Sherlock Holmes and the Dance of the Tiger (6 page)

Sherlock leaned back in his wing-backed chair beside the beginning flames of a fire, his open shirt casting his physique in a favorable light.
 
His curls were still damp from a combination of initial perspiration and a light drizzle they had encountered.
 
“I must warn you, Watson, there is a certain danger.”

“Naturally.
 
I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Grrrrr! ZZZ-Zzzz-ZZzzz SNORT!”
 
Sherlock’s outstretched legs rested on Dr. Watson’s bulldog who vacillated between snoring and growling.
 
Prinnie was a formidable and fearsome hedonist, much like his namesake.

“But why are we going to Paris?” she asked, picking up the duster and applying it to the marble fireplace.

“Beyond a doubt I would tell you if you needed to know, Miss Belle.
 
This is a matter of utmost secrecy involving the highest levels of government.”

Please, please, dear God, don’t let it be another finishing school.
 
What a horrific experience that was, attempting to sit, sew, smile, converse politely, paint, play the pianoforte and be on display in corseted splendor all day.
 
She shivered at the thought.
 

And then she remembered being shot at and attacked by men with knives, which was almost as bad as the finishing school.

“I must protest, Mr. Holmes.”
 
She turned around from the fireplace.
 
His belligerent mood was beginning to wear thin.
 
She said quietly, “I may be your student, and I may be a domestic, but I deserve to know where you are taking me—and, in particular, how much danger I will be in.”

The good doctor looked up at her from his chair opposite Sherlock’s, surprised, which immediately made her feel ashamed of her protests—although John Watson should be the last person to trust Sherlock without question.
 
She bit her lip and moved to stoke the fire in the black marble fireplace surrounded by dark walnut wood.

“Why?” repeated Sherlock.
 
“When you need to know why I shall tell you, Miss Hudson.
 
Is that clear?
 
This is a highly confidential matter.
 
As to the danger, I thought we had already resolved the matter in the carriage.
 
I have great concerns about your safety which is distracting me from my work—and that
I cannot tolerate
above all else.”

He was truly angry now.
 
This was not Sherlock’s usual verbal sparring and his unemotional assessment.
 
It was as if something suppressed had finally burst forth.
 
“You are here to assist with my work and not to distract me from it!
 
You must choose once and for all, Miss Hudson!”

“Really, Holmes, I don’t think—” John protested.

Oh, no!
 
I’ve gone too far!
 
As I always do.
 
Please, please let me go to Paris
.
 

“Mr. Holmes is quite right, Dr. Watson.
 
I am sorry,” Mirabella stated softly.
 
“It isn’t that I don’t wish to go, I merely wish to be informed.”

Sherlock threw the paper down on the stand next to his chair.
 
She didn’t think she had ever seen him so impassioned.
 

“You told me, Miss Hudson, that you wished to make the decisions about your future as opposed to having your family or myself make those decisions,” he continued.
 
“So be it.
 
If you consider yourself to be grown, then act it.
 
I assure you, Miss Hudson, that I cannot re-visit this subject every hour on the hour.
 
I must have the entirety of my energy focused on my work.
 
Do you or do you not wish to work for me, Miss Hudson?
 
If the answer is yes, then we shall not discuss this again and you shall be going to Paris, is that quite clear?”

“Well, of c-c-course!
 
It just seems
unusual
that you should be taking me to Paris.
 
Two men and a woman that is.”
 
She searched for anything to say, glancing at Dr. John Watson, whose usual laughter and cordiality had been replaced by surprise.

“Two men and their assistant, you mean,” Sherlock corrected, who seemed to be regaining his composure and returning to his usual mechanical state.

“She’s quite right.
 
We cannot, Holmes,” Watson interjected.
 
“It would destroy Miss Mirabella’s reputation.”

“I do not care a feather for such things,” stated Mirabella, raising her chin.
 
“I do not plan to ever marry.
 
I will be a scientist.”
 
She was indeed saving to attend the University of London.
 
For the first time in England, almost two years ago in eighteen hundred and eighty, four women were awarded Bachelor of Arts degrees.
 
And only last year two more women were given Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of London, precisely the degree she wished for.

“There you have it, Watson.
 
Scientists are not in need of a reputation.”
 
Sherlock picked up
The Globe
as if the matter were now finalized.
 
“And I might add that all of Miss Belle’s activities will be in the context of detective work.
 
Surely there can be no objection to that, the highest of callings.”

“Do not risk Miss Mirabella’s future, Holmes,” Watson commanded.
 
“She is young and may not yet have settled on what she wants.”

Oh, I know what I want
.
 
Mirabella’s eyes rested on Dr. Watson’s blonde-streaked hair, perfectly cut, falling into his concerned eyes in a most stylish manner.
 

“Miss Belle is a person of decided opinions.
 
I have every confidence that she knows precisely what she wants,” Sherlock murmured as if reading her mind, his eyes not moving from the paper, adding under his breath, “and will stop at nothing to get it.”

“I will not bend on protecting Miss Mirabella,” John Watson insisted.

“Very well then, we shall take Miss Hudson’s aunt as a chaperone.”
 
Sherlock glanced up from the paper, his manner now calm but resolved.
 
“Mrs. Hudson will go as far as Paris and from there will return home, as other arrangements have been made for a companion of sorts upon our arrival.”

“What do you mean
of sorts
, Holmes?” pressed Watson.
 
“Miss Mirabella will either have a companion or she won’t.”

“Miss Belle will have numerous companions, Watson, I guarantee it,” Sherlock replied.
 
“Even so, given the nature of our business in Paris, I must disclose that it would appear quite odd for her to have a lady’s maid or attendant.”

