John Adams - The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

During the second course, Signora Depretis excused herself and I looked up as she stood. Her face was pale, and she held her hand to her abdomen as if her stomach hurt. Premiere Depretis escorted her from the dining room, his own face tight.

"What is the matter, do you think?" I asked Orazio.

He shrugged. "Perhaps the oysters."

During the rest of my meal, I imagined stomach pains until, feeling nauseous, I excused myself during the fourth course.

The next day, neither Depretis came to dinner.

The third day, my lady's maid, Anita, announced that two men waited in my parlour

"Where is my brother?" I asked.

She shook her head, smiling apologetically, "I do not know, Signorina."

I hesitated to step into the parlour unchaperoned, so I motioned Anita to accompany me. You must imagine my relief to find my dinner companions, Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes, awaiting me.

Here, I must pause to give you a word picture of Mr. Holmes. He towered above me, indeed, even among most men his lean figure loomed like a hawk. His dark shaggy brows pulled down in an expression of fixed concentration from the moment I stepped into the parlour and his eyes gleamed with a fire of excitement.

"How are you, Signorina Grisanti?" he asked in flawless Italian.

Dr. Watson hung back and watched our conversation with the eager interest of a newspaper reporter, in the scene but not part of it.

"I am well, thank you, Signore Holmes." I wondered for a moment if I might ask him for news of Premiere and Signora Depretis.

"The Depretises are dead." Mr. Holmes said, bluntly.

I gasped, both at the news and at how easily he read my thoughts. "The oysters?"

"Their nuptial toast was poisoned." Mr. Holmes gave me a long searching look. "Do you know where your brother is?"

"No." My attention was barely upon him, so horrified was I by the thought of that happy couple murdered. Assassinated.

"Well then, we shall chat with you while we wait for him, if you do not mind?"

I shook my head.

He folded himself into one of the cabin's chairs. Dr. Watson sat in a chair to the side, holding so still that in my memory he is almost invisible. Mr. Holmes leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. "Tell me about your approaching nuptials."

I blushed and stammered but proceeded to tell him about my recent betrothal to Mr. Boerwinkle and his business arrangements with Papa. About how I was moving to Africa but Papa could not accompany me because he was busy with the upcoming elections helping with the campaign for the Left. I told him about my dress; in other words, I acted every inch the vain, silly girl that I was.

In the midst of my recitation, Mr. Holmes hesitated and then asked. "May we look at your dowry?"

"Of course." I beckoned Anita and she helped the gentlemen unpack the crates of crystal. I hovered, anxious and useless, as they lay the sparkling glass and crystal about the cabin with infinite care. Mr. Holmes stopped to admire an opalescent vase, which my father had made to serve as a centrepiece for our table.

He glanced at the matched rows of clear stemware and back at the vase. "Did you have only the flutes and the vase in this style of glass?"

"Yes." I stepped forward to admire the piece. "No other glassmaker knows how to produce the opalescence and even my father rarely makes it."

"Has he produced opalescent stemware, such as the champagne flutes, before?"

I tilted my head and thought. "Not that I know of, but I am not often in the shop."

Mr. Holmes lifted the vase to his nose and, to my bewilderment, sniffed it. "Hmm. No help there. Help me put everything back, would you, Dr. Watson?"

I was thankful that Dr. Watson looked as baffled as I felt, but he said nothing and simply helped Mr. Holmes repack everything except the vase. Mr. Holmes turned to me and said, "I am sorry for the inconvenience, Signorina Grisanti. Do let me know when your brother returns." He bowed over my hand and he and Dr. Watson took their leave.

I stared at the door after them and then picked up the vase and sniffed it. I smelled nothing.

Some hours later Orazio sauntered into the room. "Well, little Rosa, how do you like your first ocean voyage?"

"I am frightened. Dr. Watson and Signore Holmes said-"

He crossed the room in one stride and grabbed my wrists. "What did you tell them?"

"Nothing!" I twisted in his painful grasp. "I had nothing to say. I do not understand what is happening. Orazio, they said the champagne was poisoned."

He dropped my wrists and stepped back, smiling. "Did they now?"

"How can you smile when the Depretises have been murdered?"

He laughed. "Why, my dear sister, do you think we are on this boat?"

The successive shocks I received that night had hardened my nerves, or perhaps I had already begun to accept the truth. With a click, the pieces came together in my head, along with something I had not told Mr. Holmes. I knew how my father made the glass. I could not let Orazio guess at my thoughts and I forced myself to answer him as the foolish girl he thought me to be: "I'm supposed to get married."

He turned, smiling, relief written on his face. "Yes, my beautiful Rosa. That is true." He kissed me on the forehead. "I am exhausted and it is long past time that you retired for the evening."

I twisted my fingers together, faint with the awareness of what my brother had done. Had his only target been Premiere Depretis, perhaps I would not have felt as horrified, but the memory of Signora Depretis kissing my brother on his cheeks, thanking him for bringing her death, sickened me. The realization that I could, perhaps, have prevented it tore at my soul. "All the excitement has me overwrought. Do you think it would be all right if I walked on deck to cool my head?"

Orazio squeezed my hands. "I am too tired to escort you."

"Anita will serve." I smiled coquettishly, masking the anguish over what I must do. "Or did you want to dazzle the young ladies yourself?"

Laughing, my brother kissed my cheeks. "Go on, Rosa, but do not walk too late."

I called Anita and we went to the upper decks. You have asked about Mr. Holmes, so I will not trouble you with the thoughts of my long promenade. Know that the night air cooled my fevered temples and gave me the resolution I needed. Anita walked with me through the decks until we arrived at Mr. Holmes's stateroom. I blushed, thinking of how it looked for an unmarried young woman to seek a man at this hour and then in the next instant I shook my head at my foolishness. What mattered my reputation on such a night as this?

Still, the sounds of an unearthly violin haunting the night nearly undid me but I gathered my resolve and knocked on the door. It opened to a cloud of blue-smoke, swirling about like that in the chimney of my father's furnace.

"Miss Grisanti?" Dr. Watson seemed so shocked at my appearance that he forgot to speak Italian and his next sentence fell on uncomprehending ears.

Mr. Holmes tucked his violin under his arm and said in excellent Italian, "Be courteous, Dr. Watson, Signorina Grisanti doesn't have a word of English. Won't you come in?"

I shook my head. "I have come simply to tell you that my brother has returned. He knew the glass was poisoned, and it was the glass, Signore Holmes, not the champagne."

Mr. Holmes leaned forward on his toes. My breath caught at his eagerness, but I somehow found the air to continue speaking. "The opalescence is caused by arsenic powder blown with the glass."

"In the glass, not on the surface!" He spun happily and pointed his bow at Dr. Watson. "That explains why my tests failed to detect it."

I felt close to fainting. "But you surely suspected, else you would not have come to look at my dowry."

His bushy eyebrows arched and I blushed under his scrutiny. "Your observation is astute," he said. "Premiere and Signora Depretis's symptoms began at dinner shortly after their champagne toast. The note of garlic, which Premiere Depretis noticed in the champagne, led me to suspect arsenic. The champagne combined with arsenic would have produced arsine gas, which was consistent with the Depretis's symptoms, but there was no arsenic residue in the bottle, so I turned my attention to the flutes. Your mention of your father's involvement with politics provided a motive, but I could not deduce the method."