Laurie King: Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

“Miss Russell. Do sit down. May I take your bag?”

“No, thank you.” I dropped the bag I had thrown together in Sussex – basic necessities such as tooth-brush, clean socks, reading material, and loaded revolver – onto the floor, and sat.

“Mr Holmes is not with you?”

“As you see.” Was that a sigh I heard? He sat down.

“You two haven’t any news of Robert Goodman, have you?”

“Is that why you asked me here, Chief Inspector? To follow up on the last case?”

“No, no. I just thought I’d ask, since the man has vanished into thin air, and whenever something like that takes place, it’s extraordinary how often Sherlock Holmes happens to have been in the vicinity.”

“No, we have not heard news of Mr Goodman.” The literal, if not actual, truth.

“Why do I get the feeling that you know more than you’re telling?”

“I know a great number of things, Chief Inspector, few of which are your concern. Now, you wrote asking for assistance.”

“From your husband.”

“Why?” Lestrade had always complained, loud and clear, that there was no place for amateurs in the investigation of crimes.

“Because the only police officers I had with the necessary skills have become unavailable.”

“Those skills being …?”

“The ability to make educated small-talk, and mastery of a type-writing machine. It is remarkable how few gentlemen are capable of producing type-written documents with their own ten fingers. Your husband, as I recall, is one who can.”

“And yet the city’s employment rosters are positively crawling with educated women type-writers.”

“I had one of those. A fine and talented young PC. Who is now home with a baby.”

“Oh. Well, now you have me.”

“Yes.” Definitely a sigh, this time. “Oh, it might as well be you.”

My eyes narrowed. “Chief Inspector, one might almost think you had no interest in this matter. Is it important enough to concern Holmes and me, or is it not?”

“Yes. I mean to say, I don’t know. That is-” He ran a hand over his face. “I dislike having outside pressures turned on the Yard.”

“Ah. Politics.”

“In a manner of speaking. It has to do with the British moving picture industry.”

“Do we have a moving picture industry?” I asked in surprise.

“Exactly. While the Americans turn out vast sagas that sell tickets by the bushel, this country makes small pictures about bunnies and Scottish hillsides that are shown as the audience is taking its seats for the feature. I’m told it’s because of the War – all our boys went to the Front, but the American cameras just kept rolling. And now, when we’re beginning to catch up, we no sooner produce a possible rival to the likes of Griffith and DeMille when a rumour – a faint rumour, mind – comes to the ears of Certain Individuals that the man they’re backing may be bent.”

I put the clues together. “Some members of the House of Lords are worried about the money they put up to fund a picture; they mentioned it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer over sherry, and Winston sent someone to talk to you?”

“Worse than that – the Palace itself have invested in the company, if you can believe that. And the trouble is, I can’t say for certain that there’s nothing to it. The studio has been linked to … problems.”

“I should imagine that picture studios generate all sorts of problems.”

“Not generally of the criminal variety. There are some odd coincidences that follow this one around. Three years ago, they made a movie about guns, and-”

“An entire moving picture about guns?”

“More or less. This was shortly after the Firearms Act, and the picture was about a returned soldier who used his military revolver in a Bolshevik act, accidentally killing a child.”

“The Bolshevist terror being why the Firearms Act was introduced in the first place.” The 1920 Firearms Act meant that every three years, Holmes and I were forced to go before our local sheriff for weapons permits, demonstrating that we were neither drunks, lunatics, nor children.

“That and the sheer number of revolvers knocking around after the War waiting to go off. Which more or less concealed the fact that someone sold quite a few of said firearms in this country, unpermitted, shortly after the picture came out.”

“What does that-”

“Wait. The following year, Fflytte did a story about a young woman whose life was taken over by drugs- Coke Express , it was called. The month following its release in the cinema houses, we had an unusual number of drugs parties along the south coast.”

“Yes, but-”

“And last year, one of their pirate movies was about rum-running into America. It came out in November.”

“I was busy in November. What happened?”

“McCoy’s arrest. ‘The Real McCoy’? The man’s made a small fortune smuggling hard liquor into the United States.”

“Hmm. Is this perhaps the same studio that was making a film about Hannibal?”

“Fflytte Films, that’s them.”

“Odd, I don’t recall hearing about a sudden influx of elephants racing down the streets of-”

“I knew this was a mistake. Never mind, Miss Russell, I’ll-”

“No no, Chief Inspector, sit down, I apologise. Surely there must have been something more concrete to interest you in the case, even in a peripheral manner?”

He paused, then subsided into his chair. “Yes. Although even that I can’t be at all certain about. We were beginning to ask some questions – in a hush-hush fashion, so as not to set the gossip magazines on fire – when the studio’s secretary went missing. Lonnie Johns is her name.”

“When was that?”

“Well, there’s the thing – it was only four or five days ago. And there’s nothing to say that the Johns girl didn’t just quit her job and go on holiday. The girl she shares a room with said it wouldn’t surprise her, that Lonnie’s job would shred the nerves of a saint.”

“But Miss Johns didn’t say anything to her, about going away?”

“The room-mate didn’t see her go – she’d just got back herself from a week in Bognor Regis.”

“Any signs of foul play at the flat?”

“Neither disturbance nor a note, although some of her things did seem to be missing, tooth-brush and the like.”

“If the girl had run off to the Riviera with a movie star, she’d probably have told everyone she knew,” I reflected.

“Normally, we’d barely even be opening an enquiry into a disappearance of a girl missing a few days, but time is against us. The entire crew is about to set sail out of England, and if we don’t get someone planted in their midst, we’ll lose the chance. And when my likely officers were unavailable, I thought, just maybe Mr Holmes would have a few days free to act as a sort of place-holder, until I could get one of my own in line for it. But never mind, it was only a-”

“And in addition, if it does blow up in the face of a gaggle of blue-bloods and splatter them all with scandal, it would be nice if Scotland Yard were nowhere in sight.”

“Miss Russell, I deeply resent the im-”

“Chief Inspector, I have nothing in particular on at the moment. I’ll be happy to devote myself to the Mysterious Affair of the Coincidental Film Crew.”

He looked shocked. “You mean you’ll do it?”

“I just said I would.”

“I thought you’d laugh in my face.” He gave me a suspicious scowl. “You aren’t a ‘fan’ of the cinema world, are you?”

“By no means.”

“And yet you seem almost eager to take this on.”

Motion pictures, or Mycroft? I reached out to snatch the folder from his hand. “My dear Chief Inspector, you have no idea.”