“As long as Miss Mirabella is not alone in our company and there are other females present, I believe it will be deemed acceptable,” concluded Dr. Watson.

“I must advise you, Watson, that if Miss Hudson continues in our service—and that is a very big ‘if’—” he glared at her as if issuing a warning, “it can only be a matter of time before she is found to be a person in our employ.
 
Servants are generally not afforded the same requirements as a lady of quality without occupation.
 
Miss Hudson will have to be the final judge if the risks to her matrimonial future are worth the benefits of an apprenticeship.
 
It would be very unlikely that she should marry outside her class anyway.
 
Maids marry footmen, and so on, and they adhere to a different set of rules regarding chaperonage than the upper class.”

“To the contrary, Holmes, maids and other women in service are held to much stricter rules of conduct than upper class ladies,” remarked Watson.
 
“Female servants might be allowed one dance per year only to mix with eligible young men—outside of conniving to meet the butcher’s son at the servants’ door in the back of the house.
 
That or a chance conversation with the footman might be a maid’s only stolen moments.”
 

“I bow to your superior and no-doubt first-hand knowledge on the different ways which female domestics might contrive to engage in liaisons, Watson,” remarked Holmes, setting down the
Globe
and picking up his pipe from the marble end-table beside his chair.

“I have no objection to occupation,” interjected Mirabella, finding some difficulty being included in the conversation purportedly about her as she continued to dust.
 
“I wish to be included on the cases.
 
I didn’t mean . . . I merely asked . . .”

“Why are you always asking questions, filling the air with pointless sounds and otherwise obstructing the functioning of my mind?”
 
Sherlock sighed heavily, pressing the tobacco into his pipe.

“When are we leaving?” asked Mirabella, suddenly turning from the fireplace.
 
“Or is that too much of a drain of your superior resources to bestow that information upon the lowly and undeserving likes of myself?”

“Beyond a doubt it is.”
 
The beginnings of a smile fought to be formed on the Great Detective’s lips, causing his mouth to twitch as if he were determined not to be amused.
 

Sherlock motioned to her to light the candles on the mantelpiece as the last light was now coming through the open window.
 
Between the hand-held gas lamp, the various kerosene lamps in the apartment, the candlelight and the wallpaper of questionable taste in rose and dark brown with hints of purple in the triangular design, the study had a warm glow in the evening.
 
Mrs. Hudson had refused to install gas lighting saying that Mr. Sherlock bloody ‘Olmes didn’t need any help blowing up the building.
 

Mirabella herself often sat in front of the fire with Sherlock and Dr. Watson after their dinner—she was a decent cook though one would never know it by Sherlock’s matter-of-fact response to all meals, they were mere fuel to him—before retiring to her Aunt’s quarters on the first floor.
 

“Do you have a headache this evening, Miss Belle?” Sherlock directed his attention towards her again.

“Yes . . .” she replied slowly.
 
“How did you know, Mr. Holmes?”

“Your coloring is not at its usual glow.
 
And you are not wearing your glasses and yet are engaged in close-up work.
 
Generally you forfeit your glasses when you have the headache.”
 
He pulled a jar out of his pocket.
 
“Here, take one of these.
 
It will help your headache.
 
And it will help you sleep.”

She took the jar, reading its contents aloud.
 
“Barbituric acid.”
 
She glanced at Dr. Watson, who shook his head.
 
“No thank you.
 
I’ll manage.”

As she returned the jar to Sherlock, a ringlet of her hair fell forward.
 

“I see you’ve tried a new shampoo, Miss Belle.”

“W-w-why, yes.”

“From your expression, it is not clear to you how I know.”

During this interchange, Dr. Watson handed her a bottle of aspirin, from which she took a tablet.

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes, but you needn’t trouble yourself.”
 
She felt a grave apprehension rising.

“It’s no trouble at all, Miss, Belle, I assure you.
 
For one thing, your hair is curlier, as if it is less encumbered,” Holmes continued, undeterred.
 
“You now have curled wisps about your face.
 
I certainly hope none of that hair finds its way into my specimens.”

“I am ever watchful, Mr. Holmes.
 
And now, if you have no further need of me—”
 
All of her instincts told her it was time to retire for the evening.

“And for another,” he continued, “I am accustomed to the smell of tar about you, which I presume would not be your perfume.
 
And I am acquainted with the smell of your laundry soap as it is my own.”

“Tar?” she repeated indignantly.
 
“Well, I never!
 
I’ll have you know that I finish every rinse with rose water.
 
Of all the rude remarks you have made to me, Mr. Holmes, which are innumerable—”

“Yes, the rose was the overall scent, no doubt contrived to hide the smell of the tar.
 
You went to great pains, and most would never have noted it.”

“I never detected it,” remarked John.

“It was very faint,” agreed Sherlock.
 
“Therefore, I must conclude it is your prior hair shampoo for the purpose of controlling the flaking of the scalp, which I can assure you is a problem you do not have.
 
Probably a long standing habit from childhood initiated by your well-meaning country mother.”
 

“My mother is a very intelligent woman with a wide range of helpful remedies.”
 
Mirabella raised her chin.
 
“Why, everyone in the Dumfries parish went to her when they were sick—“

“She also has outmoded ideas of feminine behavior, surprising since your curate father is obviously very forward-thinking in educating his girls.
 
I must say, I put your being spoiled and brash at his door.
 
But that is a different topic to be sure.”

Thank the heavens for small miracles.

To her dismay, Sherlock continued.
 
“The lavender shampoo you are now utilizing is a decided improvement over the tar shampoo, Miss Hudson.
 
Which I presume was also chosen to help you sleep.
 
If you would but take the Barbituric acid . . .”