Good Night, Mr. Holmes Part 12

I was about to remove the intruding sc.r.a.p of paper in proprietary indignation when I saw that it was a card. The name on it transfixed me as if I were one of the Temple Church's knightly stone effigies. I fixed on only that significant surname-Norton. The message scrawled across the card's face was even more paralyzing: "Miss Huxleigh, please see me about your services. No. 17, Inner Temple."

I looked about the deserted byways, needing Irene at my side, wanting to shout my amazement to whoever would listen. That he, of all persons, should be the first- the only-to rise to my bait! I couldn't credit my good fortune.

But suppose this were not mere coincidence? Suppose that, somehow, Mr. Norton knew of Irene's and my a.s.sociation, of my meddling in his affairs also? I remembered the angry voice that had thundered beyond my drawn curtains so many weeks ago, the furious heavy-footed retreat down the stairs and into the hansom cab.

I remembered also my intense curiosity to view this fire-breather in the flesh. Surely the miserable old Norton would be an ugly specimen of humanity himself. Certainly he had offended Irene beyond forgiveness, a rare reaction in her to any human being.

Pulling the card from the board, I marched smartly through the narrow pa.s.sages, past the stately Temple Church (muttering a hasty prayer for my safety) and to the door facing the quadrangle that bore the number 17.

My knock brought a baritone "Come in."

The chamber beyond was as small as a scullery and crammed with papers. A raven-haired man hunched behind the book-laden desk. Behind him a coat rack held a chesterfield and-I recognized it with a thrill of remembrance-a velvet plush top hat. Many men wore such headgear, but only one such man had stormed Irene's Saffron Hill eyrie so forcefully.

"Yes?" The gentleman did not glance up from the desk.

"I-I understand you have need of a typewriter girl."

He looked at me then and I was struck quite mute. "Old Norton" was no more than five-and-twenty, young for a barrister, young even for a child of the senile monster I pictured the scoundrel to be. Numbly, I glanced at the card, finally seeing the "G.o.dfrey" that preceded the surname. So it had been G.o.dfrey, not John, all along. This then, must be a son of the villain in question! Why had Irene not told me? After all, I had never seen the man, as she had. In addition, G.o.dfrey Norton was the most strikingly handsome man I had ever encountered, save upon the stage, when I went to see Irene perform.

I am normally resistant to male beauty-many a skin-perfect apple has a rotten core. Indeed, the smoother the skin the fouler the rot, in my experience-Jasper Higgenbottom's selfless soul lay hidden beneath a bushel of freckles and ears of regrettably elephantine prominence-but this man Norton was as exceptionally handsome as Irene was beautiful. I was astounded that she had also forgotten to mention that inescapable fact.

"Please sit," he urged pleasantly, jumping up to sweep a pile of doc.u.ments from the single oaken sidechair.

"You have not room for a typewriter girl or even her machine," I blurted, appalled by the mounded papers.

"I will have if you transcribe all this foolscap into type," said he with a winning smile. "A table lurks somewhere under the deeds there, and a spare chair as well."

The piled deeds that he had mentioned seized the opportunity of my attention being directed upon them to sigh, crackle and slowly ... inevitably, slide toward the floor.

Mr. Norton leaped up again, as did I. We hurled ourselves at the glacial tide and stemmed it, then laughed in mutual embarra.s.sment and self-congratulation.

"You see, Miss Huxleigh, I need help desperately!"

"Why are you so inundated with papers?"

"Because I am inundated with work. I am new to the law and must undertake the petty paperwork suits that my senior barristers have outgrown. A clever typewriter girl would perfectly answer my needs."

"How could you pay me if your practice is so fresh?"

He cleared his throat and looked away, revealing an aquiline profile a Caesar would have coveted for his coins.

"I have certain... obligations that I suspect will soon end. I have never been in a better position to pay anyone. But"-he eyed the cluttered room-"let us take a turn in the gardens to discuss the work. It is more pleasant there."

So I ended by strolling in the Temple gardens with G.o.dfrey Norton. Irene, I thought, would be... what? Even I could not imagine how she would greet this news.

"You must realize, Mr. Norton, that the idea of a typewriter girl in the Temple is rather radical. No one besides yourself has answered my advertis.e.m.e.nt."

"Why do you think that I did?"

"You are perverse?"

He laughed easily. "No. I simply realize that no one like yourself solicits such work except out of economic necessity."

"That is true. I was a governess first."

"And before that?"

"A parson's daughter."

"Ah. He died, of course."

"Yes." A sudden vision of my kindly father pa.s.sed before my eyes. Though I seldom thought of him, I missed him. G.o.dfrey Norton had never known that bittersweet emotion in relation to his own sire, I feared, no matter how he defended his family.

