Garment of Shadows (9 page)

Holmes took a breath. “My wife had left one of her cases with you, you say?”

“When they went off to the desert, the motorcars were very full of equipment. M. Fflytte asked his company to leave any excess luggage here. The others have retrieved theirs, of course. Your wife’s remains. With, as I said, the one brought back in her absence.”

“Let me have them both.”

“Certainly, Monsieur. Oh—stupid man that I am, I forgot—a gentleman left a message for you.”

Aha—it was Russell, in disguise. But when Holmes looked at the envelope, in hotel stationery and the same ink as that in the register, one eyebrow rose. He ripped the envelope open, and read, in beautiful Arabic script:

My brother, if you are available to assist in a grave matter, you will come to Fez and drink coffee at the shop nearest the train station, when they open in the morning or before they shut at night
.

At the look in Holmes’ eyes, the desk man immediately recalled the need for the two bags from the storage-room. He placed them on the floor, hastily retreating behind the solid desk again. “Will, er, Monsieur be requiring a room?”

“No—yes. Good idea.” He needed to go through Russell’s things, and it would give him a chance to clean up a little: In his current state, he would intimidate no one into parting with information. He held out his hand for the hastily proffered key, then asked, “Are there any of the film crew who didn’t go on the ship today?”

“Only two or three of the local men, Monsieur, who were not needed.”

“Where are they?”

“I am not certain, Monsieur.”

“They live in town?”

“Yes, Monsieur. Or so I presume.”

Holmes eyed him: That addendum had been too hurried, and his look of innocence too open.

However, bags and bath were more urgent than pinning down whatever mild chicanery the desk man might be hiding. And in any event, the local help were less likely to know what had happened to Russell than the crew itself. Without a word, he caught up the bags and headed for the stairs.

He went through every centimetre of both bags. One contained garments and equipment she had not thought necessary for a week’s filming in the desert. The other bag’s garments were less precisely folded and had sand in them. He strewed the room with the contents, and when the bags were empty, prodded the seams for hidden pockets, ripping apart one of the handles that felt lumpy.

He found neither passport nor revolver. Nor was the small leather valise she used inside the larger bags. The absences were reassuring, suggesting that her disappearance was deliberate, the lack of word merely an oversight or mislaid letter.

The water from the taps was actually warm; the water in the bath when he climbed out was opaque. He opened his shaving kit, squinted at the reflection in the spotted glass, and closed it again. Shaving could wait until he was certain that a beard would not be required.

He shoved his young wife’s clothing any which way into the bags, did the same with his own, and returned to the lobby.

“Where do I find those local crew members?” he demanded.

“Monsieur, I have no idea, I—”

Holmes put both hands on the desk, leaning forward until the man drew back. “I see that there is money involved. Some minor crime. I am not interested. I merely require to speak with the crew.”

“I … that is … Yes, Monsieur.” The desk man wrote an address on a piece of paper, and pushed it across the wood.

Holmes took it without looking, then said, “The gentleman who left the envelope for me. When was he here?”

“Monday.”

“What, four days ago?”

“Yes, Monsieur, in the afternoon. Not a European, Monsieur; a big man with—”

But Holmes turned on his heel and made for the door. He knew what the man looked like.

With his hand on the door, he whirled to see the desk man’s face. The Moroccan looked relieved, but it was not the queasy relief that comes from getting away with a profound wrongdoing. Whatever scam the man had going on with this crew of locals, it did not touch on Russell’s safety.

It took a couple of hours to run the crewmen to earth. They were not at the medina coffee house whose address Holmes had been given, nor at the home where he was directed next, but in a warehouse of sorts clear across town, not far from the hotel where he’d begun.

Four men looked around as he pushed open the door. All wore beards, turbans, and
djellabas;
three of them had the build of stevedores; one of them was six feet tall, an extraordinary height here. The youngest man, a slim figure whose beard was precisely trimmed and whose robe was more neatly tailored, spoke up, in French.

