’s business,” Mr Holmes said.5
“I would never have anything to do with that man.” My father stepped into the room. My relief at his presence was mixed with despair at Mary’s anger.
“Why did you lie?” she asked.
“I didn’t think…” I didn’t want to explain it to her, that I’d briefly had a fantasy where she invited me to chronicle her adventures, to be her Watson.
“She thought you knew about the letters,” Mr Holmes said. “Every few years, Colonel Moran writes me a letter, swearing vengeance, saying that one day I’ll hear a knock on my door. It is all in the tradition of the best Victorian melodrama. However, I made the acquaintance of Mr Moran shortly after he left Oxford, so I knew I had nothing to fear from that quarter.”
“You should have let Dr Watson shoot him when you caught him in the empty house. He made my mother’s life hell,” my father said.
“How is Colonel Moran still alive?” Mary shook her head. “No, the question is, how many of your old enemies are still alive and how law-abiding are their relatives, that is what I want to know. I have a right to know.”
DS Merton cleared his throat. “Miss Russell, I can answer one of your questions. Colonel Moran was charged with attempted murder and faced additional conspiracy charges from his connection to Professor Moriarty, but the air-gun disappeared from evidence. Superintendent Lestrade always believed it was a cover up, an inside job, as they say. That’s partly why the Chief Inspector—” He stopped, unwilling share any more of the Yard’s weakness.
“I’d hoped we would become friends, Miss Russell,” I said, abandoning all dignity.
Mary didn’t forgive me that day, but when we met again by chance on the Orient Express, my assistance on that adventure proved I had no secret vendetta against her or Mr Holmes, and we maintained a correspondence for many years.
----
1. MR: The library was an unremarkable collection of Midddlemarch and Marcus Aurelius; however, the higher shelves contained an interesting selection that included books on medicinal herbs, covered in marginalia that time had rendered nearly illegible, and a commentary on the Codex Leningradensis. The decorator must have bought a collection at auction and used them to fill in Lord Beverstone’s shelves without assessing the worth of each volume. The handwritten notes were suggestive of a tradition of women’s spirituality that is worthy of further study. Unfortunately, the library was not disposed of separately from the estate, so the books remain inaccessible to scholars.↩
2. MR: There’s always more guesswork than my husband likes to admit. The clothing was expensive, but not the height of fashion; accent, educated, but not precise; hands, obviously have spent time moving over keys, but which ones? My husband claims to believe that music and art give a spiritual cast to the face, but I don’t need to bring spirit into it. Lord Beverstone is a publisher, so it is far more likely that an aspiring writer be drawn into his circle than an aspiring musician.↩
3. MR: This is completely absurd. Holmes and I are too close in height, which makes “dangling” around his neck an impossibility.↩
4. MR: Holmes later confessed that he had once seen Clive Merton in Lestrade’s office. Years later, they discussed the art of disguise, and Merton claimed that the Detective Sergeant was the performance, while for investigations the only disguise he needed was the truth.↩
5. SH: Moran’s son resembled his father in every way, except for the eyes. There was cynicism, yes, but he lacked the cruelty and aggression. There was not even a hint of criminality in his personal life, yet I would advise caution when buying a painting from him.↩
no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 09:37 pm (UTC)[ahem!]
It is a true pleasure to have an account of Mrs. Russell's adventures from a neutral observer, although Miss Moran must certainly be chastised for her cavalier behavior as an editor. That said, her behavior is clearly a reflection of her youth and naiveté at the time of the events she describes, and may perhaps be forgiven on that account. The present memoir shows a greater degree of maturity, and the allusion to a second case is suitably Watsonesque.
(signed)
Simon Brimmer
no subject
Date: 2019-06-05 12:35 am (UTC)This is so lovely! I absolutely love this intriguing little case, and love that Russell and Holmes barely turned a hair in solving the mystery lol!
I do love Sylvie and her connection to Colonel Moran and, thus, to Holmes' earlier adventures. And the allusion to the subsequent case that Sylvie helped Russell solve in the last lines was absolutely perfect!
Thank you so, so much!! I completely adore this little gem! *cuddles fic*
no subject
Date: 2019-06-05 05:22 pm (UTC)The OCs are marvelous, btw, from Miss Moran through all three Breverstones (oh, how fortunate that Miss Moran didn't marry into that family!), to the very clever police detective. (The police sergeant is the disguise!)
And I felt Mary's indignation very much that Holmes has been keeping secrets from her re the Morans -- after what went down with the Moriartys, of course Mary is going to have an abundance of emotions about that!
In short, this is beautifully done; thank you for writing it!
no subject
Date: 2019-06-06 10:32 pm (UTC)This line especially stood out to me:
I didn’t want to explain it to her, that I’d briefly had a fantasy where she invited me to chronicle her adventures, to be her Watson.
I'm glad Mary eventually forgave Sylvie.
This was fun to read- thank you for sharing it!
no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-09 10:07 pm (UTC)What can I say? The way you write Mary Russell herself is pitch-perfect, from her somewhat muted connection (she doesn't really want to be there) to her very realistic rage over a Moran's involvement. Sylvie Morris is another type of woman with a different set of vulnerabilities to the men around her, but her ways of maneuvering them felt so believable -- she entirely had my sympathies, even as I cringed a bit at some of the compromises she was forced to make. I also loved the idea that the Moran family were comparatively innocent and not able to be protected by Holmes, that's just such an interesting idea and a nice little grace-note acknowledgment of the fact that criminals' victims aren't always (or only) the targets of their crimes.
And speaking as someone with an academic training I loved the footnotes written in MR's own voice. An inspired move, that! Well done, author!
no subject
Date: 2019-06-11 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 12:45 pm (UTC)"She turned and examined me; it was not unfriendly, but it was slightly uncomfortable." It would be quite something, wouldn't it, to be the recipient of Russell's studying gaze?
It's been a million years since I was really immersed in the Russell/Holmes books, but I enjoyed this thoroughly. :-)
no subject
Date: 2019-06-22 06:22 pm (UTC)