"Died, leaving you penniless," he added a trifle bitterly.

"It was not Father's fault! The Church is not meant to be a profitable undertaking. The flock cared for me until I came to London and left their purview. That is my own error."

"Or good fortune," said he, taking my hand in a kindly way that I could not find the heart to object to, despite his handsome face. "You will be the first typewriter girl in the Inner Temple; think of the honor! And you will save me from being buried alive by the scribblings of the law's delay."

His charm was as lethal as Irene's. Even if I had not known that the chance of just this employment with G.o.dfrey Norton had inspired her to direct me to the Temple, I would have succ.u.mbed to his obvious need of an organizing hand. I had often come to my father's rescue just so with his sermons and correspondence.

"It is settled then," Mr. Norton prodded, shaking my hand on the bargain.

"When do I begin?"

"Tomorrow. With the deeds. When they are done we shall have a table cleared. I will demolish the pile on the chair myself tonight."

I laughed at the ludicrousness of it-that tiny room, the proximity of Irene's nemesis and possible rival for the Zone of Diamonds, my sudden installation in the heart of the female-free Temple.

Mr. G.o.dfrey Norton took my laughter for the joy of employment.

Irene laughed even harder and longer that evening when I reported to her.

"Splendid! Only one fish bit, and that the one we sought. What will he pay you?"

"I... neglected to ask," I said, mortified. The shock of discovering that G.o.dfrey was not the Norton I had a.s.sumed him to be had combined with the man's native charm to drive normal practicalities from my head, though I could hardly tell Irene that. Mr. G.o.dfrey Norton had apparently had no effect on her whatsoever, else why had she omitted mention of his youth and good looks?

"Be certain to demand your best rate, Nell-above it, if you can."

"Mr. Norton expects to be freed of a financial obligation. I have the impression that his capacity for work is enormous. And I still do not understand why you did not warn me that I would be meeting the son, not the father."

Irene shrugged. "A Norton is a Norton as far as our quest is concerned; the son is cut from the same arrogant sailcloth as the sire. Besides, you make a better investigator if you form your own opinions."

"Indeed I have, and I do not feel that this Mr. Norton can have much in common with his father. For one thing, he is self-supporting and has evidently been so for some time, which means he has not benefited from the possession of the Zone of Diamonds. He is young to be a barrister-"

"Not so young," Irene corrected me. "Close to my age, no doubt, and I am becoming established in my work."

"Still, he must have begun his studies at a remarkably early age, with no or little monetary aid from his father, certainly."

"How admirable," Irene said icily. "We all face our obstacles. One of mine is being underestimated. See that you don't underestimate your new employer. He is a barrister and a Norton, untrustworthy breeds both."

With that she went off to the Lyceum Theatre and I prepared myself for my new position at the Temple.

Within days it was clear that G.o.dfrey Norton refused to play the villainous character Irene had a.s.signed him. His solicitude toward myself verged on chivalry-a pillow for my back, an eyeshade for my head, help in deciphering the clerk's abominable penmans.h.i.+p ... His actions reminded me of the kindness the curate, Mr. Higgenbottom, dispensed to his flock; no doubt he would have lavished even more solicitude upon the woman he chose to wed- if only fate had permitted our paths to join as well as simply cross!

I would never confess it to Irene, but I found the position ideal. The Temple grounds, both Middle and Inner, formed an isle of tranquility amid London's fiercest urban uproars. Like a tide the stream of city life rushed past, only Fleet Street's faintest murmurs foaming through the narrow gates to both Temple yards. Across that thoroughfare bristled the Gothic towers of the Royal Courts of Justice, opened by Queen Victoria this very year of 1882.

Yet a stone's throw from such turmoil I could amble through courtyards reminiscent of my notion of Oxford and Cambridge, trod cobblestones unaltered since Queen Elizabeth's time, idle in the gardens along the tranquil river, even visit the lovely Temple Church with its twelfth-century round nave holding the stone effigies of knights naming the first families in the land. The first earls of Pembroke and Ess.e.x lay there with other n.o.ble knights, uncaring of the traffic upon Fleet Street.

To save me transporting it, Mr. Norton had bought a typewriter. Like Rapunzel I speedily spun the straw of longhand into the glitter of type-neat, efficient type that occupied so much less paper. Mr. Norton was often out, joining his fellow barristers-gowns flying and wigs askew-in racing between chambers and the Royal Courts across Fleet Street, daily breaching the flow of commerce with suicidal abandon.

The pay, it transpired, was generous and Twining's tea shop was just down Fleet Street, so Irene's illicit larder was soon stocked with exotic Orient brews.