“You are in the wrong place, Monsieur.”

“I think not,” Holmes replied, then changed to Arabic. “I need to ask about one of the moving picture crew. You are just returned from the desert, I think?”

“The picture crew is off working on a boat,” the man said, sticking to French.

Holmes shifted back to that tongue, since the others were Berbers, and to at least one of them, Arabic appeared to be a closed book.

“My wife, Mary Russell, was with them when I left Rabat, but at the hotel, they tell me that she did not return with the others.” He slid his hand into his jacket, drawing out his note-case. He opened it, and removed several franc notes, which he tucked beneath the handle of a hammer that lay on the packing case by his side. He looked at them, and said simply, “I am concerned.”

The four men consulted in silence for a moment. One of the heavily bearded individuals said something in a language Holmes recognised, although he only spoke a few words of it. Thamazigth was the language of the Berbers of North Africa, and of an intriguing structure. One day, he intended to study it properly. Today he merely required communication.

“Do you know the person I mean? Tall, blonde, she wears spectacles.”

“A lady with … much assurance.”

“That’s a diplomatic way to phrase it. Did she go with the company to the desert?”

The slim young man’s eyes gave the briefest flick over the money, before he lifted himself onto a crate and took out a cigarette.

When he got it going—Holmes blamed the picture industry, for making every man a dramatist—he blew out a smoke cloud and answered, “Yes, she went along. But she did not come back.”

Patience, Holmes
.

“Tell me what happened.”

“We were at Erg Chebbi, near Erfoud. You know Erfoud?”

“I know where it is. Past the
bled
and over the mountains to the Sahara proper.”

“Precisely. And that is why M. Fflytte took everyone there, because he wished to film the sand dunes for his picture. We warned him, there are few
sheikhs
in Erfoud.” He chuckled; two of the others did as well; the big man just stared.

“Such was the plan before I left,” Holmes said. “Why did she not come back with the others?”

“It was Tuesday night,” the dapper man persisted. “The filming was all but finished, although Monsieur Fflytte planned to spend the following day filming scenes he thought he might want. That were not written into the script, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“So.” The man examined the end of his cigarette, flicking the ash until he was satisfied with its shape; the only thing that kept Holmes from going after him with the hammer was the knowledge that it would cause even more of a delay. “We had a very full day, on Tuesday, from before sunrise—M. Fflytte wished to capture the sunrise—to sunset, which he also desired to film. We had fallen upon our dinners like hyenas (How those pretty blonde English girls can eat!) and the younger ones had gone to their tents, while some of the others, as this would be their last night in the desert, lingered around the fire with cognac.

“Not the crew, you understand—not those of us who carried things and made arrangements with the local people. We had another fire, and were sitting there.

“So we were the only ones to see your Mademoiselle—rather,
Madame
—Russell—go away. She had gone to her tent,” he explained—Holmes’ hand twitched, craving the hammer handle— “before the other ladies, and a boy came to speak with her.”

“A boy? A young man?”

The Moroccan laughed, thinking he perceived the underlying question. “No, Monsieur, you need not be concerned with your wife’s virtue. No more than any European husband needs to be concerned, that is. He was young—one of many such who wandered in and out of the camp, you understand, selling small items, begging for coins. Occasionally stealing perhaps—we hired guards from the town, which helps to keep thievery down. In any case, the boy came to her tent, and they spoke.”

One of the others made a remark. The two talked back and forth for a minute in Thamazigth, then the spokesman returned to his narrative. “I am sorry, Monsieur, but Massim here says that it was not so much a case of the two speaking, as it was her asking questions.”

“You mean, the lad didn’t answer?”

“Not that Massim heard. And Massim’s hearing is very good,
Bismillah
.”

Massim looked at Holmes, and for the first time smiled, displaying a mouth like a smashed fence.

“So she asked the boy questions, but he didn’t understand her.” Which was unexpected: A young man accustomed to the camps of foreigners should speak either Arabic or French, in both of which Russell was fluent.

