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

Then I came to the more complicated part, which concerned the characters acting out their parts inside our tight little stage.

Four sentences into my analysis, however, Holmes stopped me. “Perhaps you had better go through that more slowly.”

The section of my body resting on narrow stone had lost sensation and my arms ached, but I could not bring myself to be impatient with him, since it had taken me hours with mental graph paper to map out the permutations of all that I had gathered on the rooftop harem that day.

“We knew on the Harlequin that Adam is smitten with Annie,” I began. “However, paying close attention to her concerns during the day, she responds to remarks concerning Bert-the-Constable with approximately the same ratio of interest as she does to remarks about Adam-the-Pirate, even though I’d have said that Bert was more intent on a friendship with Jack than on reciprocating Annie’s affections. Jack, on the other hand, would rather follow Edith about, being unaware that Edith is a boy.”

“Edith is a boy?”

I was pleased to find something he’d missed. “Didn’t I mention that? Yes, I found Mrs Nunnally plucking her child’s emergent beard. Beyond those specific links, various of the girls are interested in the young pirates and the young constables interchangeably – any young male will do – but I should say that Mrs Hatley-”

“Mother of June.”

“Right. Mrs Hatley appears to retain both affection and hope regarding Geoffrey Hale – although it could as easily be a sort of psychic contagion spilling over from her rôle as the pirate’s nursemaid, Ruth, since she also pets Daniel Marks, her Frederic, at any given opportunity.”

“And yet I should have said that if Geoffrey Hale is interested in anyone, it’s his cousin Fflytte.”

My numb hands jerked along the rope and nearly spilled me to the paving stones.

“Russell? Are you there?”

“Yes, Holmes, merely startled. You think …?”

“They would not be the first aristocratic cousins we have known in … that situation.”

“Except that Fflytte has a reputation as a womaniser. And is currently – well, not currently, but until Harlequin intervened – associated with the picture’s choreographer, Graziella Mazzo.”

“Which association appears to trouble Hale considerably.”

“But, Mrs Hatley, and June …?”

“A man’s tastes may change. Or they may be, shall we say, inclusive.”

I thought about that, about one or two times when I had found Hale studying his cousin with an expression difficult to analyse. “You could be right. But what about La Rocha and Samuel?”

“You suggest they may have a similar, er, affection?”

“No! I mean to say, I hadn’t thought of …”

“I should think more along the lines of the Barbarossa brothers,” he said firmly.

“The sixteenth-century pirates.”

“Aruj the elder – called Red Beard by Europeans – and his brother Kheir-ed-Din,” Holmes mused. “Aruj was a brutal fist of a man, and became the virtual ruler of Algiers. When he died, his brother took over, and consolidated their base of power. He was every bit as merciless as Aruj had been, but he was also a sophisticate, educated, capable of seeing beyond the reach of a pirate ship.”

“Holmes, the length of time I wish to linger out here is limited.”

“I suspect that we may be caught up in a re-establishment of the Barbarossa empire.”

“What, in this little place? The smallest gunship of the British Navy could flatten Salé in an afternoon.”

“With thirty-four European citizens within its walls?”

He had a point. “So how do we remove His Majesty’s citizens from harm?”

“Having had a plenitude of time in which to reflect, I believe I have identified Mycroft’s agent here.”

“You don’t sound terribly pleased.”

“It’s Bert.”

“Really? But that’s good, isn’t- Ooh. Bert, who may be fond of Samuel’s younger son. I could be wrong,” I offered.

“I, too, have seen reason to believe that there are emotional ties there, ties that could make Bert less than wholehearted in his support of an escape.”

“If he’s Mycroft’s man, he’d never side against his countrymen.”

“Not consciously, I agree, but a slip of the tongue? A moment’s hesitation?”

I dangled glumly and had to agree: Mycroft’s undercover agent had best be considered a broken reed, and should not be brought into any plans. “For my part, the only person on my side of the wall with a degree of native wit is Annie, and I consider her judgment clouded by affection for Adam. Certainly, she seems to have a suspect degree of curiosity about the actions of others – you saw how every time one turns around, there she is, blinking her pretty blue eyes.”

“It is true, beauty and reliability rarely go hand in hand.”

Which rather trod underfoot the compliment with which he had greeted me. “Thank you, Holmes,” I muttered.

“Beg your pardon?”

“I said, It looks as if it’s up to the two of us, yet again.”

I remained at his window for another ten minutes or so while we discussed options and signals, then reluctantly I told him that I had to go or risk falling. He ordered me to give him one hand, which he massaged back to life, then the other. Feeling restored, I dug out my pocket-knife and held it into the inner darkness, then set about climbing back up the wall to the rooftop. Behind me, the metal shutter swung shut on silent hinges, and I reflected that Holmes had contrived to grease them, probably with a pat of butter from his breakfast. That he had done so spoke of his confidence in me.

As I set my hands upon the rope, there came a melodramatic whisper:

“ ‘And noiseless as a lovely dream is gone. And was she here? and is he now alone?’ ”em›

I nearly fell off the rope laughing.

Warmed by his hands and his attitude, I walked up the wall to the rooftop. There I hung for a couple of minutes, peering over and waiting for motion, but the area was still deserted. I swung up and onto the rooftop, retrieved the rope and bound it around my waist, then clambered to the top of the high dividing wall to stretch my foot down for the bench, left against the wall.

Except that it was no longer there. Dangling, I craned to look over my shoulder, and saw two figures stand up from their seats on the bench, now ten feet distant.

They did not rush to seize me. After a moment’s thought, I let go and dropped to the roof, then turned to face my captors.

There came the scrape of a match, and a flame gave light to our tableau: Annie holding the flame to a candle, with at her side a smaller person. Oh, God: Edith.

All in all, I’d rather have confronted a pair of armed guards.

SERGEANT: This is perplexing.

POLICE: We cannot understand it at all.

EDITH HAD DISCOVERED me missing first.

She, or he, had been lying awake in the room she shared – or, he shared … oh, dash it all, call the diabolical brat a female – in the room she shared with her mother, lingering over the day’s events and the basic dreadful pain of adolescence heaped high with the unutterable shame and anguish of being a boy in a dress, when she heard a faint whisper of sound from the hallway. By the time she dressed and figured out the person had been going up rather than down, I was no longer on the roof, and she was too short to reach the top of the wall from the bench-top.

Annie, whose attention had been caught by the sound of Edith going through two doors and up the stairs, caught the child arranging a chair atop the bench. And although Edith tried hard to convince her that it was the only place the mysterious person could have gone, Annie had the sense to keep Edith from throwing herself on top of the wall and, for all either of them knew, into range of that Purdy shotgun.