To my surprise, employment with Mr. Norton led to invitations into other chambers at the same good pay. I came to learn the law's peculiar syntax and easily mastered the long, Latin phrases. Father had insisted I study the dead language, not because of any fondness for the Roman Church, but because Latin underlay English. Never had his foresight proved so useful. I flourished in the Temple, but I learned not a syllable of the Zone of Diamonds.

"What a wasted effort," Irene complained of my unrequited investigations after some weeks. "This G.o.dfrey Norton is proving to be as dull as ditchwater. No irregular habits, no vices, not even a suspicious client or two, though the steady sums paid to that Hammersmith establishment called 'The Sycamores' are of mild interest. Perhaps you would deign to look into them. What a good thing that you are not a blackmailer, Nell; you would have slim success at it. To spend two months almost daily closeted with a man and know nothing more of him than the cut of his clothes strikes me as unlikely beyond belief." She yawned.

"I know a good deal about him! He is unfailingly courteous-"

"Ah, how incriminating!"

"Most conscientious in his work-"

"A saint among us!"

"Neat about his person if not his office, and not even vain about his appearance."

"A paragon, 'tis plain."

"You could benefit from his example," I added, "as far as the vanity is concerned."

"Vanity is an accessory of my profession."

"Which one?"

"You begin to interrogate me as if I were a witness; too many hours spent among the barristers, I fear. Vanity is of use to both the performer and the investigator. In both roles I wish to win applause; only in investigations, the audience is naturally smaller."

"I wonder which role is the more vital to you?"

"Why, my singing, of course! Playing detective is merely a necessity that underwrites the greater occupation. Once my singing future is secure, I shall let all these petty little puzzles go to their natural solvers-Scotland Yard, or Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective."

"Would you really, Irene? Somehow I think the cart has come to pull the horse. You've shown no loss of interest in the Zone of Diamonds despite all this time and a cold trail."

"The Zone." Irene lifted an eyebrow. "No, I shall always want to solve that conundrum-but that is a major work of detective art, involving revolution and royalty and missing crown jewels. As for the rest, let it go. I shall be as indifferent to mysterious matters as a dog to milk once I am fully established as an opera singer."

Though this was said grandiosely, with Irene's offhand tone of conviction, I sniffed audibly before she swept out the door, which unspoken comment she pretended not to have heard.

"You seem distracted today, Miss Huxleigh."

I tore my eyes from the window, where they had been staring at the treetops. "So sorry, Mr. Norton. I don't think I have fallen much behind." I began to admonish the keys sharply.

"I did not mean for you to attack the poor machine," he said, laughing. "Let me rephrase my comment. 'You seem pensive today, Miss Huxleigh.' Is there a difficulty?"

"No, of course not... I was merely thinking."

"Is thinking such a sad occupation?"

"No, only... I was thinking of my late father."

"Ah." His tone became abruptly noncommittal.

"And... guilt. I was meditating on the strange state of guilt"

"Perhaps natural in a parson's daughter," he said with a slight smile.

"Have you ever felt... guilty, Mr. Norton?"

His laugh was sharp and brief, like a bark. "What person who has pa.s.sed through childhood has not? Have you not instilled guilt in your day, Miss Huxleigh, as a governess?"

"Yes. Guilt is quite a useful emotion. Now that I have experienced it more closely, I feel... wretched... for ever having induced it in another, even in the name of discipline."

"What have you to feel guilty about, for heaven's sake?"

I took my hands from the keys and folded them in my lap, staring steadily at Q-W-E-R-T. "I have not been fully frank about my situation with you, Mr. Norton."

"I sense a confession coming on. I should warn you that a barrister is not a man of the cloth."

"Perhaps you will have to do. I should tell you that, that I... share lodgings with another."

"You... share lodgings with another." A long silence, in which Mr. Norton cleared his throat. "Surely, you are not implying an unsanctioned alliance...?"

I looked up, mortified. "Oh, no! I reside with another woman, of course."

"Of course." He sounded much relieved. "But that is becoming common as more countrywomen descend on London for work. There is nothing irregular in it-"

"My chambermate is... an actress."

"I see. No doubt an... unusual companion for a parson's daughter, but there are a good many actresses in London, and some of them even respectable, I am sure."

"She also... takes on clients-"

"Clients! I see."

"No! Clients of a quite respectable kind, although unusual."

"Respectable but unusual." His voice remained carefully neutral as his confusion grew.

By now he had no inkling of where I was headed and half-feared the direction. Yet he remained calm and not at all judgmental. I did not quite know how to conclude my awkwardly begun admission.