But the crewman shook his head. “Oh, he seemed to understand. Merely did not answer.”

“Did not, or could not?”

The three men consulted without speech. Massim gave a tiny shrug; the slim man admitted, “Perhaps could not. He seemed friendly enough towards her. And after all, they went off hand in hand.”

“Did they now?” The man’s face gave a little twist of chagrin, that he had been distracted into a premature revelation of the tale’s dénouement, but Holmes did not give him the chance to regain the floor. “When the boy came that night, did he loiter about for a time? Speaking with the young girls perhaps?”

“We did not notice him. He was Berber, not a desert-dweller, so he stood out a little. The first we saw of him, he was scratching at the door of Madame’s tent. The two talked—or, she talked—and they went inside for a time. When they came out, she was wearing the heavy
djellaba
she had bought in the village—a man’s
djellaba
,” he added disapprovingly. “The two of them walked away together, into the night. In the morning, she was not in her bed.”

“Had you seen the lad around the crew, before that night?”

The men agreed, no. “We thought he was one of the village urchins, even though the dunes are quite a walk from the town.”

“Wait—urchin? How old was he?”

“Oh, young. As I said, too young to be interested in the girls.”

“A child? Russell went off with a
child
?”

“Put her hand in his and walked away into the desert.”

“But he must have said something to her, or given her a message of some kind.”

The other short man spoke up, his French ungrammatical and heavily accented. “He gave her a thing. Not letter, just small, I don’t know. She looked at it, very—” He said something to the other, who translated.

“Very interested.”

“What did she do with it? Did she hand it back to him?”

The man shrugged. “They went in tent. I don’t see, after.”

“She did not take a valise away with her?”

“Not that was told, Monsieur.”

“And she did not return, once she and the lad had left?”

“Again, Monsieur, who knows?”

The more fluent one commented, “But she must have expected to be away.”

I shall murder this fellow
, Holmes thought. “Why do you say that?”

“Because she left a note. And her passport was missing.”

“None of her other possessions?”

“Who knows? One of the other girls packed Madame’s things and brought them back.”

With a jolt, Holmes remembered the presence among the Fflytte crew of Annie, one of Mycroft’s agents. That redoubtable young lady spy would surely know what had happened.

“What did the note say?”

“ ‘I have to go to Fez, I will come to Rabat later.’ In English, naturally. In any event, that is what I was told.”

“Did no one think it odd?”

“M’sieur Fflytte was irate, because as I said, he wanted to do a few more scenes the next day, but none of them were of importance, and in truth, he was finished with her. If it had been one of the girls who disappeared, we would have been concerned, but Miss—Mrs—Russell? The lady is
formidable
. Who could worry?”

Indeed. And yet, Sherlock Holmes worried.

The big man seemed to have the brains of a tortoise, but at Holmes’ expression, even he was beginning to look alarmed.

Holmes drew a calming breath, and started again. “So she left her tent that night. After dark.”

“Oui, Monsieur.”

“And was still gone the next day.”

“Oui, Monsieur.”

“She spoke to no one, merely left a brief note to say that she was going to Fez.”

The man nodded.

“The filming ended. The rest of you came back here. No one thought this odd. And all you have to say is that my wife was last seen walking into the desert in the company of a child. Three days ago.”

Four faces stared back at him, unable to respond.

“Who brought her bag back from Erfoud?”

“One bag, and a small valise. It was the oldest of the yellow-haired girls.”

Annie.

Holmes left the notes beneath the hammer, and went to find a taxi.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

H
olmes’ thoughts raced in front of the trotting horse. The sun was low. He badly wanted a conversation with Annie (a young lady with a background almost as interesting as her skills) but her late return would keep him from reaching Fez tonight, and he was needed there—or he had been needed, on Monday.

Would that conversation justify another day’s delay? Russell had only disappeared on Tuesday—in England, after three days he’d have scarcely noticed her absence. But in an unknown place, accompanying an unknown person, leaving no notice? And, considering the note left on Monday …